25 Dec - Netvibes ( 1 of 3 )

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6 Yr. Old Boy Asks His Dad For $20, Then Gets The BEST Response Ever From His Dad With This Letter… - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – Every now and then America’s Freedom Fighters likes to take a break from the every day problems we all deal with when it comes to the troubles our country and world are facing and like they say, ‘Laughter is the BEST MEDICINE!’ ****************************  Read More The post 6 Yr. Old Boy Asks His Dad For $20, Then Gets The BEST Response Ever From His Dad With This Letter… appeared first on AFF.57 min

BREAKING: Day Before Christmas, Politico Uncovers MASSIVE Trump Scandal- There’s Just One HUGE Problem… - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – The liberal rag Politico has discovered a BOMBSHELL that is guaranteed to end Trump’s presidency before he even enters the White House! These journalists are so damn good that it seems as if we conservatives should just throw in the towel. NEVER!  Look, PoliticoRead More The post BREAKING: Day Before Christmas, Politico Uncovers MASSIVE Trump Scandal- There’s Just One HUGE Problem… appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

MSM Reporters Ticked After Trump Makes Them Do Something For Christmas Obama NEVER Did - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – President-elect Donald Trump has already shown the media that this won’t be a President Barack Obama style White House. Of course, during the holidays there will be the usual decorations and the celebrating of Jesus Christ but there will be one tradition we’ve all seenRead More The post MSM Reporters Ticked After Trump Makes Them Do Something For Christmas Obama NEVER Did appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

ALERT: If You Live In One Of These 9 States- You Will NOT Be Able To Fly On Airplanes Anymore, Here’s Why - Sassy Liberty AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – If you have a driver’s license from Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington you may soon need a second form of ID to get through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at the airport. If you’re like most Americans, you useRead More The post ALERT: If You Live In One Of These 9 States- You Will NOT Be Able To Fly On Airplanes Anymore, Here’s Why appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

Liberals Sink To New Low After People See What Dems Are Giving Their Trump Supporting Family Members - Sassy Liberty AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – After the crushing loss of Hillary Clinton the 2016 Presidential Election, many Democrats absolutely refuse to let it go and move on with their lives.  For many of the same people that were intent upon telling Conservatives and Republicans alike that “elections have consequences” whenRead More The post Liberals Sink To New Low After People See What Dems Are Giving Their Trump Supporting Family Members appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

[WATCH] Internet ERUPTS After People Spot What Obama Did With His MOUTH During Christmas Address- Did You Catch It? - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – Barack Obama delivered his final Christmas address and used the occasion to tell America how GREAT HE IS! Seriously. Yes, Obama did say the words Merry Christmas. He must have forgotten the past 8 years of persecuting Christianity on a daily basis. Well, weRead More The post [WATCH] Internet ERUPTS After People Spot What Obama Did With His MOUTH During Christmas Address- Did You Catch It? appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

Day After She’s Killed In Crash, Boyfriend Breaks Promise And Reveals Secret He Swore To Keep - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – Oh guys, this has to be one of the saddest stories we have done but it needs to be seen.  On the night of Dec. 20, 2016, Kylee Bruce was in a car accident that took her life. According to authorities, Bruce lost controlRead More The post Day After She’s Killed In Crash, Boyfriend Breaks Promise And Reveals Secret He Swore To Keep appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

Stranger Shames Mother For Parking In Handicapped Spot, Her Response Will Break Your Heart… - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – A Tulsa mother named Colleen Stice said a stranger left a nasty note on her car slamming her for using a handicapped parking spot at a local Target store. “We watched you pull into handicap spot and get out carrying a toddler,” the noteRead More The post Stranger Shames Mother For Parking In Handicapped Spot, Her Response Will Break Your Heart… appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

BREAKING: Obama Administration Finalizes Social Security GUN BAN, Here’s What We Know - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – The Obama administration finalized a gun ban that could prevent “tens of thousands” of law-abiding citizens from purchasing guns for self-defense. The ‘Social Security Gun Ban’ targets senior citizens… Unbelievable. The Los Angeles Times reported that the ban would be sweeping; that it would cover thoseRead More The post BREAKING: Obama Administration Finalizes Social Security GUN BAN, Here’s What We Know appeared first on AFF.24 Dec

BREAKING: LIBERAL GOES ON FACEBOOK AND THREATENS TO KILL TRUMP… YOU’LL WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT - Kevin Krohn, 59, of Pembroke Pines, was arrested Thursday after the U.S. Secret Service said he posted comments on Facebook threatening to kill or injure President-elect Donald Trump. (Sun Sentinel / Broward Sheriff’s Office Handout) Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. –  A Florida man’s Facebook postings have landedRead More The post BREAKING: LIBERAL GOES ON FACEBOOK AND THREATENS TO KILL TRUMP… YOU’LL WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT appeared first on AFF.23 Dec

BREAKING: TRUMP FIRES WARNING SHOT AT U.N…. HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW - Dean James III% AMERICA’S FREEDOM FIGHTERS – President-elect Donald Trump warned the United Nations on Friday that things will be a hell of a lot different after he takes office. After the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution Friday condemning Israel for building settlements on the occupied territories annexed after the 1967Read More The post BREAKING: TRUMP FIRES WARNING SHOT AT U.N…. HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW appeared first on AFF.23 Dec

Accidental Deliberations - RSS

Saturday Afternoon Links - Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Anatole Kaletsky discusses the gross failures of market fundamentalism. And William Easterly points out that the risks to democratic governance which now seem to be materializing can be traced to the lack of a values-based defence of empowering people to decide their own future at the societal level. - Julien Gignac reports on the glaring lack of comprehensive information about the state of homelessness in Canada, while also noting that what we do know shows the consequences of homelessness to be as much a problem in smaller communities as in big cities. - Gary Mason discusses British Columbia's epidemic of drug overdose deaths, including the appalling lack of public interest to date.- CBC notes that the introduction of private pay-for-plasma operators has cut into the volunteer donor base of Canadian Blood Services.  - Finally, Andrew Jackson examines the possible effects of Donald Trump's trade policy - and notes in particular that a focus on protecting some established U.S. industries such as autos and steel might have significant spinoff benefits for Canada (even if that type of smart protection may be well beyond what we can expect from Trump himself).24 Dec

Musical interlude - Radical Face - Always Gold23 Dec

Friday Afternoon Links - Assorted content to end your week.- Christo Aivalis offers some suggestions for a set of progressive and effective tax policies:My view is that the Left has to combine the general philosophy of economic redistribution with the practical needs of getting the money to preserve existing social programs and build new ones. We have to make greater peace with forms of taxation that are currently deemed regressive, because they can offer efficient paths to revenue collection. This doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t also explore means to make existing tax models more progressive....My suggestion is that we could consider raising sales taxes by a few percentage points, but increasing the maximum income at which one can access a GST/HST rebate. And to ensure that very low-income Canadians are not unduly shocked by increased sales taxes, you can make the payouts larger and more frequent than the quarterly payments we have now....Seldom discussed today is the 1966 Carter Report on Taxation, which concluded that the government did not tax all forms of income equally; that you paid more tax on income earned through labour than income earned through capital gains. Carter’s suggestions—which were strongly supported by labour and the NDP at the time, and mused about by Brian Topp in recent years — was that all income be taxed on a buck-is-a-buck basis, meaning that if you made $50,000 selling stocks, you would pay the same tax as you would making $50,000 working. But despite the importance of this report, the buck-is-a-buck principle never became reality. As it stands, income made from investments and capital gains has an exemption level and, even after this, is taxed at only half the rate of labour-based income. The Left should commit to the buck-is-a-buck principle, both ideologically, and because it is an effective tactic to shift a tax burden onto the sorts of people who typically make more than negligible incomes on investments and capital gains. Of course, some exemptions could still persist which protect selling a family home or dealing with small inheritances. And some potential pitfalls exist with this suggestion in our current tax code, as do some complications when we consider things like RRSP, RESP and TFSA accounts. Still, a system where flipping stocks for $100,000 nets you significantly lower taxes than working isn’t one conducive to progressive taxation, and could be addressed via a tax policy that has an effective populist edge that seeks a fair deal for Canadians who earn the vast majority of their income through work, unlike the “boys on Bay Street.”- And Scott Santens notes that to the extent income gains are disproportionately being enjoyed by capital rather than labour, we should be particularly interested in pursuing opportunities to increase the public revenue taken in from that income. - Martin Regg Cohn discusses the political hot potato that is health care funding - though we should expect the politics to be second to a commitment from all levels of government to the availability of effective care. - Gordon Price writes about the "phantom affordability" of housing which places massive transportation burdens on commuters. - Henry Fountain and John Schwartz discuss the latest evidence that global warming has taken hold to an extent exceeding the worst fears of climate scientists. And Kiley Kroh points out John Holdren's suggestions as to how subnational governments can lead the fight against climate change even as the likes of Donald Trump take power at the national level. - Finally, Rick Smith argues that in addition to offering the promise of far more fair and democratic elections, proportional representation could also substantially improve our governance.23 Dec

Thursday Morning Links - This and that for your Thursday reading.- Linda McQuaig writes about the dangerous spread of privatized health care which threatens to undermine our universal system:Privatization advocates want us to believe public health care is no longer affordable. But in fact, it’s private, for-profit medicine that’s unaffordable. The publicly funded portion of our health care spending – doctors’ fees and hospital stays – has remained fairly stable as a percentage of GDP for more than 30 years. What is out of control is the part controlled by the private sector – drugs, home care, physiotherapy, etc. If we want to control health care costs, we should extend the publicly funded portion, not open more services to the private sector. But that would require more public funding, which provincial and federal governments, after years of deep tax cutting, are reluctant to commit to. High drug prices, for instance, are a major contributor to rising costs. The solution, as many studies have shown, would be a national universal pharmacare program, which would cost money to get started but ultimately save Canadians billions of dollars a year. ... In an age when the rich demand a fast lane to the front of every line, it will require resolve and determination to preserve our medicare system, a bastion of equality sharply at odds with the heartless corporate world we inhabit. - Noah Smith discusses the connection between work and dignity, while noting that there's no reason to pretend there's any lack of work to be done by people who would like the opportunity to do it. But Van Badham notes that workers are instead being treated as disposable, with new challenges to employment and life security surfacing regularly. And Vincent McDermott highlights a Canadian example, as 170 camp workers near Fort McMurray are being terminated on Boxing Day for not agreeing to forfeit half of their income. - Meanwhile, Elizabeth Thompson points out how the requirement of a high-speed Internet connection may freeze applicants from rural areas out of federal tribunal positions. And while the CRTC's steps to declare broadband Internet a "basic service" may help in the long run, they represent cold comfort for anybody whose employment prospects are limited now. - The Australian Associated Press reports on research showing the minimal costs of paid domestic violence leave - such that there's no excuse for forcing anybody to suffer an abusive relationship in order to avoid employment consequences.- Finally, Jennifer Graham, Jordan Pearson and Alex MacPherson each discuss the Wall government's refusal to be honest or accountable about past pipeline inspections. And Keith Leslie reports that Ontario's government has been tampering with document receipt dates in order to pretend to comply with its access-to-information obligations.22 Dec

New column day - Here, on Justin Trudeau's broken health care promises - and the need for a concerted provincial push for an equal partnership in maintaining and enhancing a universal health care system for all Canadians.For further reading...- The Liberal and NDP 2015 election platforms (PDF) offer a useful indication of the expectations Canadian voters had of any replacement for the Harper Cons.- Joan Bryden has already compared the Libs' platform to their current rewriting of history, while Campbell Clark calls out the games the Libs are playing.  - But this exchange from the September 17 leaders' debate more clearly highlights Trudeau's dishonesty now in claiming to have campaigned on capping health funding:Hon. Justin Trudeau:         Mr. Harper, Mr. Mulcair has talked about health care transfers ––Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper:  –– and the financial (crosstalk) government to make (crosstalk).Hon. Justin Trudeau:         –– but he just stepped back from that promise. He promised to increase health care transfers, and now has said oh no, balancing the books is more important.Hon. Thomas Mulcair:       We are increasing ––Hon. Justin Trudeau:         That’s not what Canadians need.Hon. Thomas Mulcair:       — investments, we are increasing them.Needless to say, that couldn't be much less reconcilable with Trudeau's current position:“Canadians voted, in part, for our commitment to increase health care transfers by three per cent,” he said in French.“And yes, we were well aware we would be criticized for that during the election campaign but it’s a promise we made in terms of priorities. People should not be surprised that we are staying faithful to our election promises.”- Finally, Thomas Walkom notes the need for both an expanded view of health care, and increased federal funding to support it, while providing background on the development of our national Medicare system. And my mention of current funding levels is based on Teresa Boyle's report on this week's meeting. 22 Dec

Wednesday Morning Links - Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Vincent Bevins interviews Branko Milanovic about the economic roots of the working-class revolt against neoliberalism, while pointing out that there's nothing inevitable about globalization harming large numbers of people in the developed world:Let’s start with the obvious question. Does the elephant graph explain Brexit and Trump? Yes, I think that it largely does explain Brexit and Trump. Why? Because it shows in very stark terms that people in the lower parts of rich countries’ income distributions have seen fewer benefits of globalization compared both to the people in Asia against whom they often compete in global supply chains and compared to the people in their own countries’ tops of the distributions. You just cannot undo these two facts....Rich world governments, in say the US and Western Europe, failed to “mop up” globalization’s mess. What could they have done differently?Perhaps it is easy to say it with hindsight, but they could have argued for trade pacts that would pay more attention to workers’ standards rather than to the protection of intellectual property rights and patents. Rich countries, and especially the US, could have paid more attention to the quality of education and tried to not only equalize access to the best schools but make public schools’ quality similar to the quality of private schools. You may say that it is a generally desirable policy that has little to do with globalization: I agree, but I also think that it would have reduced the number of “losers” because it would have enabled larger swaths of the population to successfully compete globally.- George Monbiot discusses how celebrity culture has facilitated the corporate takeover of our social sphere. Katrina vanden Heuvel notes that Donald Trump's false populism has given way to pure plutocracy in the naming of nothing but corporate elites to his cabinet. And Polly Toynbee reflects on a miserable 2016 for far too many people, while highlighting the need to fight against the trends toward corporatism and austerity in the year to come. - Malcolm Buchanan writes that the CETA is yet another bad trade deal being sold as an inevitability in the face of serious concerns. - PressProgress points out that a million Canadian retail workers are making do with less than a living wage while catering to holiday shoppers. - Finally, Heidi Garrett-Peltier discusses how renewable energy stands to create far more jobs than fossil fuels. And CBC reports that both Canada and the U.S. have taken some steps to rein in oil drilling in sensitive Arctic waters.21 Dec

Tuesday Night Cat Blogging - Cats with company.20 Dec

Tuesday Afternoon Links - This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Lynn Parramore interviews Mariana Mazzucato about the options available to build a more fair and inclusive economy even in the face of corporatist leaders like Donald Trump:LP: In your earlier book, The Entrepreneurial State, you describe a model of capitalism that would address many of these problems. How does it work?  MM: My work has shown how a different understanding of the role of the state in growth can unlock private investment. Markets are not static entities that are ‘intervened’ in (for good or bad) but are outcomes of public and private interactions. In my view, the state should be active and work in cooperation with private businesses to spur growth that’s sustainable and inclusive. The policy process is about co-creating and co-shaping of markets, creating new opportunities for business investment —and negotiating a better deal for the public too. Historically, it has been an entrepreneurial state that stimulates and gives direction to new technological opportunities. It is those opportunities that  stir the animal spirits of business to invest—and we can do that again. The examples I give in my book show that public investments are not only important for affecting the rate of growth but also its direction. And that these investments were most successful when mission driven, rather than aimed at single sectors. The venture capital industry entered biotechnology only decades after the National Institutes of Health led the way. Similarly, Apple’s i-products were only made possible due to the hefty public financing of all the technologies that make those products smart and not stupid: internet, GPS, touchscreen and SIRI. Today there are opportunities in green: indeed Germany is using its Energiewende policy as a way of envisioning a green transformation and innovation across many sectors. If we want growth today to be more innovation-driven, more inclusive and more sustainable, then we need a more active state — not a less active one.- And James Bloodworth argues that we should embrace the efforts of workers who are striking for better pay - particularly when the alternative is to have "emergency laws" applied to further attack already-low levels of industrial activism. - Thomas Walkom discusses how the Libs have been little more than a more photogenic version of the Harper Cons, while Tom Parkin compares them to the Sex Pistols as having run little more than a political swindle. Althia Raj calls out the Libs' sudden belief that Parliament is no place to discuss matters of public importance, including political fund-raising and the rules associated with it. And Joan Bryden points out that Justin Trudeau seems to have long since forgotten that he ran on a platform to fund health care, not to starve it.  - Shaurya Taran and Naheed Dosani write that Toronto's budget cuts figure to be devastating for people living in poverty. - Finally, Lenard Monkman reports on the possibility that small and portable homes might help to address housing shortages on First Nations reserves.20 Dec

Monday Afternoon Links - Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- Danielle Martin highlights how investments in ending poverty including a basic income can improve health outcomes among other key social indicators:Far more than consumption of medical care, income is the strongest predictor of health. Canadians are more likely to die at an earlier age and suffer more illnesses if they are in a low income bracket, regardless of age, sex, race, and place of residence.There are at least two ways in which income is related to health. First, income allows people to purchase the things that are necessary to survive and thrive, such as nutritious food and safe shelter. Second, income affects health indirectly, through its effect on social participation and the ability to control life circumstances. Put another way, the biggest disease that needs to be cured in Canada is the disease of poverty, and part of the cure is to implement a big idea: A Basic Income Guarantee for all Canadians. We can eliminate income poverty by ensuring that no one in Canada has an income below what’s needed to achieve a basic standard of living. If we did so, we’d see a considerable improvement in the health of Canadians. The Basic Income Guarantee goes by various names (such as the guaranteed annual income, the negative income tax, and the basic income), and there are different ways to design it. The version I like best works like this: if your income from all sources falls below a certain level, you get topped up to a level sufficient to meet basic needs. That’s it. A true Basic Income Guarantee would ensure that everyone in Canada has an income above the “poverty line.” The Basic Income Guarantee can’t and mustn’t replace all social programs. We still need good public education, publicly financed health care, quality affordable child care, affordable housing, and reliable unemployment insurance. But it would eliminate the need for the kinds of income support programs that invade people’s lives and limit their choices.- And Robin Boadway and Roderick Benns similarly argue that a basic income should be included in our set of fundamental needs in setting labour policy - though we shouldn't pretend it's a complete solution to the problems facing workers either.  - Joseph Stiglitz discusses how workers stand to lose out from Donald Trump's combination of trickle-down and crank economics. And Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger note that Trump's preference for corporate deal-making is likely to ensure that the most important work in building and maintaining necessary but unglamourous infrastructure doesn't get done. - The Star rightly points out that we shouldn't use prison as a solution to individuals' mental health problems. - Tamara Khandaker writes that the Libs' idea of reexamining the already-appalling civil rights abuses in Bill C-51 seems to be to push an even more intrusive and unaccountable surveillance state. - Finally, Karl Nerenberg observes that Justin Trudeau may be creating far larger risks for himself by passing up a clear opportunity for electoral reform, rather than working with the consensus in favour of a proportional electoral system. And PressProgress muses as to what an electoral reform survey would look like if it were designed to be as slanted as the Libs', only in the opposite direction.19 Dec

Sunday Morning Links - This and that for your Sunday reading.- Ben Tarnoff discusses the two winners - and the many losers - created by the spread of neoliberalism:Neoliberalism can mean many things, including an economic program, a political project, and a phase of capitalism dating from the 1970s. At its root, however, neoliberalism is the idea that everything should be run as a business – that market metaphors, metrics, and practices should permeate all fields of human life.No industry has played a larger role in evangelizing the neoliberal faith than Silicon Valley. Its entrepreneurs are constantly coming up with new ways to make more of our lives into markets. A couple of decades ago, staying in touch with friends wasn’t a source of economic value – now it’s the basis for a $350bn company. Our photo albums, dating preferences, porn habits, and most random and banal thoughts have all become profitable data sets, mined for advertising revenue. We are encouraged to see ourselves as pieces of human capital that must ceaselessly enhance our value – optimizing our feeds and profiles, hustling for follows and likes and swipes....Yet if Trump personifies neoliberal ideas, his victory also reflects a revolt against neoliberal policies. The uncaged capitalism fostered by neoliberalism has produced an era of spiraling inequality, stagnant wages, declining life expectancy, and an increasingly post-democratic political system that is more or less openly oligarchic. These things make people angry, and Trump used that anger to get himself elected.The irony is that Trump will only intensify the crisis that put him in power. His cure for the social catastrophe of neoliberalism is a stronger strain of neoliberalism. Trump is like a lunatic doctor who, after a treatment has nearly killed his patient, decides to double the dose in the hopes of a better result.Whether we survive depends on the political struggle ahead: not only in the streets and statehouses, but at the level of ideas. Defeating neoliberalism will require not just the creation of a movement, but the creation of a new common sense. At its heart must be the belief that democracy is a better way to organize society than markets – that some things are not for sale.- Alex Tabarrok points out a new study showing the rapidly-diminishing returns on research within industries. And it's worth noting what that discovery means for our overall economic organization: first, we can expect better returns directing our efforts toward new fields rather than trying to prop up existing ones; and second, to the extent we've already harvested the low-hanging fruit in most current industries, we may need to focus our economic discussion more on distribution than growth. - Meanwhile, Bruce Campion-Smith reports on PIPSC's success in negotiating a right for federally-employed scientists to share their research. - Sherri Borden Colley reports on the difficulty social assistance recipients in Nova Scotia have making ends meet on insufficient benefits. And Iglika Ivanova writes that we should rely far less on private charity to meet basic needs, and instead use the collective power of government to ensure nobody is forced to live in poverty.- Finally, John Whyte offers some suggestions to build a stronger participatory democracy in Saskatchewan.18 Dec

Al Jazeera English

Security forces warn Tunisia over returning fighters - Government should take "exceptional measures" to avoid "Somalisation" of country, security forces say.08:41

Baghdad hit by deadly bombings, at least 11 dead - Dozens of others injured in string of blasts targeting commercial areas of Iraqi capital and its surrounding districts.07:09

Time to reclaim our suffering - The exploitation of the suffering of people in Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq needs to stop.06:05

Pope urges end to Syria fighting in Christmas message - "It is time for weapons to be still forever and actively seek negotiated solution," Francis says in Vatican address.05:25

Israel summons 14 ambassadors after UN settlement vote - Civilian coordination with Palestinians also cut, in rebuke of UN resolution, Defence Minister Lieberman announces.04:29

French aid worker kidnapped in Mali's Gao - No claims of responsibility of the abduction of a female employee who worked with a children's NGO.04:20

The UN settlement resolution is too little and too late - Palestinians know that they have been offered only stale crumbs from the UN Security Council's table.03:59

East Aleppo: 'Our memories are buried' - Residents evacuated from the Syrian city of Aleppo are beginning their lives anew in Idlib.03:56

A symbolic resolution against Israeli settlements - Observers are divided on whether the recent UNSC resolution will lead to any substantive change.03:42

Peter Hultqvist: 'Respect international law' - The Swedish Defence Minister discusses security issues in the Baltic region as Russian and NATO troops mobilise.03:05

Atlas Obscura - Latest Articles and Places

Watch a Guy Hit 240 Consecutive Green Lights in New York City - It took Noah Forman about 26 minutes to accomplish, but earlier this month, he achieved a personal driving goal: hitting 240 consecutive green lights in Manhattan, which he says is a record.  Forman had previously hit over 100 consecutive green lights in 2014, but, on Tuesday, December 6, very early in the morning, he set out to beat that. "I wasn't satisfied with that number. These two years have gone by and much has changed: people are driving slower, stopping in random places, crossing four lanes of traffic," Forman, a taxi driver, told Gothamist.  Many stop lights in Manhattan are timed to the expected speed of drivers, which means that if you drive the speed limit up, say, Third Avenue without obstructions, you're likely to catch several green lights in a row. Which appears to be the part of the strategy Forman used, in addition to some luck.  "I was hoping to push my goal up to a large number like 500 green lights," he told Gothamist, "but I'll settle for this: no stopping, smooth, well mostly smooth sailing, for an estimated 240 lights, one yellow, all the rest green."23 Dec

Little Istanbul in Sala, Sweden - Outside of Sala, a small town in southern Sweden, there is some decidedly un-Scandinavian architecture. Minarets, domes and ornamental arcades dot the landscape of a miniature version of Istanbul, as seen through the eyes of a unique city planner. The man behind Little Istanbul is Jan-Erik Swennberg, and the story of his personal journey to create a Turkish city goes back a few decades. He was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome at an early age, and it’s not uncommon for people with Asperger’s to have an intense focus and interest in one topic. In 1979, Jan-Erik turned his focus to Turkey. It all began during a trip to Bulgaria, a holiday that included a three-day excursion to Istanbul. Jan-Erik fell in love with the hectic, beautiful, crazy, ancient, modern city. The jumble of building styles from millennia of construction, spear-like towers piercing the sky, car exhaust curling around smoky incense—it was all fascinating and mysterious, if not a little intimidating to the young traveler. After the trip, his interest in Turkey and Istanbul grew and grew, and was soon channeled into creating a small-scale version of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (aka the Blue Mosque) in his family garden. At first Jan-Erik’s father was skeptical, fearing the neighbors might laugh. But they didn’t, and construction continued. Today there are about 20 model buildings of Istanbul landmarks spread throughout the garden. They are all there: the Dolmabahçe Palace, the Yavuz Selim Mosque, the Topkapı Palace, and the Blue Mosque that started it all. What might be most impressive about the garden mini-city is that it has all been built from one man’s own perspective, no drawings, plans or blueprints—and all from salvaged material from the local dump and recycling bins.23 Dec

The Complicated, Inconclusive Truth Behind Rat Kings - On the top floor of the Otago Museum in Dunedin, New Zealand, where there are taxidermied circus lions, a tooth from the largest species of shark to ever have existed on Earth, and delicate glass models of sea creatures, lies one specimen that stands out from the rest: a large jar that contains eight rats in a yellowish preserving fluid, their jumbled bodies sunk to the bottom to reveal a thick, floating knot of tails tying them together. The jar’s label reads, simply, “Rat King,” identifying it as a phenomenon that for centuries has been both mythologized, even if the rat king—a group of rats with their tails tied up to each other’s—may not even actually exist. Or, at least, occur in nature. All of which hasn’t stopped popular culture from elevating it to myth, popping up in numerous works of fiction, often as a bad omen, a representation of plague, or associated with witchcraft. But experts, for one thing, are skeptical, even as, throughout history, they keep turning up. What most people can agree on is that they are gross, and, if they do occur naturally, would be about as unpleasant for the rats as they might be for human observers. “Rodents stuck together could not survive long and are probably in agony and distress until they separate or die,” says Kevin Rowe, a rat expert and the senior curator of mammals at the Museum Victoria in Australia. “A ‘rat king’ would be a horrible ball of animal suffering; nothing about it evokes a sense of kingship.” Rat kings have been reported since the 1500s, and have been documented across the world. People who think they form naturally theorize that up to a few dozen rats—perhaps the young offspring of the same mother—tie their tails together when confined to small spaces, or when cold temperatures force them together to stay warm. Rattus rattus, known as the ship rat or the black rat, is the only type to have been documented in rat kings, though the same phenomenon has been found among other small mammals like squirrels. “Ship rats, according to some theories, are climbing rats, so their tails have… a grasping reflex,” says Emma Burns, the curator of natural science at the Otago Museum. “In the nest, they form a hold.” A bunch of adept, grasping tails might, in other words, be able to get themselves tangled. And in the presence of a binding agent, like sebum—a sticky, oily substance that comes from the rats’ skin—or their urine or feces, the knot might become inextricable. Which is Burns’ theory, at least, for how the rat king on display at the Otago museum formed. It was discovered sometime in the 1930s, she says, when it dropped from the rafters onto the clerks at a shipping office. One of the clerks reportedly beat the writhing mass with a pitchfork. Not long after that, the dead specimen ended up in the hands of a museum curator. Rat experts, meanwhile, are a bit more skeptical, though they concede that a naturally occurring rat king is at least … possible. “When it is very cold rats may use one another for heat, bringing those long tails into direct contact, wrapping around one another,” says Michael Parsons, a scholar-in-residence at Hofstra University who developed a remote sensing technique to better understand rat behavior in urban environments. “Rat kings might be more common than thought—they just don’t persist very long as the tails would unwind as temperatures rose, or (gasp!) when one rat gnaws off its own, or another rat’s, tail.” Others have different theories. “Rat kings may just be a myth that a few people have perpetuated with fake examples,” says Matthew Combs, a doctoral student focusing on rats at Fordham University, even if the motivations of the modern rat king fabricator are less than clear, and the fabrication itself not necessarily easy. The fabricator, for one, would have to tie the rats’ tails together after they were dead, since doing so while they were alive would be “virtually impossible,” Burns notes. Still, real or not, rat kings might always be with us, the result of humans’ loathing of rats themselves. More rats together, in our eyes, just means more of the things we revile about rats in the first place. “In medieval times, people were pretty anti-rat, especially if you saw some seething mass.,” Burns says. “People really just don’t like rats.” And, for her, the research goes on. She and her collaborators plan to take a closer look at the knot in their specimen to figure out what kind of adhesive stuck the tails together and to create a model using X-rays for how the rats might have gotten themselves tangled in the first place. Lab studies with live rats, meanwhile, could, in theory, be done, but, Combs says there wouldn’t be much point. “An observation of a rat king forming from start to finish in a lab setting would be the ultimate support,” he says, “but that seems like it would take a good deal of time and luck and precious lab funding.” Which means that, for now, the myth, at least, will live on. 23 Dec

Dr. Rafael M. Moscoso National Botanical Garden in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - Named after the accomplished Dominican botanist who cataloged the considerable range of plant life of Hispaniola, the Dr. Rafael M. Moscoso National Botanical Garden was founded in 1976. Covering 400 acres (160 hectares), the park showcases the remarkable endemism in both the birds and vegetation native to the second-largest island in the Caribbean. The garden features collections of bromeliads, ferns, palms, succulents, medicinal plants, and an exhibit of over 300 types of orchids. The expansive, well-maintained park is also a popular destination for bird watchers, as a wide variety of avian species—both familiar and rare—make either permanent or transitory homes in the Dominican Republic. A traditional Japanese garden can also be found on the premises. The park's symbol, found throughout in various representations, is the leaf of a guanito, which is a palm tree common to the garden.23 Dec

The Seely House in Mamaroneck, New York - A walk along Grand Street in Mamaroneck is much like a walk along any other street in the suburbs around New York City. That is until you reach number 175. Known as the Seely House, it has the same homey charm as its neighbors, with one exception: It’s only 10 feet wide. The house was built in 1932 by a local contractor named Nathan Seely. In the boom years of the 1920s, Nathan ran a successful home-building company together with his brother, Willard. They bought land in Mamaroneck and built houses for the African-Americans moving from the South during the Great Migration. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 changed everything. Nathan Seely lost his business, and the beautiful home he built for his wife Lillian went into foreclosure. Left with nothing, Nathan’s friend and neighbor Panfilo Santangelo offered him a 12 1/2-foot-wide strip of land that ran between the two houses. To seal the deal, Nathan paid Panfilo one dollar. With no money to buy materials, Nathan used whatever he could find: the basement was held up by a salvaged railroad tie; a chicken coop was used in the living room. Nearing completion, Nathan tethered his new three-story home to the ground with steel cables, to keep it stable in high winds. The Seelys lived at number 175 until 1962, when Nathan passed away. In 1988, Panfilo’s daughter, Ida, bought the house from the Seely family, and began renting it out. Although empty now (a bad case of termites), it’s still owned by the Santangelo family. A desire to preserve this odd, little house runs deep in both Nathan and Panfilo’s descendants. The Santangelos are working to raise funds for restoration, while Nathan’s great-granddaughter, Julie, is working on a book called Skinny House, with proceeds to go toward the repairs. In 2015, the Seely House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, giving new hope for the survival of a local symbol of neighborliness.23 Dec

WWII Bomb Discovery Sparks Christmas Evacuation - Yesterday, construction workers in Augsburg, Germany, unearthed a holiday surprise—a 3.8-ton bomb, dropped on the city by Britain during World War II and still primed to explode. In response, authorities are evacuating the town, starting Christmas morning, the BBC reports. This will give experts a chance to defuse it with little risk. The evacuation will be the biggest since the war ended, comprising 32,000 households and 54,000 residents. Logistically, a holiday is a great time to evacuate a town and defuse a bomb—there's little traffic, work doesn't get interrupted, and families are already primed to keep track of each other. Emotionally, it's probably a bit less ideal. The residents of Augsburg will be spending Christmas in schools, sports halls, and an exhibition center—here's hoping they have a good one.23 Dec

How a Team of Reenactors Helped Solve a Revolutionary War Mystery - In June of 2014, archaeologist Meg Watters led a team of five Revolutionary War reenactors through a forest in Minute Man National Park, on the edge of Lexington, Massachusetts. It was damp out, and the reenactors had traded period garb for rain slickers, hiking boots, and metal detectors, which they slowly swept over the ground. Their first few dozen pings were all useless—cans, bits of wire—but eventually, they found what they were looking for: a gritty, rusted sphere, about the size of a large blueberry. "We actually hit a musket ball," says Watters. "It was like, alright! Here we go!" Two years later, Watters and her team have successfully used that musket ball—and 31 others—to recreate Parker's Revenge, a legendary but little-understood skirmish that took place on the first day of the Revolutionary War. A few weeks ago, the Parker's Revenge Historical Project released their final report on the battle, capping off a multi-year project and solving a centuries-long mystery. All Americans are conversant in the better-known events of those first Revolutionary days—Paul Revere's ride, the "shot heard 'round the world," the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord. Parker's Revenge is more of a deep cut. It lasted only ten minutes, and just one first-person account of it exists, a spare description from a militiaman named Nathan Munroe. ("We met the [British] regulars in the bounds of Lincoln, about noon, retreating towards Boston," it reads, in part. "We fired on them, and continued to do so until they met their reinforcements in Lexington.") But those who do know about the battle hold it up as an exemplar of Revolutionary courage. Captain John Parker, who had brought 77 men to that morning's Battle of Lexington, lost 18 of them to death and injuries before heading after the retreating British. "So he takes 20% casualties, patches up his men, and makes the decision to march after this force, which was ten times the size of his," says Robert Morris, President of the Friends of Minute Man Natioal Park. "This was just an incredibly heroic effort that we wanted to document, research, and preserve for future generations." Thus far, doing so has involved three years of multidisciplinary research, with Watters and her team digging through archives, data, and dirt to piece the battle together. The first step was finding the battlefield—although the general area was known, everyone had different ideas of where exactly the fight took place. Watters sifted through historical documentation, taking into account everything from oral reports of the day's other fights to tax records and land conveyances. She also brought in an ecological design expert, who pointed out how the landscape likely differed 240 years ago. Slowly, a picture of the past began to emerge: what is now new growth forest and a wetland was pastures, meadows, and an orchard. There was a barn in one spot, and a road in another. One they had narrowed down the setting, Watters and her team of volunteers went over 25 acres of it with sophisticated metal detectors. In response, several distinct eras of history reared up to meet them. For a large chunk of the 19th and 20th centuries, the area had been filled with houses, and the ground was covered in the debris from hundreds of lives. Nails from 1890 mingled with beer can tabs from 1970. After a thorough sweep, they had found "thousands of pieces of trash and 29 musket balls," Watters says.  Next, a revolutionary ballistics expert carefully examined each musket ball to determine whether it had been British or Colonial. They mapped where the balls had fallen, and did what are called "viewshed analyses," where they determined what parts of the land would have been visible by a Colonial soldier marching on foot or a British officer on horseback. Researchers made use of a battlefield analysis strategy, known as KOCOA, that focuses on what fighters think about when they see a landscape—"things like, where would be a good place to take cover? What were the obstacles? What, from their perspective, was the line of fire, the line of sight, and the key terrain?" Watters explains. When they had gathered all the data, they held what Watters calls a "military tactical review event." Ecologists, historians, veterans, and military commanders pored over the available information, walked the field, and discussed what, exactly, needed to have happened for the pieces to fit together in the way that they did. "We determined what happened in the field, based on everyone's expertise," Watters says. "All tied together by the archaeological artifacts—by those musket balls that were dug out of the ground."  The story they found goes as follows: after the Battle of Lexington, Captain Parker and his men came to the boundary of the town and set themselves up at a bend in the road, at the edge of a large woodlot. There, hidden by trees and boulders, they waited for the British, who were retreating from Concord towards Boston. As the British approached, they sent a vanguard ahead to engage —but before they could organize themselves, the Lexington militia fired, one shot each. They then retreated over a small hill. The British fired at their backs. In this way, Parker had his brief revenge. Within this broad summary, small details paint an even more human picture. The placement of one Colonial musket ball means a militiaman probably dropped it as he retreated. Distribution of fire suggests that some soldiers ran more quickly than others—as one army historian commented, "The young guys would have taken off fast while the older fat guys would have taken more time to get their things together and move.” Now that the initial research is complete, Morris says, it's time to tell the public this story—to reincorporate Parker's Revenge into the park itself. "This may include things like restoring colonial stone walls and rehabilitating a colonial-era orchard" to return the land to a historically representative state, he says. Walkways may lead visitors through the battlefield, pointing out the positions of both troops. Those telltale musket balls will get their own display case in the lobby. One group has already benefited from the new information: the reenactors. Representatives from 12 different reenactment groups—Redcoats and Minutemen alike—volunteered on the project, helping with everything from site preparation to metallic surveying. On Patriot's Day of this year, reenactors were able to play out Parker's Revenge exactly where it took place 241 years ago, and future run-throughs will be able to incorporate even more detail. "That's kind of an emotional thing for reenactors, to actually be standing where people stood," says Morris. Ed Hurley, one of the volunteers, felt transported back centuries: "Each time [I found a musket ball] my first thought was of the individual who had last touched the ball," he is quoted as saying in the project report. "Who was he? What was he feeling?" Archaeology can't quite tell us that. But thanks to the renewed dedication of Hurley and others, the land will keep giving up the secrets it can. "A few of [the reenactors] have since gone on to be crazy archeology metal detecting guys," Watters says. If there's more history out there, they'll find it.23 Dec

Glacier Republic in Chile - As climate change progresses, glaciers worldwide continue to melt, and Chile, which holds 82% of South America’s glaciated land, is no exception. In addition to warming temperatures, the glaciers of southern Chile are threatened by explosions and pollution caused by mining operations near and atop the glaciers—harmful practices that have prompted environmental advocacy group Greenpeace to take matters into its own hands. On March 5, 2014, Greenpeace declared a new country, the “Glacier Republic,” consisting of all 8,800 square miles of glaciated Chilean land. This bold environmental declaration was Greenpeace’s best attempt to protect Chilean glaciers from the unpunished corporate gold mining practices that pollute and excavate the ice at unsustainable rates. The reason for the previous lack of environmental protection in the area was that, according to Greenpeace director Matías Asún, Chile's Constitution and water code exluded glaciers as public goods in need of protection. According to Asún, this legal loophole gives Greenpeace the ability to lay claim to the icy expanse. Since the republic’s inception, Greenpeace has worked to ensure that the Glacier Republic can qualify as an actual nation. As of now, the unrecognized state has a population of over 165,000 petition signers, as well as a flag, a Declaration of Independence, a tent in the Andes serving as the capital, and 40 international embassies (conveniently located in Greenpeace’s international offices), satisfying all of the requirements for statehood outlined in the Montevideo Convention. The group pledges to maintain its claims to sovereignty until all mining near glaciated areas is completely abandoned, including the Chilean government's proposed expansion of the Andina copper mine, which would, if enacted, destroy nearly 20 square miles of glaciers and contaminate the watershed that provides water for six million Chileans. As of today, the Glacier Republic is not recognized by any member of the United Nations, and unfortunately for Greenpeace, environmental protection has once again taken a back seat to economic opportunity.23 Dec

The Great Harvard Pee-In of 1973 - In 1973, a group of outraged female Harvard activists took to the steps of the school's historic Lowell Hall and poured out jars of fake urine. The powers that be really should have let them use the bathroom. The Harvard Pee-In of 1973 was the brainchild of legendary rabble rouser and activist Florynce "Flo" Kennedy. One of the first black women to graduate from Columbia Law School in 1951, Kennedy practiced law prior to devoting her life to activism. Inspired to battled discrimination and inequality, she often fought for feminist and African-American causes, becoming known for her radical, outspoken, and provocative rhetoric and actions. Kennedy was instantly recognizable by her iconoclastic look, often sporting a cowboy hat, pink sunglasses, and loud outfits while she was out protesting the Miss America pageant or lecturing alongside other feminist luminaries such as Gloria Steinem. In a lengthy obituary in The New York Times (Kennedy passed away in 2000), former New York mayor David Dinkins was quoted as saying, “If you found a cause for the downtrodden of somebody being abused someplace, by God, Flo Kennedy would be there.” So when some female students at Harvard realized that something had to be done about the lack of female bathrooms, they went straight to Kennedy. In the early 1970s, Harvard was embroiled in a fight to bring the ratio of female to male students up to 50:50. (the ratio of men-women at Harvard didn’t become even until 2007), and issues of feminism were at the school were on everyone’s minds. But the question of where all of the female students would be able to go to the bathroom at the historically male university wasn’t necessarily everyone’s priority. And yet, in at least one situation, the lack of available restrooms was actively affecting females’ ability to successfully enroll. In 1973, women took their exams in Lowell Hall, a historic campus building that was equipped with exactly one bathroom. And it was only for dudes. Women taking part in the lengthy, timed exam process had to leave the building and head across the street to use a women’s bathroom, taking up crucial minutes and actively advantaging male applicants who didn’t have to worry about such inconveniences. This would not stand, and finally one third-year Harvard student reached out to Kennedy for a solution.   Kennedy had been quoted earlier in the year by The Harvard Crimson: “If you had to give the world an enema, you would put it in Harvard Yard. This has got to be the asshole of the world." When approached, she asked when the next exam was set to take place, and devised a unique protest to bring attention to the issue. According to an extensive first-hand account of the event from 1990, Kennedy dubbed her action “A Protest Pee-In On The Harvard Yard.” Together with a group of fellow female activists, Kennedy led her protest group around Harvard Yard. They carried signs and banners with slogans like “To pee or not to pee, that is the question,” and “Will the dean let women use his personal toilet?” Most evocatively, many of them also carried jars of bright yellow liquid. The group had gathered a crowd of onlookers as Kennedy finally took the steps of Lowell Hall and spoke. Kennedy gave a characteristically impassioned speech about the importance of gender equality in bathroom availability, pointing out how the disparity led to women feeling “niggerized” by the exclusion. She highlighted the fact that Harvard was built by men to cater to men, but that women have always been a huge part of the school’s fabric, if not always as students, then as secretaries and other workers. The lack of bathrooms wasn’t just an inconvenience, it was a sign of the institutionalized inequality at the school. After Kennedy finished speaking and a poem about pay toilets was read, the assembled activists, one after another, took turns pouring the symbolic pee on the steps of Lowell Hall. According to that same 1990 account, one of the onlookers called foul, complaining that she thought they were actually going to urinate on the steps, even offering to do it herself. But at this Kennedy, quieted the crowd, saying, “Let the Dean of Harvard be warned. Unless Lowell Hall gets a room for women so that women taking exams don't have to hold it in, run across the street or waste time deciding whether to pee or not to pee, next year we will be back doing the real thing." It’s unclear whether or not Kennedy’s protest led to any immediate changing of the bathroom rules in Lowell Hall, but according to a 2012 survey of Harvard bathrooms, the campus now has 91 gender non-specific restrooms across residential buildings, classroom buildings, and restrooms available in businesses. The school has come a long way from the days when women had to go on a minor field trip just to relieve themselves, but all of the handy places to urinate that exist today may have never opened their doors without the women who peed on the steps of Lowell Hall.  23 Dec

George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia - The George Washington Memorial Parkway was one of the first high-speed roadways designed specifically for automobiles in the United States. It’s significant both as a beautiful piece of landscape architecture and a transportation engineering breakthrough: Its designers pioneered many of the transit principles that we take for granted, like highway medians, overpasses, exit ramps, safety flared intersections, and cloverleaf interchanges. The initial stretch of the GW Parkway was built during the early 1930s as a New Deal-era make-work project (that’s the same year the first sections of the German Autobahn opened, as it were). Automobile ownership in the U.S. had skyrocketed over the preceding two decades, and drivers were clamoring for better roads. The largest streets at this point were urban avenues, and they were designed with horses and pedestrians in mind. Outside the cities road conditions were almost medieval; if you wanted to cross the country in the 1930’s you did it on dirt roads and cow trails. The Washington Post noted in 1930 that the Parkway’s planned route “will pass through a rugged countryside, most of which remains in a state of virgin beauty." The GW Parkway was innovative in its status as a long distance, high speed, and automobile-only roadway. It was designed by the Bureau of Public Roads, a part of the Department of Agriculture (DOT was not established until 1966). The department built large architectural models to demonstrate some of the new features and sent them to the Capitol Rotunda to spark the interest of Congressional appropriators. The word "parkway" is key to understanding the other side of this innovative project. The National Park Service describes the artistic element with this poetic description: "A parkway is not intended to be just a road. Rather it is conceived as a linear strip of parklands encompassing a comprehensive spectrum of environmental and visual elements and principles, similar to the ingredients used by an artist to compose a good painting. Parkway designers use terrain, space, trees, shrubs, rock outcroppings, water features, natural edges, and the roadway itself as elements of their artistic palates and combine them in a highly skilled manner to create expansive pictorial compositions . . . It is meant for comfortable driving in pleasant surroundings, not merely for getting from one place to another " It's easy to think of the interstate highway system as laser-straight and devoid of scenery. Parkways are the opposite. Their meandering curves are optimized for beauty instead of speed. The GW Parkway surroundings were laid out with this in mind and enriched with oak, maple, poplar, beech, dogwood, hickory, walnut and sumock plantings. In some places the side railings are a rustic wooden design, and in others you see more elaborate rough cut stone walls that are characteristic of 1930's public architecture. The parkway’s route was deliberately laid out to maximize long distance views of the Potomac and Washington skyline. There are numerous planned vistas, and pull offs with parks and picnic areas so pleasure drivers could enjoy the space. Other than the proliferation of street signage in recent decades, the GW Parkway’s original aesthetic has been faithfully preserved into the present day.23 Dec

re: The Auditors

NYSSCPAs Breakfast Briefing: Whistleblowing Under Dodd-Frank – Update - When is a whistleblower not a whistleblower? When she’s the reluctant whistleblower, Enron’s Sherron Watkins. On Friday January 28, 2011, I moderated a briefing for the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) on the whistleblower provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial services regulatory reform bill.  This was a special audience, in my opinion, because it consisted of CPAs and those who support and work with them. Here’s a blurb about the event in the Society’s annual report: The four breakfast briefings held during the 2010/11 fiscal year were well attended by NYSSCPA members, nonmembers and the media, and featured expert panelists on topical issues. For the Breakfast Briefing on “Whistleblowing Under Dodd-Frank,” Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins, CPA, was a featured panelist, in a session that received widespread attention by the media. Moderator Francine McKenna of Forbes, and author of the blog re:The Auditors, live-tweeted the event for her significant Twitter following of more than 6,600. Panelists and moderators for breakfast briefings were recruited from regulatory bodies, firms and the media. I’ve written at Forbes about the event, including some quotes from Sherron Watkins that made news. Also see: Whistleblower Rule: Business Leaders Want it Changed The Fiscal Times A report prepared by journalist Steve Burkholder appears in BNA’s Securities Regulation & Law Report, Accounting Policy & Practice Report and their Corporate Accountability Report available to subscribers only. Why Enron Whistleblower Sherron Watkins Doesn’t Trust the SEC BNET Enron Whistleblower Would Go to WikiLeaks Now Accounting Today Enron Whistleblower: I Would Have WikiLeaked Fox News Houston ******************************************************************************************************* Breakfast Briefing on Whistleblowing Under Dodd-Frank Friday, January 28, 2011, 8:30 – 10:30 a.m. FAE Conference Center 3 Park Avenue (at 34th Street) 19th Floor Sponsored by The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants. Panelists: Sherron Watkins, the Enron Whistleblower. Marion E. Koenigs, Deputy Director, Accountant, Division of Enforcement and Investigations, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Paul Atkins, Managing Director, Patomak Partners and former Commissioner for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Moderator: Francine McKenna, re: The Auditors Blog Note: This event is free, and CPE is not available. This is the tenth in a series of NYSSCPA Breakfast Briefings.  (Other briefings featured the Presidential Tax Foru,; Madoff and Taxes, an Economic Update, Key Washington Tax Issues and the Financial Reform Law. All Breakfast Briefing webcasts are available on the NYSSCPA home page at www.nysscpa.org.) For other questions, contact Lois Whitehead, NYSSCPA Public Relations Manager at 212-719-8405 or lwhitehead@nysscpa.org. 7 Dec

A Happy Story About Housing - My colleague Andrea Riquier writes at MarketWatch about housing and the housing companies and organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Fannie and Freddie, the government sponsored entities or GSEs, now have a cult following that follows us both around on Twitter anytime we mention them.  That’s because the two organizations were, after the financial crisis, put under a conservatorship led by the FHFA and then subjected to a US Treasury profit sweep that is not too popular with the remaining minority shareholders of both. In fact, the shareholders of both have sued many parties involved, including the federal government and the auditors of both, Deloitte and PwC, respectively, over what they say was a master plot to take their rightful property.  In both cases against the auditors the plaintiffs say that the audit firms plotted with the government to falsify the accounting at both entities to make them look financially weaker and therefore subject to takeover. For more on that controversy you can read Andrea’s story here, and one by her predecessor Ruth Mantell, who is now at The Pew Trusts, here. PwC settled its Freddie Mac shareholders suit, not long after settling its exposure to the Taylor Bean & Whitaker bankruptcy I write about here, also with a sealed agreement.  That knocks a fourth trial exposure out but still leaves two more for early next year – Colonial Bank and MF Global. The case against Deloitte is still pending. (It’s not the first time the auditors have been sued by the GSE shareholders. Find a summary of my writing on the subject here.) Andrea took a field trip to Indiana earlier this year on a tip about a group that helps people struggling to get their act together and prepare for home ownership.  It’s a nice thing to see, given all the ongoing struggles many still have with jobs, finances and the challenges of this economy, especially in the heartland. Andrea is a career changer like me, although not as recently.  Before coming to MarketWatch she was the economy and central banks reporter for Investor’s Business Daily, a beat which included housing, jobs, manufacturing, consumer spending, the Fed, the Bank of Japan, and how the ECB handles challenges for the future of the Eurozone. Before that she covered distressed and high-yield municipal debt, as well as more general public finance issues for Debtwire. She broke lots of news about public pensions, especially about CalPERS. She had a career in not-for-profit before deciding to take on some debt to attend the Columbia Journalism School, where she received a Master’s degree. Her undergraduate degree is from Boston University, where she studied film. Andrea’s story is called, “Life Happens”: [Dawn Newerth’s] car died five months after she’d knocked on the door of the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership. Seeking the group’s help buying a home, she learned how to set up a budget and clean up her credit along the way. INHP — and organizations like it across the country — are invaluable to people like Newerth, guiding them into starter homes in unsexy neighborhoods and housing markets many miles and dollars from high-profile locales like New York and San Francisco. They help thousands build long-term wealth and become anchors in their communities not just by getting them into houses — but by helping them pick the right ones and then keep them. INHP prepares clients for a roof that leaks a month after closing, unexpected medical bills and cars that start smoking just before the mortgage comes through. It does this with a simple motto its counselors say matters more than choosing a loan or real-estate agent: “Life happens.” At a time when so much seems broken — from the housing finance system to the safety nets that were supposed to help people — organizations like INHP can seem like the makers of small miracles, helping ordinary people participate in the American dream. Its program can be a slog. Finishing can take years. INHP’s clients usually have challenges: too much debt, dented credit scores, low salaries. And they’re often what INHP calls “problem avoiders,” people who let financial issues pile up unaddressed. Not Newerth. “I’m not too prudish to ride the bus,” she said in May. “If that’s what it takes, I will do it.” Enjoy Andrea’s story.  It’s a little bit of happiness for the holidays.   25 Nov

Speaking Engagements/Conferences - I’m on the road again visiting universities, attending select conferences and forums and speaking to groups of all kinds. If you would like me to visit your university and your accounting/audit program, please write soon to lock in upcoming dates. Contact me at fmckenna@marketwatch.com to schedule a presentation at your university, conference, or firm. Coming Up November 17, 2016, Duquesne University Accounting Department Fifth Annual Accounting CPE Conference.  I will be speaking. November 26, 2016, Speaking to graduate accounting students at Benedictine University, Lisle, IL at the invitation of Martin Terpstra, M.S., C.P.A., Plante & Moran LLP partner and adjunct instructor of audit and forensic accounting. Previously November 7, 2016, NYU Stern School, New York, New York, Panelist for “Recent Trends in Non-GAAP Reporting”, 4-8 pm.  My remarks are here. October 21, 2016, Visit in Marketwatch/WSJ DC newsroom from the Baylor University Masters in Accounting program.  Yes, all 36 students and two faculty, Gia Chevis who teaches ethics and Tim Thomasson who teaches tax, were there.  Click here to see our agenda. @retheauditors visiting with @BaylorACC. Great conversation! pic.twitter.com/SPIvrdki7i — Gia Chevis (@giachevis) October 21, 2016 October 13, 2016, Securities Enforcement Forum 2014, Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC. Attended as media. Asked questions.   October 13, 2016, FCPA Compliance Report-Episode 285 Interviews Francine McKenna, In this episode my old friend Tom Fox interviews me for his podcast on the recently concluded Taylor Bean litigation against PwC and what it might mean for the Big 3 going forward. September 20, 2016, Washington DC, 7A.M. I was on a panel with Daliah Saper, Principal Saper Law, and Brian Stafford CEO Diligent Corp for a Power Breakfast: Communicating in Critical Times at the National Association of Corporate Directors 2016 Global Board Leaders’ Summit. “A leaked e-mail, an overlooked disclosure, or just a simple misunderstanding can cost a company billions of dollars. Boards must balance demands for transparency from activist shareholders, workers’ rights groups, and governments with the need to protect trade secrets and board negotiations. This session exposes the potential pitfalls of being uninformed and explores how boards can best receive critical information from management, meet their fiduciary responsibilities, and reduce their liability. August 22, 2016, I was interviewed for Late Night Live, an Australian radio show on the Australian Broadcasting Company network about Trump’s taxes and the PwC-TBW trial. August 8, 2016, Keiser Report, cable TV appearance in Washington DC with Max Keiser.  Watch Part 1 and Part II  where I talk about Donald Trump’s taxes, the banks, and PwC’s trial defending its audit at Colonial Bank, a crisis era failure along with Taylor Bean & Whitaker that was all about massive multi-year fraud the auditors did not detect.  My interviews start in each case at the 12:45 mark. July 1, 2016, On a panel at the Financial Times Camp Alphaville Festival of Finance, London England. I will be talking about spotting corporate fraud with Carson Block of Muddy Waters Research on a panel moderated by the FT’s Dan McCrum. May 16, 2016, Spoke for my fifth time at the 2016 Georgia Southern University Fraud and Forensic Accounting Education Conference hosted by Georgia Southern University’s Center for Forensic Studies in Accounting and Business and sponsored by Porter Keadle Moore, LLC. Westin Jekyll Island, GA.. Here’s my speech: “The Challenge of Reporting on Pharma Company Fraud: Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Martin Shkreli.” March 20-21, 2016, I was asked again, my 6th year, to be a preliminary judge for the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. ( I am a two-time award finalist.) UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. July 15, 2015, Spoke with Broc Romanek, editor of the CorporateCounsel.net, to the Shareholder Services Association Annual Meeting on “Leveraging Social Media.” Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.. November 4, 2015, Attended as media. Securities Enforcement Forum 2015, Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC. May 5-6, 2015, Attended as media. Finance and Society Conference, sponsored by The Institute For New Economic Thinking, Washington DC. Private dinner with Elizabeth Warren on May 5 and full-day invitation-only conference on May 6th including speakers Janet Yellen, Christine Lagarde, Brooksley Born and Anat Admati. For more information you can view the program here. May 5, 2015, Attended as media. “The Auditor of the Future”, a conference sponsored by the Center for Audit Quality, the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance and the Department of Accounting and MIS, Lerner College of Business & Economics, University of Delaware. 9:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Gore Recital Hall, University of Delaware. To register go here. May 2, 2015, Guest lecturer. Baruch College/CUNY, Zicklin School of Business, New York, NY, for an advanced auditing class at the invitation of Professor Doug Carmichael. March 25, 2015, Roosevelt University, Chicago, IL. Accounting Club presentation. “The Future of Public Accounting: What Does That Mean For Students”. March 23-24, 2015, I was asked again, my 5th year, to be a preliminary judge for the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. ( I am a two-time award finalist.) UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. February 18, 2015, Stanford University and the Graduate School of Business. Visiting lecturer for undergraduate and graduate classes taught by Professor Anat Admati, author of the book Bankers’ New Clothes. December 3-4, 2014, Illinois CPA Society’s 2014 Accounting & Auditing Conference, Wednesday, December 3, 2014 at The Crowne Plaza Hotel, Springfield, IL, and also on Thursday, December 4, 2014 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, IL. I will present at both locations with Martin W. Terpstra, CPA, CFE, Partner, Forensic & Valuation Services, Plante & Moran PLLC, “Lessons from Litigation – CSI”. Here’s my presentation. October 14, 2014, Securities Enforcement Forum 2014, Four Seasons Hotel, Washington DC. Attended as media. October 12-14, 2014, NACD Board Leadership Conference: Beyond Borders, Gaylord National Resort | National Harbor, Maryland.  Attended as media. October 11, 2014, University of Illinois-Chicago, ‘ProfessionaPalooza’ 2014 Conference, Speaking at 10 am on “Opportunities in Professional Services for Business Undergraduates – Audit, Consulting and Risk/Compliance.”  The presentation is here.  July 10-12, 2014, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics Conference. Theme of this year conference is “The Institutional Foundation of Capitalism”. Our special session is entitled ‘The New Financial Architecture after Financial Crisis’. I’ll be a panelist with moderator Guler Aras, Ph.D. and Professor of Finance &  Accounting and Visiting Scholar of Finance at the McDonough School of Business and Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University, Thomas Clarke, Professor of Management and Director of the Key University Research Centre for Corporate Governance at the University of Technology, Sydney, Shyam Sunder, James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics, and Finance at the Yale School of Management; Professor in the Department of Economics; and Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center, and Paul William, Professor, Ernst & Young Faculty Research Fellow, at NC State University. Williams is also Associate Editor for Critical Perspectives on Accounting. The conference is organized by Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and will be held in Chicago. Text of speech can be found here. April 29, 2014, Speaking to accounting students at Benedictine University, Lisle, IL at the invitation of Martin Terpstra, M.S., C.P.A., Plante & Moran LLP partner and adjunct instructor of audit and forensic accounting. April 24 and 25, 2014, Speaking at the 2014 Williamsburg Fraud Conference, Norfolk VA. Jointly sponsored by the Tidewater Chapter of the IIA and The Hampton Roads Chapter of the ACFE. Luncheon keynote speech is here. April 23, 2014, Speaking at Hampton Roads Economic Club, Norfolk VA, noon meeting. My luncheon keynote speech is here. April 7, 2014, IIA Annual Conference, Chicago Chapter, Rosemont, Illinois, Joint presentation with Martin Terpstra of Plante & Moran PLLC on “Internal Auditor Legal Liability”. March 31 – April 2, 2014, Business Ethics Conference for Deans of Catholic Schools of Business, Co-Sponsored by The Center for Faith and Culture, the Center for Business Ethics and the Cameron School of Business, University of St. Thomas-Houston. I will be leading breakout discussions. March 23-24, 2014, I’ve been asked again to be a preliminary judge for the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. ( I am a two-time award finalist.) UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. March 11, 2014, Private briefing via webcast to law firm Cooley LLP private company practice and clients on the AgFeed fraud and my writing, in particular, on Milton Webster, Audit Committee Whistleblower. March 3-4, 2014, NEIU European Business Conference, Chicago, IL, Speaking on “The Challenge of Creating and Sustaining A Multinational Career”. My presentation. February 10, 2014, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Class visit to Bus F332/Law 725 Finance and Society taught by Professor Anat Admati, author of the new book Bankers’ New Clothes. A post with my lecture notes. December 5, 2013, Baruch College of the City University of New York, Ensuring Integrity: The 8th Annual Audit Conference, I’m on a panel with Professor Robert Coulson of Baruch College, Brian Croteu of the SEC, Greg Jonas, Director of Research and Analysis at the PCAOB, and Phil Wedemeyer a Director at Atwood Oceanics. We talked about the PCAOB’s audit quality indicators initiative. Here’s an article written about that panel in Corporate Responsibility Magazine. November 13-14, 2013, PCAOB Standing Advisory Group meeting, attending and covering. November 7-8, 2013, Visiting students and faculty at Michigan State University at the invitation of auditing Professor Chris Hogan. November 5-6, 2013, Futures Industry Association Expo 2013, Chicago, IL, attending and covering. November 1, 2013, Spoke at University of Chicago Law School for a class taught by Tom Manning on corporate governance in China. October 17, 2013, Women In Listed Derivatives (WILD) Chicago 2nd Annual Symposium and Networking Reception, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 4pm. Panelist. October 9-11, 2013, The Professional Liability Defense Federation (PLDF) Annual Meeting, special guest luncheon speaker on the 10th, “Is Private Litigation The Only Hope For The Accounting Profession?” The Westin Hotel, Chicago. October 5, 2013, University of Nebraska, Lincoln NE, Luncheon speaker for the annual Finance and Accounting seminar sponsored by the Department of Finance and the School of Accountancy. Speech title: “The Economic Significance of the Audit Industry and the Key Role of Integrity in the Accounting Profession.” September 30, 2013, Live “Spreecast” hosted by Broc Romanek of TheCorporateCounsel.net on the PCAOB’s proposed changes to the auditors report.  With Joseph Hall of law firm Davis Polk & Wardell LLP. September 25, 2013, Speaking to graduate students in the College of Communication at DePaul University, Chicago about the importance of finance and accounting proficiency for aspiring business journalists and corporate public relations professionals.  Invited by Matt Ragas, an assistant professor of Public Relations at the school. July 22,2013, Marquette University speaking to graduate auditing class at the invitation to Accounting Department Chairman Michael Akers. July 17-19, 2013, July 17 informal meeting with Villanova University accounting faculty. July 18 spoke to Villanova University students and interested faculty at the invitation of Professor Anthony Catanach and an informal visit at the American College, a think-tank, on July 18. Spoke twice at the PICPA Educators Conference in Hershey, PA July 19. Keynote in the morning and lunch speaker. Morning: “The Ethics of Auditor Independence and Our Public Duty”, skepticism and professional responsibility in accounting and auditing. Lunch: “Auditor Independence, Professional Skepticism and Auditors’ Obligations When Fraud Happens: Case Studies and Examples”, building on the morning remarks with actual examples and “war stories”. Here’s a link to that combined presentation. June 29, 2013, RT Television, The Keiser Report appearance. Talking about Anglo Irish, Ernst & Young, and my latest Forbes magazine story, “The Madoff of Munis”. Here’s a link to the video. June 20, 2013, IIA Augusta, GA Chapter. “Internal Auditor Liability: Why You Should Pay Close Attention To The Colonial Bank and Avon Cases”. May 16-18, 2013, Spoke for the fourth year in a row at the Seventh Annual Fraud and Forensic Accounting Education Conference hosted by Georgia Southern University’s Center for Forensic Studies in Accounting and Business and sponsored by Porter Keadle Moore, LLC. JW Marriott Buckhead in Atlanta, GA. Here’s my speech on May 16: “Professional Skepticism and Auditors’ Obligations When Fraud Happens: Case Studies and Examples“. April 24-25, 2013, Texas Tech University Rawls College of Business “Strive For Honor Week”. My presentation was Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m, Rawls College of Business, Room 101, “The Economic Significance of Accounting and the Key Role of Integrity in the Profession“. Hosted by Professor Robert Ricketts. April 16-17, 2013, Marquette University, Milwaukee Wisconsin, at the invitation of Accounting Department Head Professor Michael Akers and Professor Jodi Gissel. The presentation I gave to a graduate forensic accounting class and an undergraduate audit class was entitled, “Auditor Independence, Professional Skepticism and Fraud”. April 9-11, 2013, Texas A&M University at the invitation of Professor Michael Shaub. Guest taught his Accounting and Ethics class for two days and visited with faculty and Ph.D. candidates. April 8, 2013, IIA Houston Chapter Annual Conference, “Internal Auditor Liability: Why You Should Pay Close Attention To The Colonial Bank and Avon Cases”. March 11, 2013, Interviewed by Broc Romanek on TheCorporateCounsel.net blog, “Francine McKenna on Audit Industry Developments”. March 4-5, 2013, Northeastern Illinois University, Latin America International Business Conference. I planned to present, “The Challenge of Creating and Sustaining A Multinational Career” the evening of the 5th. Canceled due to snowstorm.  Ask me to do this presentation at your university or industry conference. February 19, 2013, Market Technicians Association, “Risk 2013: Protecting Your Trading Accounts From Fraud”, DeVry University Chicago Loop Center, 5pm. My remarks are here. Feb 10-12, 2013, Keynoted for the Federation of Schools of Accountancy and the Accounting Program Leaders Group at their annual joint meeting for accounting professors in San Diego, CA. My speech is here. Video of the speech including my ad-hoc remarks and Q&A is here. January 17-19, 2013, Keynoted Saturday morning at the American Accounting Association Auditing Section Midyear Conference, New Orleans, LA. My speech is here. November 26, 2012, Panelist at NYU Stern School, Ross Roundtable on Impact of Reemergence of Consulting Practices at Major Audit Firms, with Paul Volcker and Robert Herz. 4-6pm. Here are my remarks. Here’s a summary of the session by Accounting Today.  Here’s a quote from me from the session in Floyd Norris’ column in the New York Times that following Friday. November 21, 2012, I was asked to talk about HP and Autonomy tonight on NPR’s “All Things Considered” program. November 15-16, 2012, Attended the PCAOB Standing Advisory Group Meeting, Washington D.C. November 14, RT Television, The Keiser Report appearance. Talking about JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon. Here’s a blog post with the link to the video. November 12-13, 2012, Attended the 2012 CFRI Conference, New York Marriott Marquis Times Square October 26, 2012, Attending as past-President of ISACA Chicago Chapter, the ISACA-Chicago Chapter, PwC’s Forensic Services Practice and Neal Gerber & Eisenberg LLP hosting a General Counsel Roundtable Forum focusing on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Union League Club, Chicago. September 24-26, 2012, Visited North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. July 17, 2012, I appeared on Chicago Tonight, a nightly news program produced by WTTW, Channel 11, the public television station in Chicago on, talking about business ethics. July 13, 2012, 66th annual Society of Corporate Secretaries National Conference at JW Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC, Participating in a panel, “Auditors, the Board and Shareholders: An Evolving Relationship.” I was joined by Kayla Gillan of PwC, Guy Jubb of Standard Life, a UK based investment advisor and Marilyn Mooney of Fulbright & Jaworski. The panel was moderated by Ken Bertsch, President of the Society. July 8-11, 2012, Boston, MA, Covered the Institute of Internal Auditors International Conference. June 24-26, 2012, Palo Alto, CA, Attended Stanford Rock Center Directors’ College at Stanford University. June 6, 2012, RT Television, Capital Accounts, I’m interviewed live in the studio in Washington DC on JP Morgan trading loss and MF Global by Lauren Lyster. June 4-6, 2012, Washington, DC,  Moderated “SEC Reporting Update” and some other panel discussions at the Compliance Week Annual Conference. May 23-24, 2012, New York City, Attended Stanford Rock Center Program for Journalists: A Primer in Corporate Governance. May 18, 2012, RT Television, Capital Accounts, I’m interviewed on the accounting behind ‘Hot Tech’, Facebook IPO, JP Morgan trading loss and MF Global  by Lauren Lyster. May 17, 2012, The Committee for Monetary Research and Education Annual Dinner. My Topic: The Mystery of MF Global: How Hot Money and Hubris Caused The Loss of $1.6 Billion in Customer Funds. Here’s the speech. May 15-17, 2012, Presenting for third year in a row to the Georgia Southern University Fraud and Forensic Accounting Conference, , Savannah, GA. My presentation:  Auditors as “Whistleblowers”: The Auditors’ Responsibility to Report Fraud and Illegal Acts. April 29-May 2, 2012, Milken Conference, Los Angeles, CA.  Here’s a piece about the  incredible lineup of panelists and speakers. March 6-7, 2012, Gust lecturer, Eastern Illinois University. My speech to a large group of students, faculty and visitors in the afternoon was entitled, Who Will Slay The Dragon? Penn State and College Football: How “Ethical” Institutions Have Dropped Their Swords and Shields.  The evening presentation to MBAs was, Stay on your feet. How “new hires” can successfully negotiate the slippery ethical slopes of the workplace. February 11, 2012, The Keiser Report, a program presented by Russia Today TV, talking about the MF Global bankruptcy starting at the 13:00 mark.22 Nov

The Legacy of Mary Jo White - Mary Jo White became the 31st Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 10, 2013. I wrote quite a bit about her before, and after, I became a reporter for MarketWatch. Last week she announced she would be leaving the job, with two years left in her term when President Obama leaves office in January. At a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, where White presented the agency’s proposed budget, members took the opportunity to applaud her tenure, try to get her to answer a few last questions, and get her to agree not to do much more before she leaves. One member, Rep. Maxine Waters a Democrat from California and that party’s ranking member,  had an interesting interchange with White about some work she did when she was a former defense attorney. Waters remarked that Chairwoman White probably had no interest in serving President-elect Trump because she had seen the “true character of Donald Trump” during her legal defense of journalist Timothy O’Brien, then a business reporter for the New York Times when Trump sued him over his 2005 book, “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” Waters had asked White if she could tell the hearing about the true nature of Trump’s character, based on her involvement in the case, including arguing the appeal on behalf of O’Brien. White demurred, saying she did defend O’Brien but that it would be inappropriate for her to comment on any of the details of the case. White later told another member that it was a custom for agency heads to leave when a new administration comes in. At the hearing, Waters and other Democrats also pressed White to update them on the Wells Fargo investigation. They fear that a Trump administration will shut down all inquiries from the myriad of state and federal agencies and law enforcement officials investigating and who is responsible. Rep. Maxine Waters, the committee’s ranking member and a California Democrat, was very vocal at the hearing. She is concerned that any further investigation or sanctions against Wells Fargo and its executives will be dropped by the new administration and four new SEC commissioners that will be named once Donald Trump takes office. “Just yesterday Wells Fargo shares closed at their highest price this year,” said Waters, “on the expectation that the Trump administration and a Republican-dominated Congress will erase its culpability.” Two members tried to get White to commit not to bring any Dodd-Frank rules that have not yet been approved to a vote before she leaves. Two Republicans, Rep. Bill Huizenga from Michigan and Rep. Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, tried to get White to commit to not bring any remaining Dodd-Frank rules, such as one that expands the Sarbanes-Oxley compensation clawback provisions and another that cover hedging transactions by executives, to a vote if they are ready in the next two months. White, however, would not make any promises.   She told the committee she won’t “judge the next two months in a vacuum.” Another issue that came up quite a bit during the hearing, seemed to have less to do with Mary Jo White and more to do with Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s desire to tee up his leadership of the repeal of Dodd-Frank, specificaly the Volcker Rule, and to soften the Basel bank capital requirements for smaller banks. Hensarling’s first question to White  at a Tuesday hearing focused on what he characterized as “significant tension” regarding liquidity concerns in the fixed income markets. But rather than worry about the well-documented concerns about liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market, after the August 2015 market volatility event,  Hensarling and his Republican colleagues are fixated on the perceived difficulties big banks and high-frequency trading firms are having trading corporate bonds. The Volcker rule bans most proprietary trading by banks, but allows banks to continue to hold and trade U.S. Treasury securities and municipal securities for their own account. The rule bans certain relationships by banks with hedge funds and private equity funds but exempts bank market-making that serves clients. The Basel rules use a risk-weighted assets method for determining bank capital requirements and has strong bipartisan political support from everyone but the banks. Treasury securities and municipal debt are considered Level I assets, the least risk of all assets held by a bank and, therefore, banks are encouraged by regulators to hold and trade in them. Hensarling and other Republicans repeatedly invoked remarks made by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen, the CEO of high frequency trading firm Virtu, and stories in multiple media outlets to argue that big banks and their broker-dealers had slowed trading in the corporate bond market because of Dodd-Frank’s Volcker Rule and Basel bank capital requirements. But White told the Congressmen the jury was still out on whether there was even a problem.  Her remarks were echoed by Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer spoke at the Brookings Institution on the same day and told the audience, there to talk about market liquidity, “the evidence presented in these two figures seems to suggest that market liquidity has not deteriorated in recent years…”  He concluded his remarks by saying, “Overall, liquidity is adequate by most measures, in most markets, and most of the time.18 Bid-ask spreads and price-impact measures point toward liquidity that is good by historical standards, and we have not observed declines in market liquidity in recent episodes of high market volatility. Nevertheless, the market structure is changing, and trades in certain situations and in certain market segments might have become more costly.” Sounds like good old capitalism to me.  In fact, if corporate bond trading is drying up, and banks and investment firms are afraid to trade or can’t trade especially in distressed debt seem to be then how did a Goldman Sachs trader make $100 million in just a few moths recently doing just that? It looks like proprietary trading. It walks and talks like proprietary trading. A Goldman Sachs junk-bond trader earned more than $100 million in profits buying and selling distressed corporate debt earlier this year, but according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday, the trades don’t violate the so-called Volcker Rule because the trader is a market-maker not a soon-to-be prohibited proprietary trader. The Volcker Rule isn’t yet in effect. In July, the Federal Reserve said it would extend the deadline for banks to comply with the Volcker Rule until the middle of 2017, seven years after the Dodd-Frank law was first passed. Not everyone has been full of praise for Mary Jo White during her tenure. What Warren really is asking Obama in her latest anti-White salvo In a letter on Friday, Warren asked Obama to replace Mary Jo White as chairwoman of the SEC , after she said, trying several times to publicly and privately persuade White “to direct the agency’s resources toward pressing matters of compelling interest to investors and the public, and toward completing those rules that Congress has required it to implement.” Also read:White asks Obama to fire SEC chief White  Schumer says SEC’s White is ‘poisoning’ politics Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, joined Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren in strongly criticizing the leadership of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White on Tuesday. White appeared before the Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs to answer questions regarding the SEC’s progress on several issues, but it was White’s refusal to reconsider her position on mandated disclosure of corporate political spending that raised Schumer’s hackles. Schumer spent almost his entire allotted time lambasting White for taking what he said was proposed rulemaking from the SEC’s so-called reg-flex agenda. “You are hurting America. I wish you would change your mind. I am so disappointed,” said Schumer. White said that there were a number of items on the agenda when she came on board in early 2013 but the list tends to be “aspirational” rather than binding on the agency. Elizabeth Warren previously implored Mary Jo White to shift her priorities directly back in June 2015. In a 13-page letter sent to White on Tuesday, Warren cites four main complaints with White’s two-year tenure: •The SEC’s failure to finalize Dodd-Frank rules regarding disclosure of CEO pay to median workers. • White’s failure to curb the use of waivers for companies that violate securities laws. Several firms received a waiver after pleading guilty to Justice Department charges of manipulating the foreign exchange market. Also see: SEC underwriting privileges persist amid bank criminal pleas • SEC settlements that don’t require an admission of guilt. • Numerous SEC enforcement cases that require recusals by White because of conflicts from her prior law firm employment and her husband’s current law practice. Warren even suggests companies may deliberately hire her husband, John White, to lead to a recusal and a 2-to-2 deadlock of remaining commissioners. And then there was the ongoing drama between the SEC under Mary Jo White and the PCAOB under Jim Doty. Who would have thought that Doty could outlast White on the job?  The SEC vs. The PCAOB and Jim Doty: Impasse or Détente? Jim Doty is still on the job and told Patrick Temple-West of Politico in a recent interview that he plans to stay. The Washington DC cognoscenti are divided about how that might happen.  I am sure he will stay too, for now.  But it’s a fifty-fifty bet whether it’s going to be because Mary Jo White actually reappoints him or if she just lets him squirm in limbo, neither appointing him nor anyone else in the next year, until both President Obama’s term is up and she is asked to step down by Obama’s successor. 21 Nov

Remarks at New York University Forum on Non-GAAP Metrics - Here are my remarks from the panel discussion I participated in on November 7, 2016 at NYU Stern. ****************************** My remarks are from the perspective of a journalist who is also an accountant with a particular interest and aptitude in auditing. First, we have been reporting at MarketWatch on this subject and, in particular, the challenges for journalists or anyone tries to get quick read from earnings press releases now that non-GAAP metrics are out of control. My New York colleagues Ciara Linnane, editor of MarketWatch’s Companies section and her lieutenant Tomi Kilgore are here. They try every day to decipher the less and less intelligible earnings release info put out by companies. It used to be that before the market opens you could quickly and easily pick out the key numbers and comparisons with prior periods from that day’s earnings releases. Revenue, Gross Profit, Net Income, and EPS. Non-GAAP metrics like EBITDA and free cash flow are now generally accepted. But the proliferation of non-GAAP metrics and the thousands of versions of each has made their life a nightmare. It’s like standing behind the person in the Starbucks line who orders their coffee with seven different variations. They don’t want milk or even 2%. They want soy or maybe now coconut milk. They want half caf/half decaf. They want extra espresso shots but skinny syrup. Maybe they want wet or extra dry foam, whatever the heck that means. And the final ridiculousness is some people actually dictate the temperature of the drink! I’ve often said Starbucks should make a rule, no more than two variations! Otherwise the barista inevitably can’t juggle all those adjustment, you can never count on the person to order the same formula the next time because it’s dictated by the weather, their mood, maybe even the moon phases and, worst of all, the line slows to a crawl. No one is going to be happy. If journalists, and analysts we’ve heard from, who do this ten times a day across the thousands of public companies can’t quickly find or figure out which number is the primary GAAP number for the key financial data and which non-GAAP number is intended to the one most directly equivalent, imagine what the average investor is thinking? Many have given up. They feel bamboozled. They feel misled. That’s what the lack of discipline and enforcement of the non-GAAP rules is like. We see everything during earnings season at MarketWatch.For example, the number of different non-GAAP EPS variations can skew P/E ratios reported by other news outlets and aggregators. You never know whether they have picked up the GAAP number, the most directly-related non-GAAP number or some other preliminary or unofficial version. Could the chicanery have a more sinister motive? The shares move on the non-GAAP EPS, compared to “consensus estimates” and guidance, lately also appearing as non-GAAP metrics.  Is someone taking advantage of the pop on numbers that can have nothing to do with the financial reality of the company? When does reality catch up? When I came to MarketWatch I was confused, as an accountant, by all the emphasis on the earnings release.  We never go back to the Q.  Unless there’s something really unusual going on, the numbers announced in earnings release and on the conf call are the only ones that get reported. What if the filings are inconsistent with the earnings release or the call or both? What if the company guides on a non-GAAP number that they change or make an error in calculating? Journalists have been doing a lot of good work on the growing differences between GAAP and non-GAAP numbers.  My colleague at the Wall Street Journal, Michael Rapoport, has been sounding the alarm for a while. At MarketWatch we have been calling out specific companies for what could be considered broken windows infractions – the errors in prominence, or form or insanely format.  Why do we see, at least once or twice a week, some company flipping the table?  I am referring to putting prior year numbers before current year numbers in the reconciliation and calculating the % comparisons in reverse. Who gave these people their accounting degrees? They should be drummed out of the beancounter business. I’ve written that a lot of people are going to get comment letters as a result of a dedicated task force in Corp Fin begun after the May guidance came out that is focusing on the most frequent and egregious offenders in each industry group.  I’ve heard at least half of the companies reviewed are getting letters. Michael reported last week that enforcement is also looking at a few cases for bigger penalties.  We’ve already seen two cases of criminal fraud enforcement related to non-GAAP, the Credit Suisse case and the American Realty Capital Partners case.  I am personally waiting for charges to be brought against the Brixmor REIT CEO, CFO and Chief Accounting Officer who were fired over a supposedly “non-material” case of manipulation of metrics.  That’s because I wrote that it was all about their bonus metrics. In my opinion the next frontier for enforcement should be, one, the use of non-GAAP metrics for exec compensation purposes, which I think no one is seriously scrutinizing.  The Mylan story is a great example.  There, Theo Francis of the WSJ reported that the $465 million penalty the company paid for overcharging Medicaid is not included in the metric used to calculate executive bonuses, a non-GAAP  “adjusted diluted” earnings figure. That’s just nuts. I also think it’s time someone started comparing the use of non-GAAP metrics on the conference call with the what is defined and reconciled in earnings release and what shows up in the later Q.  I think a passing reference and link is not enough.  And it’s certainly not right if all kinds of new and non-defined metrics are showing up, either never to be used again or inevitably redefined the next time something needs to be explained away. And finally, as I always do, I ask, where is the auditor in all this. Nowhere, it seems.  As we heard in the report from the PCAOB Investor Advisory Group, The auditor is not responsible for what’s in the earnings releases, in investor presentations, or in any other communications with analysts or the public like the conference call. The IAG actually made the recommendation, with SEC Chair Mary Jo White in the room, that non-GAAP metrics should be audited.  We know why the auditors will never agree to that, at least not as part of the standard audit report.  They won’t get paid extra for it and they will incur additional liability.  Even non-accountants know that doesn’t add up. The IAG recommended two possible solutions: Require disclosure and presentation of NGFM in financial statements, which puts them under the auditors responsibility. That would ensure they are consistently calculated and audited. Unfortunately there are significant concerns about who would force this and whether this could ever be achieved. Or, the PCAOB/SEC could mandate inclusion of non-GAAP metrics in supplementary information and make them subject to AS 17, Auditing Supplementary Information Accompanying Audited Financial Statements. I’ll leave those discussions for another time. 9 Nov

BPS Research Digest

Our 10 most popular posts of 2016 - Three-year-olds keep track of when you’re indebted to themIt’s been a funny old year, but through it all we’ve kept on doing our thing and loved every minute of it: bringing you daily reports on the latest psychology research. Contributing writer Alex Fradera and I have covered the entire field, everything from the way infant memory works to research on the psychophysiology of post-sex pillow talk. We told you about failed replication attempts, including smiling apparently not having an effect on mood, and provided feature-length research roundups on topics like eye contact and psychology myths. We released four episodes of our PsychCrunch podcast, including an Olympic special on how to use psychology to be a stronger competitor. Roughly twice per month we also published brilliant guest contributions from psychologists and science writers, including posts on why so many people dislike the word moist and how teens are more likely to reject junk food when it’s framed as rebellion. I like to think that our stories might have given some of you pause for thought, nurtured your love of psychology, offered you hope, maybe even made you smile. It’s been a privilege to write for you and I hope you’ll join us again in 2017. Until then, here’s a list of the 10 research stories that – based on number of clicks – seemed to intrigue you the most this year. Happy Holidays! —Christian Jarrett, editor Men who can tell a good story are seen as more attractive and higher status By age 3, kids know when you owe them one Why do so many people believe in psychic powers? The police believe a lot of psychology myths related to their work Students of today are more afraid of growing up than in previous generations This is what eight weeks of mindfulness training does to your brain Experienced meditators have brains that are physically 7 years younger than non-meditators You hear a voice in your head when you’re reading, right? Why is it so hard to persuade people with facts? A daily cold shower seems to have some psychological benefits 23 Dec

Men: this study suggests it’s a really bad idea to cry in front of your colleagues - By Alex Fradera We’re supposed to be hungry for workplace feedback: after all, it can help us to eliminate blind spots in our self-knowledge, give us focus and surpass relationship issues. Often, though, it can be a bit hard to take. On the wrong day, when the feedback’s particularly upsetting, it may even bring us to tears. If this happens to you and you’re a man, according to new research in the Journal of Applied Psychology, it could spell bad news for your career prospects. Daphna Motro and Aleksander Ellis from the University of Arizona recruited 169 adults based in the US, with an average age 32 and mostly in active employment, and presented them with one of several versions of a 6-minute video showing a performance evaluation of a grocery store manager named Pat: a scripted role performed by actors in their early twenties, a male one in some videos, a female one in others. Participants were asked to imagine they were the supervisor, and the video was staged so that they viewed the action over the shoulder of the supervisor with Pat right in front of them. The evaluation wasn’t good: Pat had recently been rude, frequently late, and oversaw declining sales. In some versions of the video, this feedback was too much, provoking male or female Pat to tears. In post-viewing ratings of how typical the behaviour in the meeting was, participants who viewed the version featuring a tearful female Pat didn’t find her behaviour any more strange than participants who viewed the video showing female Pat remaining dry-eyed. But for participants who saw male Pat, tears were seen as significantly atypical, and they also tended to rate him lower for competence and fitness for leadership. Men and women alike made these harsher judgments of male criers. Concrete consequences also followed. After the video screening, participants were told that Pat was moving away from the area and was after a short recommendation letter to help her/him find new work, which the participant should draft. As an employee, despite his/her recent poor performance, Pat wasn’t a complete disaster – participants had seen a positive resume at the start of the experiment – and many participants gave positive feedback, using phrases like “I have nothing but praise for him.” However, participants who watched the video depicting a crying male Pat wrote recommendation letters with the most negative tone, as evaluated by independent judges. The article offers one particularly harsh example: “Well, I have to be honest, I’m not putting my name on the line for a slacker like Pat, I suggest that he get to the nearest McDonald’s and start working his way up from the bottom. Based on the reports I received I can’t in good conscience recommend that anywhere hire him. With that being said, good luck, if all else fails maybe he can get a gig flipping signs.” Publicly crying is a signal of vulnerability: a state that we are less surprised to see in women, who are meant to be tender and emotional according to stereotypes. But when men cry, it violates cultural expectations that they should be firm and in control. The new experimental data suggest that, at least in simplified scenarios, this effects our evaluations of and actions toward crying men. Now it would be important to see if this holds true in real-world contexts between people with an active history, and explore it in samples outside of the US, to establish whether for men at work – as Motro and Ellis suggest – “crying is not an option”. —Boys, Don’t Cry: Gender and Reactions to Negative Performance Feedback Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) is Contributing Writer at BPS Research Digest 23 Dec

Introductory psychology textbooks accused of spreading myths and liberal-leaning bias - By Christian Jarrett Is the job of introductory psychology textbooks to present students with a favourable and neat impression of psychology or to give them a warts and all account of the field? This is a key question raised by a new analysis of the treatment of controversial theories and recognised myths by 24 best-selling US introductory psychology texts. Writing in Current Psychology, Christopher Ferguson at Stetson University and his colleagues at Texas A&M International University conclude that intro textbooks often have difficulty covering controversial topics with care, and that whether intentionally or not, they are frequently presenting students with a liberal-leaning, over-simplified perspective, as well propagating or failing to challenge myths and urban legends. While acknowledging the daunting task that confronts textbook authors, Ferguson and his colleagues call on them to aspire to tell the full story. “That may mean telling our students about a psychology that is a little messy, muddled, and doesn’t always have definitive answers,” they write. “But, if that’s the truth, that’s what the psychology students are paying to learn about, not the fantasy we may like to believe is true.” Ferguson and his team examined textbook coverage of seven areas of research consisting of findings which might be considered particularly appealing or unappealing to textbook authors with liberal leanings. This included research on whether media violence incites aggression; the stereotype threat (the notion that performance differences between groups are exaggerated by the fear of conforming to stereotypes); the narcissism epidemic (the idea that today’s youth are more narcissistic than youth in the past); that smacking/spanking children leads to aggression and other negative outcomes; that there are multiple intelligences; that human behaviour is explained by evolutionary theories related to mate selection and sexual competition (in this case, the authors assumed liberal authors would prefer not to cover this research); and controversy around antidepressant medication. The researchers looked to see if textbook authors presented the evidence as more definitive than it is in these areas, or only presented one side of the arguments. They found that there was biased treatment of media violence and stereotype threat by half or more of the books, and of multiple intelligences and spanking by a third. Evolutionary theories were neglected by a fifth of the books and presented in biased fashion by one quarter. “We believe that these errors are consistent with an indoctrination, however intentional, into certain beliefs or hypotheses that may be ‘dear’ to a socio-politically homogenous psychological community,” Ferguson and his colleagues said. They also looked at textbook treatment of various psychology myths and urban legends, including the frequently exaggerated story of the murder of Kitty Genovese, which is often cited as a perfect example of the “bystander effect”: our reduced likelihood of intervening to help when in the company of a greater number of other people who could help. Nearly half the books perpetuated the myth that 33 witnesses watched the killing of Genovese  without doing anything to help her. Meanwhile, nearly three quarters of the books failed to challenge the popular misconception that we only use ten per cent of our brains, or that listening to Mozart makes us smarter. And 70 per cent of the books gave the French neurologist Paul Broca undue credit for localising speech function in the brain: the researchers say that the theory of the cortical localisation of speech was first put forward by Ernest Auburtin. “It is surprising to see so few textbooks addressing common misconceptions about psychology,” they said. Ferguson and his co-authors acknowledged that some of the textbooks they examined were excellent, and they admitted that their selection of topics and myths to investigate was far from random: this subjectivity must surely weaken their claims that there is an ideological agenda influencing textbook coverage. It’s worth remembering too that the textbooks they examined were American, so the same biases and oversights may not be present in European and other texts. Also, they looked at editions available in 2012: it’s possible that textbook authors may have updated to a more balanced and considered approach in more recent additions, especially since the replication crisis in psychology has only intensified in recent years. But despite these caveats, this new analysis is just the latest to suggest that some of our leading introductory texts may be presenting an oversimplified and sometimes error-prone version of psychology to our students. After all, in recent years, we’ve also covered research by Richard Griggs at Florida State University that’s found biased textbook treatment of Milgram’s classic studies on obedience, outdated accounts of the story of Phineas Gage, biased coverage of Asch’s studies of conformity, and of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. Psychology students: if you’re looking for a rounded and accurate introduction to the field , you could consider supplementing your textbook reading with regular visits to our Research Digest blog. Or maybe you do that already. —Education or Indoctrination? The Accuracy of Introductory Psychology Textbooks in Covering Controversial Topics and Urban Legends About Psychology Image via Peter Merholz/Flickr Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest   22 Dec

Signs of our sexuality revealed in our faces are likely to influence job recruiters - By Alex Fradera Vacant job roles should be filled on the candidate’s skills, experience and knowledge, not their identity. But that means dodging our deeply held stereotypes, such as men being a natural fit for decision-making roles like management and women for care-giving professions. Evidence suggests this also applies to sexual orientation, meaning, for instance, that CVs that indicate the candidate is homosexual (for instance, by mentioning college experience in a group promoting gay rights) are likely to be seen by recruiters as a better match for care-giving roles. New research from the Journal of Applied Psychology adds to this, suggesting that merely looking gay is enough for a candidate to be treated in a biased way by recruiters. Nicholas Rule and his colleagues from universities at Toronto and Stanford conducted several studies, each involving between 68 and 201 participants. In every study, participants read about a target job, in most cases either a nurse or engineer, and then estimated the likely success of 90 different candidates, based only on a photo provided of each one. These cropped photos were originally taken from dating sites, ensuring that sexual orientation data was known by the researchers for each candidate. Participants repeatedly predicted gay candidates would have more success applying to nursing positions than heterosexual candidates, and they predicted the reverse pattern for the engineer position. This effect was also found when participants were asked to say who they would prefer to teach their child maths (straight men preferred) or English (gay men). In another study, there was also a relative preference for gay men applying to paediatric roles over surgeon roles, although heterosexual men were predicted to have more success than gay men for both medical roles. Participants who had previous hiring experience were just as influenced by sexual orientation cues as other participants. What’s going on? Previous evidence from this research group suggests that people can rapidly detect sexual orientation from viewing faces, and that this “gaydar” goes beyond interpreting stereotypical cues like clothing or gesture, reflecting instead our ability to read something more phenotypic, coded into the face or body. However recent research that used photos from a dating site to attempt to replicate Rule’s general gaydar effect revealed a potential confound: photo quality tended to be higher for men who were gay. If this was true of the photos used in the current research, it would muddy the researchers’ conclusions. Even if photo quality happens to be what we use to judge sexual orientation (the alternative hypothesis that we simply don’t trust people who take good photos to be good engineers seems implausible), we should still take heed of these new findings, especially when other people’s prospects are in our hands. Thankfully, there was a suggestion that the bias was assailable, at least to some extent. When each photo was accompanied by a GPA score showing the candidate’s success in studying for the profession, a low-GPA score seemed to trump any effect of sexuality cues in facial appearance. As real life job picks always involve considering some relevant information, this is somewhat reassuring; however Rule’s team thought a single relevant score may be too obvious a guide for decision making, and that the effect of sexuality cues in facial appearance would hold their own when accompanied by more complex (and representative) supporting information, as would be found in real-life contexts. They conducted a further study that supported this view, suggesting facial cues to sexuality are likely to persist in spite of more relevant information. However, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the methodological design of this particular study, so I’m skeptical that sexuality cues would have such strong influence. For instance, it used photos (and profiles) procured from LinkedIn rather than from a dating site, and the researchers presumed sexual orientation based on the person’s workplace – LGBT organisation or otherwise – which seems a noisy and inaccurate criterion to use. Another of the new studies provided more reason for hope. It showed that simply asking participants to be fair and objective in their judgments stopped them from favouring heterosexual men for the engineering role, although their bias for gay men for nursing positions remained. This suggests diligence on the part of recruiters could help correct this ‘insidious’ tendency. —Subtle perceptions of male sexual orientation influence occupational opportunities Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) is Contributing Writer at BPS Research Digest 22 Dec

Men think women will be impressed by a tattoo, but they’re not – Polish study - By Alex Fradera Men with tattoos are likely to provide serious competition for a woman’s attention, at least in the eyes of other guys, but women themselves actually aren’t that impressed. That’s according to research published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, where 2584 heterosexual men and women from Poland viewed photos of shirtless men, sometimes digitally modified so that their arm was emblazoned with a smallish black tattoo depicting a generic symbol. The 215 men among the participants rated the inked bods as more attractive than tattoo-free comparison models, which presumably reflects in part what they think women are looking for in an ideal male partner. But the female participants didn’t rate the tattooed gentlemen as more attractive; moreover, they considered them worse prospects as partners and parents. Women did rate tattooed men as healthier, which researchers Andrzej Galbarczyk and Anna Ziomkiewicz think might be because tattooing is a costly signal of strong health, involving as it does a painful experience and risk of infection. Normally, perceived health correlates with perceived attractiveness, but this positive connotation of the tattoos might have been counteracted by the fact the women also associated the tats with masculinity and aggression: not such a positive thing if you consider that another marker of masculinity, high testosterone, is known to be associated with affairs and higher risk of assault on a partner. All in all, the women’s judgments were swayed by the (admittedly small) tattoos far less than were the male participants’ judgments. Heterosexual men who are planning a trip to their local tattoo parlour might be surprised to learn from this research that their new ink is likely to cause a bigger stir among the gentlemen than the ladies. —Tattooed men: Healthy bad boys and good-looking competitors Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) is Contributing Writer at BPS Research Digest 21 Dec

Four-year-olds’ knowledge of gender stereotypes foretells their gender bias a year later - By Christian Jarrett  Group loyalty is woven into our DNA. After being allocated to a category on the flimsiest of grounds, such as their matching shirt colour, children will show impressive favouritism toward their new group members, and antipathy toward outsiders. No wonder that once children learn about genders, and become aware of their own – which begins to happen in earnest from around age three – they soon after usually begin to show profound signs of loyalty toward and preference for their own gender. As the authors of a new study in Child Development put it, “Around the world, girls tend to play with girls, whereas boys tend to play with boys. Such stark separation is stunning, yet as adults we tend to accept this segregation without a thought and sometimes even encourage it.” The aim of the new research was to find out how gender-biased beliefs and behaviour develop from age four to five. The researchers hope their findings might help encourage children to be less biased against the opposite gender, and therefore “benefit relationships between girls and boys, and future relationships between women and men.” May Halim and her colleagues measured the gender-based beliefs and attitudes of 246 girls and boys in northeastern USA when they were aged four, and then caught up with them again when they were aged five, to test more attitudes and look for signs of gender bias in their behaviour. The children were from a range of ethnic backgrounds, including Mexican, Chinese, Dominican and African American. When the kids were age four, the researchers asked them about: their happiness at being a boy or girl (most were happy, although 9 per cent were not); belief in gender stability (“when you grow up will you be a mommy or daddy?”); and awareness of gender stereotypes (“here’s a boy and a girl, which of them do you think likes trucks? The girl, the boy, or both?”). The children chose the stereotypical answers around 66 per cent of the time. At age five, the researchers asked some of the same questions again, plus new ones, including about “gender consistency”, which tapped the children’s awareness of the fact that gender remains unchanged even following behaviours atypical for that gender, such as: “If a girl had her hair cut really short, would she become a boy?”. The researchers also measured awareness of “gender flexibility”: instances where the children had shown knowledge of gender stereotypes when they were four, but now aged five showed a more liberal attitude, for instance saying that both the boy and girl would like trucks. And the researchers asked the five-year-olds how they felt about boys and girls in general (they answered using a scale made up of happy, neutral and frowning faces) and what they thought about how smart and mean girls and boys tend to be. Overall, at age five, the children were very positive about their own gender, but twelve per cent felt negatively. Conversely, on average the children were somewhat negative about the opposite gender, with girls being more negative about boys than vice versa. The researchers surmised this might be because girls had internalised the stereotype that “girls are nice and good, whereas boys are bad”. Then there were the two behavioural measures at age five: the children were asked to allocate coins to a drawing created by a group of boys or to another created by a group of girls (on average the children allocated more coins to their own gender); and the children indicated where they would choose to sit in a row of chairs if a boy was sat on the first chair, or a girl. A boy choosing to sit near the boy but far from the girl was taken as a sign of own-gender bias. Overall, to the researchers’ surprise, the children didn’t show an own-gender bias in where they chose to sit. The researchers were most interested in how early gender attitudes and knowledge shape later attitudes and behaviour. One key finding was that four-year-olds who were happier about belonging to their own gender, and who were more aware of gender stereotypes, tended to express more favourable attitudes toward their own gender at age five. On the other hand, holding more favourable attitudes toward the opposite gender tended to go together with greater awareness of gender consistency (realising your gender doesn’t change just because you act in gender atypical ways), and a more flexible view of stereotypes, such as coming to realise that both boys and girls might like trucks. What about signs of gender bias in the children’s behaviour? The only measure related to behaviour was how much the children believed the other gender was smart and not mean. That is, more positive views of the other gender correlated with less own-gender bias in the coin allocation and seating tests. One other tidbit: there was some suggestion that own-gender favouritism was greater among children from ethnic cultures, such as Dominican and Chinese-American, where there is a greater emphasis on gender roles. Hail and her colleagues cautioned that their findings need replication, but they believe they may offer clues to how to help foster more friendly interpersonal relationships between boys and girls. The researchers don’t make this explicit, but presumably their thinking is that if we encourage young children to challenge gender stereotypes, and to see gender as a more flexible concept, then they might be more inclined to display more friendly behaviour towards the opposite gender, which could eventually trickle down to reduce sexism when they grow into adults. —Gender Attitudes in Early Childhood: Behavioral Consequences and Cognitive Antecedents Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest 21 Dec

You probably don’t know much about your own face-recognition skills - By Christian Jarrett Life would be awfully confusing if we weren’t able to recognise familiar faces. It’s a skill most of us take for granted, and we rarely stop to consider the impressive cognitive wizardry involved. But some of us are better at it than others: in the last decade or so it’s become apparent that around two per cent of the population are born with a severe face-recognition impairment (known as congenital prosopagnosia), that there is a similar proportion of “super-recognisers” with unusually exceptional face-recognition skills, and that the rest of us are on a spectrum in between. Where do you think your abilities lie? A new study in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that, unless you are severely impaired at face-recognition, you probably don’t have much insight into this question. When participants were confronted with the question: “Overall, from 1-‘very poor’ to 9-‘very good’, how would you describe your general ability to recognise faces?”, the research found that most participants’ answers bore no relation to their performance on a range of lab-based face-recognition tests. Romina Palermo at the University of Western Australia led a large multi-national team that tested the face-recognition skills of nearly 300 undergrads recruited in Italy, Australia, and Belgium. The research involved established face-recognition tests and specially designed new ones. These tasks required participants to look at specific faces and then pick them out from among a larger range of faces later on, including in new lighting conditions and from different angles. One newly designed task involved watching film clips of people conversing, and then later identifying the actors’ faces from a display that featured several new faces. Before they completed the face-recognition challenges, the participants answered questions about how well they thought they would do, including the single item question mentioned above or another that read “How well do you think you will perform (from 1 to 9) on studying and recognising faces from your own race”. There was also an established 15-item survey that involved questions like “I can easily follow actors in a movie” but this scale has been criticised for also including a few items not related specifically to face-recognition; and finally, there was a new, mammoth in-depth survey with 77-items that tapped participants’ beliefs about their basic face-recognition skills, but also what friends and family said about their skills, and there were other items covering experiences in specific contexts, such as “I have difficulty recognizing a colleague / student if I see his/her face outside my workplace / study.” Overall, there was no correlation between participants’ scores on the single-item questions about their abilities and their actual face-recognition performance. There was minimal correlation between the 15-item survey and one of the face tests (the correlation was -0.14; note that higher scores on this test equal greater perceived difficulty hence the negative correlation). And there was a moderate correlation (0.30) between answers to the 77-item survey and test performance: this modest level of insight is similar to what’s seen when people are asked about their general memory abilities. So we might be capable of some insight into our face-recognition skills, but only if we’re led through a comprehensive series of nearly 80 questions, and even then it’s likely our answers will only correlate modestly with our actual performance. The researchers also tested 13 participants who had registered with a congenital prosopagnosia website as having everyday problems with face recognition: they rated themselves as having poorer face-recognition skills than the students on the 15-item survey, which isn’t really a surprise as they complained of face-recognition problems. But crucially the prosopagnosics were no better than the students at identifying their level of ability relative to other people with prosopagnosia. In other words, they knew they had problems, but they didn’t have much insight into just how bad they were. However, a larger sample is needed to confirm this result. “In summary,” the researchers said, “the ability of self-report questionnaires to measure insight into face recognition ability, even when the items concentrate on face recognition, appears limited.” They added that: “People with very poor face recognition skills may be more aware of their difficulties than the typical population, but such insight is clearly not universal.” Assuming these results are accurate, why are most of us fairly useless at judging our face recognition abilities? The researchers speculated that part of the reason might be that, compared with, say, our language skills, which are tested regularly through schooling, we never actually receive any formal tests of our face recognition abilities. Also, they suggested that perhaps our subjective sense of our facial recognition skills is easily confused by our sense of our more general person-recognition abilities, which could be based on other cues, such as clothing, gait or tone of voice. One limitation of this research was its focus on young adults. Face-recognition skills are known to mature and peak at around age 30. It will be interesting to see if middle-aged and older adults have better insight into their face identification skills than young people do. —Do people have insight into their face recognition abilities? Image via Lisa Cee/Flickr Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest 20 Dec

The evidence for the psychological benefits of animals is surprisingly weak - By Christian Jarrett To see a man’s face light up as he strokes a dog, to hear a child’s laughter as her hamster tickles her skin, it just seems obvious that animals are good for our state of mind. Let’s hope so because not only do millions of us own pets, but also animals are being used therapeutically in an increasing number of contexts, from residential care homes to airports, prisons, hospitals, schools and universities. Unfortunately, as detailed by psychologist Molly Crossman in her new review in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the research literature has simply not kept pace with the widespread embrace of animal contact as a form of therapy in itself, or as a therapy adjunct. In short, we don’t know whether animal contact is psychologically beneficial, and if it is, we have no idea how. After several decades of animal-human interaction research, Crossman explains that the evidence is mixed: some studies have found benefits, others have not. And the research has tended to be of poor quality. In relation to animal-based therapy or animal-assisted therapy, for example, those studies showing benefits have usually only looked over short-term outcomes; they’ve not compared the generalisability of effects from one animal to another; and they’ve typically had no control condition, so there’s no way of knowing if the apparent positive outcomes are simply due to the passage of time, or to any kind of sociable or pleasurable activity. Another issue is that, for obvious reasons, animal-based therapy always requires the presence of a human handler, but existing studies have always failed to account for the effect of this person. This means it’s possible that any benefits are solely or partly down to the friendliness and company of the handler, as opposed to the animal. Similarly most research on the benefits of pet ownership (as opposed to animal therapy) has been observational, rather than involving any experimental allocation of pets to some participants, with other participants placed in a no-pet control condition. Again, this makes it difficult to source any apparent benefits to animal companionship per se. “There is not yet sufficient evidence to conclude that companion animal ownership conveys benefits for human health,” Crossman writes. Even if we assume that the apparent psychological benefits of animals are real, Crossman also explains that there has been virtually no research into the mechanisms. She identifies several possibilities, all of which need testing, including: the simple pleasure of the interaction; the passing of positive emotions from animal to human; feeling that the animal is providing unconditional love; and the benefits of tactile contact. There is also likely to be a large placebo effect. Finding out how and why animal contact is psychological beneficial and for whom would help to maximise the positive impact of using animals for therapeutic reasons. Crossman points out that the idea of there being positive emotional contagion from animal to human also reminds us that it’s important to consider the effect of animal therapy on animals, and not to sacrifice their welfare in the process of helping people. Some may wonder whether it matters that there is such a dearth of quality research in this field. As Crossman says, many people just feel they “know” that animal contact is beneficial and “they’re often sceptical of the need for empirical evidence.” But the wider psychotherapy literature teaches us that there are dangers in assuming interventions are always going to be helpful – animal therapy or ownership might not work for everyone, and in some cases it could even be detrimental. For instance, the responsibility of a pet might backfire for someone who is struggling to cope with stress. “Researchers and practitioners have called for methodological improvements and advancements [in human-animal interaction research] for nearly half a century, but those calls remain largely unanswered,” Crossman writes. “At this point, the clearest conclusion in the field is that we cannot yet draw clear conclusions.” —Effects of Interactions With Animals On Human Psychological Distress Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest 19 Dec

The surprising self-interest in being kind to strangers - Our editor’s pick of the 10 best psychology and neuroscience links from the last week or so: The Surprising Self-interest In Being Kind to Strangers Amy Alkon’s recent TED talk dealt with “Trickle-Down Humanity,” about why we need to do small kindnesses for strangers and why that’s the most powerful kind of kindness. Why Magazines Matter As The Psychologist relaunches, Ella Rhodes considers style and impact in the printed form. Beyond Grit: The Science of Creativity, Purpose, and Motivation A conversation between the psychologists and best-selling authors Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth: “Your interests and your passion develop over time. I want to disabuse people of this mythology of ‘it happens to you and if you’re lucky, you find it, and then that’s all you have to do.’” Leaders Are More Powerful When They’re Humble, New Research Shows By Ashley Merryman at the Washington Post. There Are Only Two Kinds of Terrible Bosses And knowing which category yours falls into can make it easier to deal with them, says Cari Romm at Science Of Us. How To Hack Your Memory and Remember Almost Anything Julia Shaw’s recent talk at WIRED’s 2016 Next Generation event about how memory manipulation is happening everyday, from modern politics to advertising. If Your Gift Choices Seem To Disappoint, Psychology Might Explain Why Melissa Healy at the LA Times Who Cares, What’s The Point? New psychology podcast that asks psychology researchers about an article they’ve published, and why we should care about it (find it on iTunes). Presented by Sarb Johal. Echo Chambers: Old Psych, New Tech If you were surprised by the result of the Brexit vote in the UK or by the Trump victory in the US, you might live in an echo chamber, says Tom Stafford at Mind Hacks. Watch A Resting Brain Light Up With Activity  From WIRED: “a comprehensive visualization of neural activity throughout the entire brain at rest, and evidence that the blood rushing around in your brain is actually a good indicator of what your neurons are doing.” – Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest 17 Dec

A daily cold shower seems to have some psychological benefits - By Alex Fradera Exposing your body to cold water has been promoted as a health tonic since at least the Roman period, so it’s about time we gave this a thorough investigation. In a new paper in PLOS One Geert Buijze and his colleagues report on the health and wellbeing effects of the “cool challenge” – a 30-day event in the Netherlands that involved more than 3000 people taking daily showers that ran cold for at least the last 30 seconds each time. The clearest finding was a 29 per cent reduction in sickness absence for those who took cold showers compared with their colleagues who weren’t involved in the challenge; the length of the cold blast, whether 30 seconds or 90, didn’t matter. However cold showers didn’t provide an immunisation against sickness as such. The challenge participants felt ill as frequently as their colleagues, it’s just that somehow they were better able to fight through it and make it to work. Most of the psychological factors that the researchers measured were not influenced by the chilly treatment. Participants reported a small increase in quality of life after 30 days, but that disappeared when re-measured later; meanwhile work productivity and levels of anxiety were unaffected. But the participants did report some other benefits such as higher energy levels, comparable to drinking a coffee, and over two thirds chose to continue the challenge for a further two months. On this evidence, cold showers don’t refresh all the parts we might desire, but seem to insulate against the effects of illness and provide some yet to be determined energetic effects. Why? Maybe thanks to effects on the levels of hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine, which respond in the short-term to a cold dousing. Or simply the benefit of a short daily physical activity – the power of a good shiver. —The Effect of Cold Showering on Health and Work: A Randomized Controlled Trial Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) is Contributing Writer at BPS Research Digest 16 Dec

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Kissinger, a longtime Putin confidant, sidles up to Trump - Back in the 1990s, Henry Kissinger, the legendary former U.S. secretary of state-turned-global consultant, encountered an intriguing young Russian and proceeded to ask him a litany of questions about his background. “I worked in intelligence,” Vladimir Putin finally told him, according to “First Person,” a 2000 autobiography cobbled together from hours of interviews with the then-unfamiliar Russian leader. To which Kissinger replied: “All decent people got their start in intelligence. I did, too.”23 Dec

NYPD Cops Raid Wrong Home, Posting Photo of Handcuffed Family to Snapchat - New York City cops raided a family’s home in Brooklyn at the break of dawn Thursday, handcuffing every family member while searching the apartment unit for three hours before realizing they had the wrong home and leaving. Next thing the family knew, a photo showing them handcuffed while sitting on the couch appeared on Snapchat with the caption, “Merry Christmas it’s NYPD!”.23 Dec

British Govt-Funded Outlet Offered Journalist $17,000 a Month to Produce Propaganda for Syrian Rebels - The Revolutionary Forces of Syria (RFS) media office, a major Syrian opposition media outfit and frequent source of information for Western media, is funded by the British government and is managed by Westerners operating out of Turkey, according to emails provided to AlterNet by a Middle East reporter RFS tried to recruit. The outlet stirred controversy this November when it released a video at the height of the Mannequin Challenge, a pop culture craze in which people compete for how long they can freeze in place on video. The RFS video depicted a staged rescue by the White Helmets, the Western-funded rescue group that operates exclusively in rebel-held territory. RFS quickly removed the video and issued an apology out of apparent concern that the staged rescue could raise questions about the authenticity of other videos by the White Helmets.23 Dec

Welfare jihad: Dozens of Danish ISIS fighters received state unemployment benefits - Denmark has discovered that dozens of its citizens fighting for Islamic State have continued to receive cash benefits. According to local media the government somehow expects jihadists to pay the improperly distributed funds back. At least 36 people who are known by authorities to have left Denmark to allegedly to join the ranks of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) continued to receive welfare payments, according to the Ekstra Bladet newspaper.23 Dec

NATO Auditor General found dead in Belgium - NATO Auditor General was found dead in Belgium. The body of Yves Chandelon was found in the city of Andenne, in 140 kilometers from the place of his work and 100 km from Lens where he lived.22 Dec

Has Berlin massacre suspect killed before? Police probe ISIS murder of German boy, 16, for links to terror attack - as it emerges prime suspect in Christmas market atrocity had been arrested for HIJACKING a lorry before - Police are probing whether market massacre suspect Anis Amri was responsible for the murder of a young German boy in Hamburg two months ago. The news comes as it also emerged that Amri was previously jailed for hijacking a vehicle in his home country of Tunisia. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the October 16 knife attack which claimed the life of a 16-year-old called Victor E.22 Dec

Police’s secret cellphone-surveillance tool can also block calls by the innocent - It’s no secret that state and local law enforcement agencies have grown more militarized in the past decade, with armored personnel carriers, drones and robots. But one item in their arsenal has been kept largely out of public view, to the dismay of civil liberties advocates who say its use is virtually unregulated – and largely untracked.22 Dec

Your right to record the police is at risk - In 2011, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that we have the right to record the police in the public performance of their duties. But what does the right to record the police mean if you cannot exercise it? Not much. Our society entrusts the police with unusual and extreme powers: the ability to use violence and to deprive us of our liberty primary among them. Recording the police is a tool we can use to make sure officers don’t abuse those powers, and with which to hold them accountable if and when they do. Five years ago, the First Circuit held that this right is protected by the First Amendment. Chilling videos depicting police killing people across the country, released over the past few years with alarming frequency, underscore the importance of securing this right.22 Dec

Google changes algorithms of hate - Search engine Google has changed its algorithms after discovering that users using search terms related to the Holocaust or ethnic minorities were being pointed to hate sites. The new algorithms are said to prioritise high-quality information, bumping down sites associated with racial hate speech, and to remove anti-Semitic auto-fill queries. In the past, Google has shown reluctance to change its algorithms in the past, preferring to prioritize whatever pages generated the most online sharing and discussion. But it discovered that hate groups were manipulating the algorithms to amplify misinformation and hate speech.22 Dec

DHS is now asking some foreign visitors about their social media22 Dec

Home

World War Three, by Mistake - Harsh political rhetoric, combined with the vulnerability of the nuclear command-and-control system, has made the risk of global catastrophe greater than ever. By Eric Scholosser, in the New Yorker.24 Dec

Environmental coalition defends its legal appeal, seeks to block Fermi 3 proposed new reactor in Michigan - Terry Lodge, legal counsel for the environmental coalition resisting Fermi 3 An environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, is entering its 10th year of resistance (2008-2017) against Detroit Edison's proposed new Fermi Unit 3 reactor in southeast Michigan on the Great Lakes shoreline. On Dec. 23rd, Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge filed a Reply Brief, in defense of a legal appeal originally filed in October, at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second highest court in the land, just below the U.S. Supreme Court. The Reply rebuts challenges to the appeal brought by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Detroit Edison (DTE). The appeal challenges NRC's exclusion of the transmission line corridor from the Environmental Impact Statement, a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The appeal also challenges DTE's violations of NRC's quality assurance (QA) regulations (Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, Inc. serves as the coalition's QA expert). More.23 Dec

UN General Assembly approves historic resolution seeking to abolish nuclear weapons - The International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons has reported on this story. Physicians for Social Responsibility has put out a press release lauding the vote.23 Dec

Putin & Trump call for strenthening and expansion of nuclear weapons arsenals - A quarter-century after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump have, in remarkably similar language, called for the strengthening and expansion of their countries' respective nuclear weapons arsenals. Politico reprinted Putin's words: "We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems," he said, according to multiple news reports. The BBC has reprinted the full text from Trump's Tweet this morning: "The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its sense regarding nukes". For some hopeful and welcome relief from Putin's and Trump's fearful and fearsome proposals, check out this moving Counterpunch article by John LaForge of Nukewatch Wisconsin, "In Sentencing Radical Pacifists, Judge Miles Lord Assailed 'Worship of the Bomb.'" More.22 Dec

Former Texas governor, Rick Perry, could head the "Oops" Department, but it's no laughing matter - Truth in advertizing under a Trump administration?!Former Texas governor, Rick Perry, has been tapped to run the federal agency he swore to abolish, if only he could remember which one it was. Perry's leadership of the Department of Energy could jeopardize the Iran nuclear weapons deal, with national defense (almost entirely nuclear weapons related) constituting around 65% of the DOE's mission and budget, while 21% is allocated to energy-related functions. The Iran deal has already been condemned by president elect Trump and many Republicans. Perry professes skepticism on climate change, yet has overseen a boom in wind power in Texas. He is alleged to have received millions in donations from Harold Simmons, founder of Waste Control Specialists, which is due to take irradiated waste fuel from U.S. reactors to a site in Andrews County, Texas, under the "Consolidated Interim Storage" scheme that Beyond Nuclear strongly opposes. Perry also sits on the boards of Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics, owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Readers should contact their U.S. Senators and urge them to block Perry's appointment. Find your two U.S. Senators here.  Then either write, fax or call your Senators via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121. Read more about Perry here and here. 21 Dec

Coalition defends legal challenge against unprecedented high-risk truck shipments of highly radioactive liquid waste - Attorneys Terry Lodge of Toledo, OH, and Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., legal counsel for an environmental coalition that includes Beyond Nuclear, have filed a Reply Memorandum to the D.C. Circuit Court in defense of a lawsuit against unprecedented truck shipments of highly radioactive liquid waste (also referred to by the U.S. Department of Energy, obscurely, as irradiated target material, or, even more obscurely, as HEUNL, short for highly enriched uranyl nitrate liquid). The 100 to 150 high-risk truck shipments would travel more than a thousand miles, from Chalk River Nuclear Lab, Ontario, Canada, to Savannah River Site, South Carolina, U.S.A. The shipments would most likely cross the international border at Buffalo or Thousand Islands, NY. See the PLAINTIFFS' REPLY MEMORANDUM, here. And see the related PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO SUPPLEMENT THE RECORD, here.20 Dec

U.S. looks for potential issues linked to falsified French nuclear documents - As reported by Reuters, and Tweeted by Scott Stapf of the Hastings Group: Nine U.S. reactors linked to French scandal over falsified documents over nuclear parts. Although the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) won't name the implicated American nuclear power plants, the article reports that Dominion's Millstone in CT is directly implicated, while FirstEnergy's Beaver Valley in PA may be as well. The Wall Street Journal has also reported on this story, in an article entitled "Coverup at French Nuclear Supplier Sparks Global Review." Mycle Schneider, lead author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal, warning “Likely we have seen only the tip of the iceberg.” More.14 Dec

Victory! CT Supreme court reverses lower court decision on Millstone - The Connecticut Supreme Court has reversed a lower court decision on the Millstone nuclear power station Clean Water Act permit, clearing the path for activists to nullify the permit on environmental grounds at an upcoming hearing.       The Waterford CT nuclear power plant’s Units 2 and 3 cannot legally operate without a valid discharge permit under the federal Clean Water Act, which is administered by the state DEEP.       Without a valid water discharge permit, Millstone would be forced to shut down.       The unanimous decision, authored by Chief Justice Chase P. Rogers, is to be officially released on December 13, 2016 in the case of Nancy Burton v. Commissioner of Environmental Protection, SC 19664. https://www.jud.ct.gov/external/supapp/Cases/AROcr/CR323/323CR10.pdf Burton hailed the Supreme Court decision as an “outstanding recognition by the state’s highest court of the supremacy of the law to protect the fragile environment from unnecessaryand harmful degradation.”  The stunning Supreme Court victory came eighteen (18) years after Burton successfully brought suit to shut Millstone Unit 2 for 10 days during the peak of native Niantic River winter flounder larvae migration to the Long Island Sound. Annually, larvae were sucked by the millions into Millstone’s intake structures and destroyed.  Read the full press release.12 Dec

BREAKING: One of country's most dangerous nuclear plants, Palisades, to close - The Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, MI, will close in October 2018, its owner, Entergy, has announced. The notorious reactor has been beset by critical safety issues for decades, long neglected, ignored, or given a pass by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In July, nearly two dozen security workers at Palisades were placed on paid leave after inconsistencies in fire inspection records were found. Despite constant opposition from Beyond Nuclear and others, the NRC has consistently refused to close the plant, even though the Palisades reactor vessel has become brittle after decades of use. More details on this page, and comments from Beyind Nuclear, to come as the news unfolds. Read more.   8 Dec

Misdirected NRC email reveals "overwhelmed" safety workforce at Pilgrim nuclear plant - A leaked email from an inspector with the U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission mistakenly sent December 5, 2016 to a local community activist, reveals that Entergy Corporation is “overwhelmed” by the operation of its aging Pilgrim nuclear power station in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Deteriorating safety conditions at the Fukushima-style nuclear power plant located 35 miles south of the Boston metropolitan area continue to challenge beleaguered station workers with potential for catastrophic consequences under accident conditions.    The many issues reported to have “overwhelmed” site workers include: • An emergency diesel generator necessary to power safety systems during an accident had been run with “little or no oil” in the gear box; • Poor station performance in assessing and protecting against the potential failure modes for the emergency generator and its backup power generator; • Several examples of inadequate corrective actions including an internal flooding issue raised in 2011 left unaddressed; • Lack of an onsite safety culture including “poor maintenance, poor engineering practices, and equipment reliability problems,” and corrective actions that were circumvented because they were “too hard to complete.”  The emailed memo indicates that the NRC inspection team is “struggling to figure out what all this all means.”  The answer is quite simple. The Pilgrim nuclear power station must be permanently closed immediately.\ For more information, please review these links: http://www.capecod.com/newscenter/nrc-e-mail-pilgrim-plant-overwhelmed-trying-to-run-station/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/12/07/internal-nrc-memo-outlines-concerns-pilgrim-nuclear-plant/GFRYcbdBRgwo4PulROZBYN/story.html http://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20161207/more-deteriorating-panels-found-at-pilgrim-nuclear-plant 8 Dec

bluebird of bitterness

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night - Filed under: chuckles, comfort & joy Tagged: Christmas 24 Dec

Santa’s naughty and nice list hacked in massive data breach - From The Duffel Blog. NORTH POLE – The world’s largest database of naughty and nice background investigations was compromised by hackers just days before Christmas, sources close to Santa Claus report. “It’s usually public record if someone has been naughty or nice,” said identity protection specialist Rudolph Klein. “But the information used by the special investigating elves can be pieced together and used for blackmail and identity theft. Santa has considerable surveillance resources and the ability to get down the tiniest chimneys and around the gruffest doormen. This is a lot of data. You better watch out.” Santa’s list — which was rumored to contain the name of every boy and girl, their special wish for Christmas, and an ongoing scoring rubric of naughty or nice metrics — had been upgraded recently from a scroll of fine parchment to an online database in an effort to save the North Pole thousands of hours of calligraphy and millions of gallons of glitter ink. While the OPM breach, and Yahoo and Sony account hacks affected millions of people, the Santa hack has the ability to influence billions, sources say. Though Santa had previously claimed to only monitor those who truly believe in the spirit of Christmas, as details unfold about the compromised information it has become clear that Santa has continued to surveil children long after they started emailing their parents Amazon wish lists and telling other children on the playground that Santa wasn’t real, a worry for some privacy activists. [continue reading here]Filed under: circus of life Tagged: Christmas, Duffel Blog 24 Dec

Happy Caturday — Christmas Eve edition - Filed under: animal crackers Tagged: cats, Christmas, Simon's Cat 24 Dec

Friday happy dance - Filed under: comfort & joy Tagged: Christmas, dance, Salvation Army 23 Dec

The perfect beer to drink while watching “A Christmas Story” - From The Federalist.Filed under: comfort & joy, words at play Tagged: A Christmas Story, Christmas, puns 22 Dec

Have yourself a merry little Christmas - Filed under: circus of life, simple pleasures Tagged: Christmas 22 Dec

Some beautiful music for the winter solstice - Randall Thompson’s hauntingly beautiful choral setting of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Filed under: comfort & joy, musical offerings, winter wonderland Tagged: Randall Thompson, Robert Frost, USC Apollo Men's Chorus 21 Dec

Happy first day of winter - Filed under: simple pleasures, winter wonderland 21 Dec

Christmas photo follies - Filed under: circus of life Tagged: Christmas 20 Dec

Prey on words — holiday edition - Filed under: simple pleasures, words at play Tagged: Christmas, puns 19 Dec

Boomer Warrior

Puppy Bucks – A HeartWarming Christmas Story - I seldom publish articles that are not climate-related. But during the Christmas season, the child in me drifts back to earlier days of innocence and magical thinking. You know, those days when the future looked so bright and when all seemed possible. I don’t often visit that space anymore. But my friend’s article about puppy bucks [...] The post Puppy Bucks – A HeartWarming Christmas Story appeared first on Boomer Warrior.22 Dec

Unsettling and Ominous – Climate Alarm Bells of 2016 - Climate alarm bells should be going off in every country, every city, every household. We are losing ground as we struggle to fight climate change and global warming. The climate action trends witnessed in 2016 are both unsettling and ominous. Without heroic — but improbable — efforts, the 2 °C world is but magical thinking. Source: Independent, Climate Change: [...] The post Unsettling and Ominous – Climate Alarm Bells of 2016 appeared first on Boomer Warrior.21 Dec

The Disturbing Climate Alarm Bells of 2016 - The popular belief is that if we’re not feeling the change then we’re probably not doing enough. And for the most part, that can easily be said about how humans are dealing with climate change. We are losing ground as climate alarm bells are going off all around us. Source: Independent, Climate Change: It’s “game over” for planet [...] The post The Disturbing Climate Alarm Bells of 2016 appeared first on Boomer Warrior.19 Dec

Message to Brad Wall – Border Tax Adjustments Are the Solution - Following the recent First Ministers’ Meeting and the launch of Canada’s climate action plan, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, led by National Director Cathy Orlando, issued this Media Release on December 12. (Source: CCL Canada Website).  On Friday, December 9, 2016, the Pan-Canadian Plan on Clean Growth and  Climate was signed by all Premiers at the First Minister’s Meeting (FMM) except [...] The post Message to Brad Wall – Border Tax Adjustments Are the Solution appeared first on Boomer Warrior.15 Dec

Climate Activists Like Christmas Carols Too - Based on popular demand I’m featuring again this year the Climate Activists Like Christmas Carols Too post. I’m a Climate Activist but during the Christmas season, I like to take some time off to enjoy Christmas carols and remember those Christmas mornings of my youth, a time of innocence and pure joy. I thought those days [...] The post Climate Activists Like Christmas Carols Too appeared first on Boomer Warrior.13 Dec

The Artful Deception of Climate Consultation - I’m pleased to welcome Monica Woodley, an ordinary citizen (like millions of us), who has been inspired by her grandchildren to become a climate warrior. I spoke with Monica on the phone recently. We agreed that our current government under the leadership of Justin Trudeau has made a mockery of the democratic practice of consultation, reducing it [...] The post The Artful Deception of Climate Consultation appeared first on Boomer Warrior. 9 Dec

The Inescapable Costs of Climate Change - I’m pleased to add Clare Demerse as a contributor to BoomerWarrior.Org. In this first article Clare explores the inescapable costs of climate change. She wonders if Canada should avoid the potential impact of taking a leadership role on carbon pricing ahead of the United States. (Rolly Montpellier~Editor for BoomerWarrior). With climate skeptic Donald Trump moving into the White House [...] The post The Inescapable Costs of Climate Change appeared first on Boomer Warrior. 7 Dec

Carbon Insanity! Trudeau Now Cheerleader-in-Chief for Oilsands - It turns out to be two pipelines — Kinder Morgan and Enbridge Line 3 — and the LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) project in BC for a national carbon price. And so, carbon insanity prevails as Trudeau becomes the cheerleader-in-chief of the fossil fuel industry in Canada. Source: Canadian Business, July 21, 2016. In 2012 Trudeau [...] The post Carbon Insanity! Trudeau Now Cheerleader-in-Chief for Oilsands appeared first on Boomer Warrior. 2 Dec

Climate Facts You May Not Know - This article lists climate facts you may not know. It was originally published on the Climate Reality site. As a Climate Reality leader (Chicago2013), I’m pleased to feature Climate Reality resources on BoomerWarrior.  (Rolly Montpellier~Managing Editor).  What you don’t know about the climate crisis – and its solutions – may come as a bit of a [...] The post Climate Facts You May Not Know appeared first on Boomer Warrior. 1 Dec

If You’re In A Hole, Just Stop Digging - If you’re in a hole, stop digging, is the phrase that best summarizes the ominous message of The Sky’s Limit, the Oil Change International (OIC) report released in September. I, and dozens of Citizens’ Climate Lobby colleagues, will convey that same message to Members of Parliament and Senators when we lobby on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in the coming days. [...] The post If You’re In A Hole, Just Stop Digging appeared first on Boomer Warrior.27 Nov

The BRAD BLOG

Great Book Gift Ideas and the Top 10 News Stories of the Year: 'BradCast' 12/23/2016 - On today's BradCast, I shared a couple of interviews I conducted around the Miami International Book Fair a few weeks ago. Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot joined me onsite at the Book Fair to discuss the 2016 elections --- the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. He started our conversation with a bit of sarcasm when he proclaimed, "America will never be greater!" I also spoke with another author at the Book Fair. He also happened to be the former Governor and former Senator from our state of Florida, Bob Graham. His book is a new edition of America, The Owner’s Manual: Making Government Work For You. Of course, I had to ask him about Saudi Arabia, the infamous 28 pages, and their involvement in 9-11. Also today: The AP released its list of the Top 10 News Stories of 2016. I gave it the "What's News?" treatment. Download MP3 or listen online below... [See post to listen to audio] * * *While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!23 Dec

HELP! (And Happy Holidays!) - I'm scramming for a few days for a short break that after any Presidential election year, much less this one, is more needed than I'd have time or ability to adequately describe. We'll have guest hosts on the show for the duration (thanks in advance for help making it possible, Nicole and Angie!), so please scroll down to listen to their BradCasts while Desi and I try to stand down for a bit. I've failed to ask here specifically here for a while, for a number of reasons, but if you're able to help out with a donation at years end for all that we do here --- particular after this year, and with what is heading our way next year --- the support would be tremendously appreciated. One of the reasons we are all in this mess right now, one of the main reasons, I'd argue, is thanks to the extraordinary failures, yet again, of our mainstream corporate media in almost every way imaginable (and predicted). Those failures and their unspeakable costs to the nation and the planet, I am hoping, are obscenely obvious at this point to any and all BRAD BLOG readers. But, if not, go back and review our last year and half or more of coverage. (Yes, we warned of this mess damned near every day during that period, while almost the entirety of the corporate media were happily and profitably whistling past all of our graveyards.) Then go back and review our decade of coverage before that, for still more warnings and hair-on-fire predictive journalism. As of the end of January, we will have been at this now for twelve long, difficult years. But we are improbably still here and at it because of you and your support over those years. Thank you! But support of rare, independent outlets like this one will now be more important than ever. Please consider a donation to help support our work now and in the years ahead. A one-time donation is greatly appreciated, but a monthly sustaining pledge even more so. Whatever you can do to help is welcome and appreciated. And, if you'd prefer to support a different independent media outlet rather than (or in addition to) this one, please rest assured it will be most welcome and much needed, as we all attempt to move forward together. If the institutions you have counted on have failed you, please consider supporting the ones that did not. Hopefully that includes us. But there are many others who will also be fighting for their lives in the days ahead and will need your help. Thanks in advance! Until we return, my best (and Desi's as well!) to all of you for safe, happy and somehow peaceful holidays! -- Brad (and Des by proxy) MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION ONE-TIME DONATION Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly (Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!) 23 Dec

How Progressives Can Expand Democracy NOW (Even in the Trump Years!): 'BradCast' 12/22/2016 - On today's BradCast: Enough playing defense. It's time for Democrats to go on the offense, in states all across the country, to expand the franchise, in numerous ways, rather than simply defending against increasing Republican efforts to restrict voting rights. And where they won't, it's time for progressives to hold them accountable for it. [Audio link to show follows below.] Today I'm joined by Daniel Nichanian, election expert and post-doctoral fellow in political science at the University of Chicago to discuss his "Voting Rights Manifesto: A State-by-State Plan to Defend Democracy", as recently published in Vox.com's "Big Ideas" series. Nichanian explains where and how Democrats can and must take action, right now, even during the Trump years, to expand voting rights and access to the polls. Yes, it can (and must) be done in states across the country where Democrats still have control of legislatures and governorships. In many cases, as he describes, Dems don't even need to control both. No need to wait for and hope that Congressional Republicans to restore the Voting Rights Act, which they probably will never actually do. There are many ways for Democrats to expand voter registration (such as automatic universal registration and other reforms), expand the pool of those eligible to vote (restoring millions of felons' voting rights, for example), ways to make it easier to vote (early voting and easier access to absentee voting), and many other tools to take a proactive stand in the new year. "The Democratic Party has not been at the forefront of the voting rights issue in the past two years," Nichanian observes. "The issue has really come to a head since the wave of Republican takeovers of state houses in 2010 and 2014, when the Republican Party really prioritized, in state after state, putting in place a very ambitious and consistent agenda of its own to curtail voting rights. The extent to which the Republican Party has prioritized this issue, it keeps taking Democrats by surprise." But, he explains, "when the Democratic Party has power, in many places, they really don't get their act together to think about what has to be done on this issue, and actually get it done." We discuss how Democrats can do so. We also try and hold them accountable for not having done so to date in so many places where they should have by now --- even in places like New York and California. I'm hoping the conversation, and Nichanian's piece at Vox, might give us all something positive to work for in the new year, even at the same time as progressives build the resistance against the destructive, anti-democratic agenda of Donald Trump and the GOP. Also on today's show: Fox "News" wingnuts continue their climate change hoax; Democrats in North Carolina end up playing Charlie Brown to the state Republicans' Lucy --- again. And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our year-end Green News Report as Obama, on his way out the door, bans off-shore oil drilling in large parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic, and not a moment too soon. The Arctic has turned freakishly warm over the past two months of what is likely to be the warmest year ever recorded on the planet (for the third year in a row). She also has some good news as the year wraps up, however: A new poll finds that Trump's voters actually support regulations on the burning of carbon that causes global warming and, something that even Trump can't change, solar power is now the world's cheapest form of energy. Take that, Big Oil, Big Coal and 2016!... Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below... [See post to listen to audio] * * *While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!* * *MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION ONE-TIME DONATION Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly (Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!) 22 Dec

'Green News Report' - December 22, 2016 - IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Arctic 40 to 50(!) degrees above normal; Obama bans offshore drilling in large parts of the Arctic and Atlantic; NOAA confirms climate change turbo-charged 24 extreme weather events in 2015; New poll shows majority of Trump voters support regulating carbon; PLUS: What Trump can't change --- solar energy is now the cheapest energy in the world... All that and more in today's Green News Report! Thanks for your support in 2016! Please help us continue to connect the climate change dots over your public airwaves in 2017!PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE! Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)... Link: Embed: Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com. IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Rex Tillerson's state of denial; Arizona Net-Metering Decision May Slow Solar Adoption; China demands emissions cuts as year's worst smog chokes Beijing; Exxon Mobil oil spill hits communities in southeast Nigeria; California Forests Failing to Regrow After Intense Wildfires; Jury Orders DuPont To Pay $2M In C-8 Case; Energy Dept. Offers $2B Loan To Louisiana. Carbon-Storage Project; Oklahoma Tries Stronger Measures to Stop Earthquakes in Fracking Areas; Accidental discovery spurs coral growth, ignites hope... PLUS: Outgoing EPA chief: Science is 'fundamental to absolutely everything we do... and much, MUCH more! ... STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'... VIDEO: Joe Scarborough - 'I “Just Know” Trump Believes In Climate Science; Americans don't want to talk about the environment': (Media Matters) Another 'freakish' heat wave hits the Arctic: Spiking Temperatures in the Arctic Startle Scientists (NY Times):While the earth over all has been warming — 2015 set a record for warmth, and 2016 is expected to exceed it — the Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the global average. In part, scientists say, that is because of declines in sea ice coverage...“We’ve seen a year in 2016 in the Arctic like we’ve never seen before,” [Dr. Jeremy Mathis] said. How rare were the unusually high temperatures around the North Pole in November–December 2016 and how were they influenced by anthropogenic climate change? (World Weather Attribution) 2016 Is Days Away from Sealing Record-Hot Spot (Climate Central):In less than two weeks, 2016 will officially be the hottest year on the books in more than 120 years of record keeping by U.S. agencies. It will be the third straight record-setting year — and of the 17 hottest years, 16 have been this century — a clear sign of the human-caused rise in global temperatures caused by the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases over the past century. The world is already more than halfway down the road to surpassing the Paris climate pact goal to limit warming to less than 2°C (3.6°F) by 2100. NOAA: 24 extreme weather events intensified by climate change: NOAA blames global warming for 24 weird weather events in 2015 (AP):“It has to be measureable. It has to be detectable. There has to be evidence for it, and that's what these papers do,” said NOAA scientist Stephanie Herring, co-editor of the report. Climate change played a role in dozens of floods, heatwaves, and droughts last year (Climate Progress):The NOAA report, which was worked on by 116 scientists from around the world, did not seek to determine whether climate change “caused” any of the extreme weather events, but rather, whether climate change made the events more likely. It’s a distinction that might seem like splitting hairs, but it’s actually an important one. AUDIO: Yes, scientists say, Alaska wildfires linked to climate change (Alaska Public Radio KTOO) Poll Trump voters support climate action: Even Trump voters oppose Trump’s climate agenda. (Grist):Fifty-five percent of people who backed Trump want to uphold current climate policies, and 61 percent think companies should be required to reduce carbon emissions, according to the poll, which was commissioned by the political consultancy Glover Park Group and performed by the market research firm Morning Consult. Trump Voters Support Climate Action, Environmental Protection, And Renewable Energy (Fast Co-Exist) Obama permanently bans offshore drilling in U.S. Arctic and Atlantic waters: VIDEO: President Obama Holds Final Press Conference of the Year (White House.gov) Transcript: Press Conference by the President, 12/16/16 (White House.gov) Trudeau Joins Obama in Freezing Arctic Offshore Oil Drilling (Bloomberg):Although Obama’s decision was cast primarily as safeguarding 31 ecologically precious Atlantic canyons and "fragile Arctic waters," it was a major victory for environmental activists who have been arguing that even broader climate change concerns should drive the White House to rule out drilling in mostly untouched U.S. waters. Environmentalists said the decision sends a message to the world that the U.S. knows the warming Earth can’t afford to burn "extreme oil" locked under now-protected parts of the Arctic and Atlantic. Will Obama's new drilling ban survive Donald Trump? (E&E News):The Constitution stipulates that Congress has the authority to regulate public lands, and presidents can only control them to the extent Congress delegates that power to them, said Niel Lawrence, Alaska director and a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. In the case of Section 12(a), the law specifically gives the president the authority to withdraw lands and that is it. "Congress only gave presidents the power to do this, but not to undo it," he said. "No president has ever tried to undo this." Renewable energy outpaces fossil fuels as cheapest energy source: World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind (Bloomberg):A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap panels. This Just Became the World's Cheapest Form of Electricity Out of Nowhere (Fortune):According to Bloomberg's analysis, the cost of solar power in China, India, Brazil and 55 other emerging market economies has dropped to about one third of its price in 2010. This means solar now pips wind as the cheapest form of renewable energy-but is also outperforming coal and gas. U.S. Solar Surges in Record-Breaking Quarter (EcoWatch) Solar capacity has increased 99% since last quarter: The industry is booming, and President Trump will be hard-pressed to stop it. (Climate Progress) 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)... Rex Tillerson's state of denial: (New Yorker):All of which goes to show that Tillerson is smart enough to have positioned himself, and repositioned his company, so that there’s now at least confusion about where he stands. But you have to be pretty desperate—and at this point many people are—to take this as cause for optimism. As has been copiously documented, ExxonMobil has a long history of peddling misinformation on climate change. Outgoing EPA chief: Science is 'fundamental to absolutely everything we do.' (Washington Post):I’m thinking he has a big role to do here. He really doesn’t have a great deal of familiarity with the agency and the breadth of what it does, even though he has sued us on a number of occasions. China demands emissions cuts as year's worst smog chokes Beijing: (Bloomberg) Exxon Mobil oil spill hits communities in southeast Nigeria: local leader (Reuters):Spills have been a source of tension across the Niger Delta, which often erupts into violence. The poverty-wracked region produces much of Nigeria's oil wealth, upon which the country depends, but it sees little of the money. California Forests Failing to Regrow After Intense Wildfires (Inside Climate News):There are warning signs that some forests in the western U.S. may have a hard time recovering from the large and intense wildfires that have become more common as the climate warms. Oklahoma Tries Stronger Measures to Stop Earthquakes in Fracking Areas (Inside Climate News):Oklahoma regulators released for the first time guidelines aimed to reduce the risk of major earthquakes being generated from fracking operations, including a mandate to immediately shut down operations in the event of a quake measuring 3.5 or higher on the Richter scale. Jury Orders DuPont To Pay $2M In C-8 Case (Wilmington, DE News-Journal):A federal jury in Columbus, Ohio, has ordered DuPont to pay $2 million to Kenneth Vigneron, concluding exposure to a toxic chemical from the company's Parkersburg, West Virginia, plant caused his testicular cancer. Energy Dept. Offers $2B Loan To Louisiana. Carbon-Storage Project (AP):The Energy Department said Wednesday it is offering a conditional, $2 billion loan guarantee to capture and store carbon dioxide at a planned Louisiana methanol plant, the latest element of President Obama’s strategy to slow global warming. VIDEO: Bill Maher Breaks Silence on Trump (Climate Crocks) Early warning system in the works to protect blue whales from ships: DFO (CBC):The U.S. system, called WhaleWatch, combines data from tagged whales with current ocean conditions to predict where the mammals are heading next. Experts use that information to create maps of so-called whale "hotspots" from California to Washington state. The charts are used to warn vessels of mammals in their path. Emergency Managers, City Officials Charged In Flint Water Crisis (Detroit Free Press):Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's criminal investigation of the Flint water crisis moved a step closer to the highest levels of state government Tuesday as he brought felony charges against two former emergency managers who reported to former Treasurer Andy Dillon and were appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. Corals: Accidental discovery spurs coral growth, ignites hope (E&E News)"We can [cycle through] an entire life cycle of a coral and make a selection predicting better survival," Vaughan said. "Otherwise, you would have said I got to wait 75 years and see if the next offspring are OK. And now, literally it's our lifetime. We can do something in our lifetime." Arizona Net-Metering Decision May Slow Solar Adoption (Arizona Daily Star):A decision by state regulators to end net metering for customers with rooftop solar panels will curtail demand for such systems in Arizona, industry officials say. That Awkward Moment When Donald Trump's EPA Aide Christopher Horner Didn't Want to Talk About His Coal Funding (DeSmogBlog):There are two things that have happened only once in my 20 years of interviewing people as a journalist and while neither were traumatic, they were both odd...What makes these two moments memorable, though, was that they both happened on the same night in Paris, and they both involved the same person — Christopher Horner. I'm a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump. (Washington Post):I've faced hostile investigations by politicians, demands for me to be fired from my job, threats against my life and even threats against my family... with the coming Trump administration, my colleagues and I are steeling ourselves for a renewed onslaught of intimidation, from inside and outside government. It would be bad for our work and bad for our planet. No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously (Vox):If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere. FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page NASA Video: If we don't act, here's what to expect in the next 100 years: NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA). 22 Dec

'It's a Crock': Former Presidential Intel Briefer on Russia 'Hacking' Claims: 'BradCast' 12/21/2016 - On today's BradCast, how corporate media control of our public airwaves helped elect Donald Trump, and a decades-long, top-level CIA intelligence briefer of U.S. Presidents responds to concerns about Trump skipping Presidential Daily Briefings and on, so far, evidence-free, anonymous claims that Russia hacked and manipulated the U.S. election. First up today, speaking of questioning "conventional wisdom", there is no doubt that the stranglehold of our public airwaves by corporate media helped elect Trump. But a new report suggests their helping hand may have been even worse than we knew, as Sinclair Broadcasting, the infamously rightwing media behemoth and largest single owner of television stations in the nation, apparently struck a deal with the Trump campaign to provide non-critical coverage on its scores of television "news" outlets in the South, Midwest and elsewhere. Then I'm joined by 27-year CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, who served as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and prepared and personally delivered the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs) each morning to American Presidents from Kennedy to Clinton. Since leaving the agency, he has become an outspoken anti-war advocate and peace activist and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group which includes esteemed former intel officials, analysts, experts, and whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, William Binney, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, Karen Kwiatkowski, Col. Ann Wright and others. He is also a contributor at Consortium News and his writings and appearances can also be found at RayMcGovern.com. I invited him back on today to offer insight as to how the preparation and delivery of PDBs to Presidents and Presidents-Elect have changed over the years and how important they are. McGovern offers some fascinating insight and inside Presidential stories on all of the above. But I wanted to talk to McGovern about this specifically in the wake of Trump's somewhat alarming recent admission that, he rarely attends the briefings because he's "smart", and doesn't "have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years." Instead, Trump says, he sends his national security team to attend what McGovern describes as "the acme of the intelligence cycle, just to give you an awareness off how important the process is." But our conversation soon moved to the various allegations --- still without evidence and said to be from unnamed intelligence sources citing secret National Security Estimates (NIEs) that some respectable critics say don't necessarily make a lot of sense --- charging that Russia hacked DNC and other emails during the campaign in hopes of helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. In short, McGovern and his fellow team of longtime intelligence analysts, experts and whistleblowers believe the allegations are, in McGovern's words, 'a crock'. He explains why he and his colleagues recently released a memo explaining their dispute with the charges, and what they actually believe is at the root of the thousands of leaked emails. While I agree with Ray on the lack of evidence presented at this time in support of the claims against Russia, I am also skeptical of VIPS' assertions about what they believe really happened, as we discuss on today's show as well. But, of course, I am always skeptical of anything that cannot be independently verified, especially when it comes to anonymous claims and secret evidence used to lead us into wars. McGovern offers some fascinating details and reminders on the show today as to why such skepticism is a very good idea! Unfortunately, similar skepticism seems to be all too rare these days in much of the rest of our media. Either way, I'll look forward to your thoughts on today's program... Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below... [See post to listen to audio] * * *While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!* * *MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION ONE-TIME DONATION Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly (Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!) 21 Dec

The Real Cost of Killing 'ObamaCare' and the North Carolina GOP Coup: 'BradCast' 12/20/2016 - On today's BradCast, it's not much discussed by the media, but the cost of killing "ObamaCare" is more than simply a political one for millions of Americans. And the brazen GOP coup in North Carolina's state government is not only a fait accompli, but likely a model for Republican controlled states everywhere. [Audio link to show posted below.] There's a lot of talk of late about the politics of "repealing and replacing" the Affordable Care Act by the incoming Republican Administration and GOP majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate. But there's not as much discussion in the media about the very real costs --- to actual human beings --- of repealing the measure, or of those who will be devastated by its loss, both medically and financially. All of this comes with more than 20 million more Americans now enjoying access to healthcare thanks to the ACA, and, just last week, the largest single day of sign-ups ever for the federal program. But Republicans may no longer fear any political ramifications for anything with their gerrymandered stronghold of Congress and control of the nation's public airwaves. That argument seems to be bearing itself out in North Carolina right now, where the GOP state legislature --- which already enjoys a super-majority in both chambers of the state assembly --- has successfully carried out a brazen power grab to strip power from the Executive Branch now that a Democrat has narrowly won election as Governor. In NC and in Wisconsin alike, Republicans have recently been found by federal courts to have unconstitutionally gerrymandered state election districts. And, in both states, the GOP has passed wildly radical laws that hurt Democrats and progressive, no matter how unpopular (or unconstitutional) those laws may be or the ensuing uprisings at both state capitols. Both states are likely to be a model for GOP legislators in the rest of the country. Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for some late-breaking news concerning new Obama Administration restrictions on off-shore drilling and for our latest Green News Report, with new attempts to keep drinking water safe from coal and lead, and to keep science safe from Donald Trump... Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below... [See post to listen to audio] * * *While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!* * *MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION ONE-TIME DONATION Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly (Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!) 20 Dec

'Green News Report' - December 20, 2016 - IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New report finds 3,000 American communities have high levels of lead contamination in children; Tap water now safe to use in Corpus Christi after acid accident; Interior Department races to protect drinking water from coal mining pollution; PLUS: Scientists rally to protect scientific integrity and research in the coming Trump Administration... All that and more in today's Green News Report! Please help us connect the climate change dots over your public airwaves! PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE! --> Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)... Link: Embed: Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com. IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump; Massive 2013 Oil Spill In North Dakota Still Not Cleaned Up; Advanced Black Lung Cases Surge In Appalachia; U.S. Blocks Mine Planned Near Boundary Waters in Minnesota; Feds Withheld Key Documents From Standing Rock Sioux; U.S. To Give 30-Year Wind Farm Permits; Thousands Of Eagle Deaths Seen; California approves first US energy efficiency standards for computers; Michigan loses court case to stop home water deliveries due to lead... PLUS: This Just Became the World's Cheapest Form of Electricity Out of Nowhere... and much, MUCH more! ... STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'... 3,000 American communities have higher rates of lead poisoning than Flint, MI: The thousands of U.S. locales where lead poisoning is worse than in Flint (Retuers):A Reuters examination of lead testing results across the country found almost 3,000 areas with poisoning rates far higher than in the tainted Michigan city. Yet many of these lead hotspots are receiving little attention or funding. VIDEO: Children suffer from lead poisoning in 3,000 U.S. neighborhoods (CBS News) Texas: Corpus Christi tap water now safe to use: Tap Water In Corpus Christi Is Safe, Authorities Say (NPR):The water ban had been in effect since Dec. 14, when the city notified residents that possible chemical contamination could make the water unsafe to drink or bathe in. No chemicals found yet, investigation sent to AG (Corpus Christi Caller-Times) Interior Dept. races to protect streams from coal mining pollution: Coal Country Reacts to Stream Protection Rule (WV Public Broadcasting):The Obama Administration’s Department of Interior finalized rule aims to protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests - mostly affecting Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. It maintains a buffer zone rule that blocks mining within 100 feet of streams, and imposes stricter policies that require companies to restore land to pre-mining conditions. Obama sets rule to protect streams near coal mines (AP) Scientists rally to protect U.S. scientific research and integrity: Scientists take to the streets, and the world pays attention (Climate Truth) VIDEO: Stand up for Science Rally, AGU 2016, San Francisco: (ClimateTruth) VIDEO: A conversation with Jerry Brown (American Geophysical Union):“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellites,” Brown said. “Rick, I’ve got some news for you: California’s growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas. And we’ve got more sun than you’ve got oil.” Jerry Brown strikes defiant tone: ‘California will launch its own damn satellite’ (Sacramento Bee) Inside the largest Earth science event: 'The time has never been more urgent' (Guardian UK):With Trump set to have a ‘chilling effect’ on environmental policy, 20,000 Earth and space scientists met in California to face up to a new responsibility Scientists are Saving Climate Data; This Is Why it Matters (Climate Central):"These are products funded by taxpayers who own the intellectual property and should be granted unfettered access," said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist who works at the private weather firm WeatherBell and is an adjunct scholar at the conservative Cato Institute. Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump (Washington Post) 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)... I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump. (Washington Post):I’ve faced hostile investigations by politicians, demands for me to be fired from my job, threats against my life and even threats against my family... with the coming Trump administration, my colleagues and I are steeling ourselves for a renewed onslaught of intimidation, from inside and outside government. It would be bad for our work and bad for our planet. Massive 2013 Oil Spill In North Dakota Still Not Cleaned Up (AP):Three years and three months later, a massive oil spill in North Dakota still isn't fully cleaned up. The company responsible hasn't even set a date for completion. Advanced Black Lung Cases Surge In Appalachia (NPR) This Just Became the World's Cheapest Form of Electricity Out of Nowhere (Fortune):According to Bloomberg’s analysis, the cost of solar power in China, India, Brazil and 55 other emerging market economies has dropped to about one third of its price in 2010. This means solar now pips wind as the cheapest form of renewable energy—but is also outperforming coal and gas. U.S. Blocks Mine Planned Near Boundary Waters in Minnesota (NY Times):The Obama administration on Thursday blocked development of a copper and nickel mine near a popular wilderness area in northern Minnesota, saying the project could poison the vast web of lakes, streams and wetlands that crosshatch the region. AGU Fall Meeting Day 1 – Education And Science Outreach (The Real Skeptic):Communicating science is not the same as doing science. You use a different toolkit for communicating science to a lay audience than the one you would use fora technical audience. For scientists you include all the technicalities and caveats. But don’t do that for a lay audience as they interpret it as uncertainty and it causes doubt no matter how established the findings are. Feds Withheld Key Documents From Standing Rock Sioux (High Country News):The Army made a stunning admission earlier this month when it announced its decision to require a deeper environmental review and more extensive consultation before deciding whether to grant an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline. U.S. To Give 30-Year Wind Farm Permits; Thousands Of Eagle Deaths Seen (Reuters):Wind farms will be granted 30-year U.S. government permits that could allow for thousands of accidental eagle deaths due to collisions with company turbines, towers and electrical wires, U.S. wildlife managers said on Wednesday. Michigan loses court case to stop home water deliveries due to lead (Reuters):"Although there may be no known precedent for the door-to-door delivery of bottled water, there is also no precedent for the systematic infrastructure damage to a water delivery system that has caused thousands of people to be exposed to poisonous water," circuit judges Damon Keith and Bernice Donald wrote in Friday's opinion. California approves first US energy efficiency standards for computers (The Verge):California became the first state in the US to approve energy efficiency requirements for laptops, desktops, and monitors today, in a change that could ultimately impact computers’ energy efficiency across the country. Oil And Gas Industry Is Quickly Amassing Power In Trump’S Washington (Washington Post):After eight years of being banished and sometimes vilified by the Obama administration, the fossil fuel industry is enjoying a remarkable resurgence as its executives and lobbyists shape President-elect Donald Trump’s policy agenda and staff his administration. Warm ocean water is melting East Antarctica's largest glacier (Mashable):"Measurements showed that the base of the ice shelf is melting rapidly. Assessment of possible energy sources gave high confidence that the ocean is responsible, which requires a strong inflow of relatively warm waters, with geophysical data indicating a likely path for that inflow," Alley said. No country on Earth is taking the 2 degree climate target seriously (Vox):If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere. FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page NASA Video: If we don't act, here's what to expect in the next 100 years: NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA). 20 Dec

'Miscounted Recount' in WI; 'Secret Recount' in NV; U.S. Election Agency Hacked: 'BradCast' 12/19/2016 - It's another very busy day today on The BradCast with terror attacks in Europe, the Electoral College vote in the U.S., and our continuing attempt to figure out if the votes in Election 2016 were actually tallied as per voter intent. [Audio link to show posted below.] Despite thousands of protesters at state capitols around the nation today, there were only a few defectors (so-called "faithless electors") for both for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as the Electoral College finally cast its votes today in 50 states and the District of Columbia. As of airtime, despite receiving a almost 3 million fewer votes than Clinton nationally, Trump had just received the requisite 270 votes, a majority of the Electoral College, needed to win the Presidency today. Presuming all state totals are certified by the U.S. Congress on January 6th (and I see no reason they wouldn't be), Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on January 20th. In the meantime, late last week, we learned that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) --- the federal agency responsible for certifying the accuracy and security of electronic voting and tabulation systems used across the U.S. --- was, itself, recently hacked, with about 100 user names and passwords put up for sale on the black market. The well known vulnerability exploited was one that experts say could have been easily patched (it has now been) and would have allowed access to a database of vulnerabilities in the nation's voting and tabulation systems. The Commission might have patched its own system earlier, but its Commissioners were very busy before the election and after, ensuring the nation (in an op-ed that was incorrect and misleading on innumerable levels) that "election officials have been working to secure our voting systems for years," so concerns about any such manipulation of results "are overstated". Then, my guests today are Lulu Friesdat, filmmaker of the award-winning election integrity documentary Holler Back: [not] Voting in American Town (which I am in, but it is excellent anyway) and longtime election integrity advocate Emily Levy of RecountNow.org. Both are just back from attempting to help oversee the statewide Presidential election "recount" in Wisconsin, as requested (and paid for) by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Friesdat shares her short, disturbing new video released on Friday, revealing what appear to be machine mistallies noted by observers during the statewide "recount" of ballots by computer optical-scanners in Racine County, WI, and a stymied attempt by one observer there, Liz Whitlock, to get a hand-count of the paper ballots in question. Citing the 5% error rate by the machines that observers tallied in one small precinct in WI, Friesdat notes: "A similar error rate applied across all of Wisconsin’s 2,976,150 votes --- could produce an error of 140,000 votes. Trump won Wisconsin by 22,000 votes." Levy explains a troubling report from the attempted Presidential "recount" in Nevada (yes, there was one there too!), as filed by independent candidate "Rocky" De La Fuente. There, in the state said to have been won by Hillary Clinton, Clark County Clerk Joe Gloria appears to have admitted to secretly "recounting" votes prior to the lawful, public count of votes cast on the county's absentee paper ballots and completely unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. (In the 2004 Presidential "recount" in Ohio, two election officials were convicted and sentenced to the max for doing something similar in that state.) As both explain on today's program, the long list of failures in the "recount" cases (and they describe many more such failures) have left both Friesdat and Levy even more concerned about the accuracy, security, reliability and ability to oversee our own election system than they were even prior to Election 2016. So, what can we all do about it? How can the system be improved to allow more transparency and oversight? We discuss all of that on today's show as well --- and it starts with you... Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below... [See post to listen to audio] * * *While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!* * *MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION ONE-TIME DONATION Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly (Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!) 19 Dec

Sunday Toons of the UnPresidented Moment - * * * Perry Dorrell blogs as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs, usually on topics concerning the strange brew of Texas politics. He's also on Twitter @PDiddie. 18 Dec

Organize This and FOIA You Too: 'BradCast' 12/16/2016 - It was a busy day today on the BradCast. I was happy to return to guest host from my usual perch at nicolesandler.com where I host my own show with a couple of great guests. First up was Jane McAlevey, a labor and environmental organizer, post-doctoral fellow in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, and the author of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, who joined me for a fascinating discussion about organized labor's plight and its outlook during the Trump era. We also heard from Vice News' Senior Investigative Reporter Jason Leopold, who has been labeled by our government at a "FOIA Terrorist" for his prolific and expert use of the Freedom of Information Act. Jason explains how his expedited FOIA requests dealing with issues related to the election went unanswered. In response, he and Ryan Shapiro filed a lawsuit against the FBI over their failure to comply with those requests, and they've now widened the scope of the documents and records they're asking for. You can read the complete complaint filed in court just three days ago, Dec 13, 2016, here [PDF]. Also today: I share with you my newest creation --- What's News? It's my (almost) daily unique look at the day's news. Today's edition is included inside today's show. Download MP3 or listen online below... [See post to listen to audio] * * *While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed! 16 Dec

Bridge The Gulf Project blogs

Failing Schools, Failing Students or a Failing Public? - Race and Racial Justice Quick, tell me. Do we have failing schools, failing students or a failing public? In Mobile, Alabama there is an abundance of conversation about failing schools. As if all you have to do is remove the students from that particular school and they will be just fine. Well, I am one person that believes things don't work that way. Take for instance the "down the bay" district in Mobile. Last year that district had a failing high school (Williamson), a failing middle school (Mae Eanes), and a Blue Ribbon elementary school (George Hall), all part of the Mobile County Public School System. (Above: portrait of Africatown's Mobile County Training Middle School, by James Hope) I have often wondered how can the same students that started out doing so well in their first five years of public school end up doing so poorly in their last seven years of public education. George Hall Elementary School was a failing school years ago before a new principal was brought in and one of the first things she did was hire new teachers. Did anyone from the school system talk to her to see how she changed things from a failing to a Blue Ribbon School? Also was she ever offered the choice to move up to either Mae Eanes Middle School or Williamson High School to try and work her magic with those kids and those schools? Last year, the Mobile Public School System had its share of failing middle and high schools. Mae Eanes Middle School and Williamson High School were two of those schools. However, if you look things up on your computer, you will see that the Mobile Public School System has one less failing middle school this year than it had last year. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The Mobile Public School System simply closed Mae Eanes Middle School and moved the students to the newly created Williamson Prep Middle School on the campus of William High School. Because it takes two years for a school to show up on the failing school list, the Mobile Public School System seems to have eliminated one of their failing schools. The emphasis here seems to be on moving the students around and closing schools, not solving the problem. At a strategy meeting I attended recently, the question asked was "what would you do to help students learn at a failing school". Some of the answers were, "start a trade school on the campus for the students, let the students leave school early so they can go to work at a real job and earn some money while learning a trade and bring in tutors in the evening to help failing students. While bringing in tutors sound good, I have seen too many situations where 10 tutors might show up but only two or three students show up. In those situations something has to be worked out with the parents that almost forces failing students to attend tutorial sessions. As far as trade schools on campus and leaving school early is concerned, they might be useful at a high school because juniors and seniors are ready to leave anyway, but that won't help at the middle school level. Whenever you have students go to a trade school situation or leave school you are taking them away from the classroom. Remember, we want to help them learn in a classroom situation, not remove them from a classroom situation. I prefer the term Failing Public. To me that means the parents fail, public school system failed and the general public failed. Africatown's Mobile County Training Middle School has 250 students with only eight teachers, which equates to more than 30 students per classroom. That is too many students per class for one teacher. So how do we get more teachers at that school? How about student teachers? There are three institutions of higher learning in Mobile County: The University of South Alabama, Springhill College and Mobile College. Together, they hand out hundreds of teaching degrees each and every year. Those candidates for their teaching degree are required to put in months of practice teaching before they receive their teaching degree. However, I don't know of any circumstances where those teaching candidates were sent to failing school in the Mobile Public School System, certainly not to Mobile County Training Middle School. What better place to learn how to sharpen your teaching skills than at a failing school.  I believe the colleges in Mobile and Mobile's Public School System should work out some situation where college students are allowed to spend time at a failing school. In addition, what about those in school to receive their Masters or Doctorate Degree. A thesis titled " How To Improve Failing Schools" would be a great subject to write on. Also, what about bringing in the best teachers to teach at failing schools, as that principal at George Hall Elementary School did? Right now the best teachers in Mobile are given a bonus and sent off to teach at the best school. How about offering our best teachers an extra financial incentive to teach at a failing school? That way we will really test the skills of our best teachers. If the problem is where will we get extra monies to give teachers a bonus to teach at failing schools lets have our City Councilperson, County Commissioner and School Board Rep talk among themselves and apply for funds through the city and county Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program. Recently I learned that CDBG funds can be used for more than just fixing road and drainage, as we often do in Mobile. If possible, let's see if we can do more to help save our children. And by the way, do you know that Mobile County Training Middle School has had four principals in the past twelve months? That can't help the situation any. In conclusion, let's all put forth positive efforts to remove ourselves from that failing public category. We can only do that by doing all we can to help our children learn. Once our children are able to make passing grades in all classes will we be able to eliminate failing schools and stop finding excuses to close public schools. Because after years and years of existence, communities become emotionally attached to their schools and do not want to see them closed. Tags:  public education africatown Places:  mobile 7 Dec

Letter to St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne in Response to Comments About Standing Rock - Climate and Environment Originally posted on the Bold Louisiana site on December 1, 2016  Photo: Moon rising on the Oceti Sakowin camp on November 12, 2016, by Karen Savage   December 2, 2016 Sheriff Greg Champagne President, National Sheriffs’ Association St. Charles Parish Sheriff 15025 River Rd. Hahnville, LA 70057 Dear Sir, We write to you today concerning your recounting of your recent visit to North Dakota, published on November 27 to the WWLTV website, as President of the National Sheriff’s Association. We too have been to Standing Rock, yet our experiences appear to have been very different than yours. While there, and at adjacent resistance camps, we have seen and participated in only prayerful ceremony and actions - all of which included prayers for yourself, the other officers and the families of all involved. If you are looking as to who has engaged in acts of war, sir, it might be best to see who came for one. A simple Internet search will produce countless images of unarmed Water Protectors being confronted by military-grade weaponry pointed at them by law enforcement. The several key points that you left out of your assessment require bearing to the public in a way that travels beyond your extreme bias and obvious misunderstanding of both the issue and of the local Louisiana landscape as well. For instance, you neglected to mention that the Army Corps of Engineers – a U.S. federal agency under the Department of Defense – has ordered a halt to any construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline under the Missouri River until a deeper environmental review can be completed. Additionally, in your response, you infer that it is only the Missouri River where water protectors have their concern. I assure you, strong opposition to this pipeline can be found all along the route, particularly at the Mississippi River as well. With reference to your assertion that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has no claim to the lands that the Dakota Access Pipeline disturbs, you show a complete and utter disregard to both history and the Constitution of the United States, which openly declares that treaty law is the law of the land. Under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty between the U.S. and the Great Sioux Nation, Article 11, the tribe not only retains off-reservation hunting rights to the area, but also under article 12, “no cession of land would be valid unless approved by three-fourths of the adult males.” Yet, in an act of continuing land theft, the U.S. government has never obtained that consent, an issue the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed, stating, "A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history." You also mentioned sacred sites and burial grounds in your writings, yet you failed to discuss the fact that on September 3 of this year, only hours after Standing Rock Sioux legal representation filed evidence in court that documented a culturally significant site in direct line of the pipeline route, Energy Transfer sent bulldozers to destroy the location. Paid company mercenaries - armed with dogs and pepper spray - were used to shield this egregious and cowardly act, which ended with peaceful protectors being assaulted and bitten. It is funny to us how you can, as you say, photograph and document “at least half a million dollars in damage to bulldozers and excavators,” yet not one department or DAPL security force has been able to snap a photo of the alleged Molotov cocktails or “various missiles, such as rocks and logs” being thrown. Nor have you - or any rancher or department - been able to produce a single photo or physical evidence of even one carcass of any so-called “dozen of buffalo” you claim have been killed by protecters. A person would think after 200 years or so, these false allegations would change or evolve in some way. Regarding your claim that the tribe did not participate or engage in discussions much earlier in the process of approving DAPL, your rumination is unfounded. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council went on record back in 2012, and again in 2014, as standing in opposition to this pipeline crossing the Missouri River. So you see, sir, the argument has always been about the water and protecting it for the millions of Americans who depend upon it for drinking and thus for life. Yet of all the ignorant and misguided remarks in your accounting, I take the most extreme offense to the false idea and narrative that the environment and people of the state in which you and I both reside have not suffered largely, due to the disproportionate number of pipelines below our feet. By your assertion, the opposition to the pipeline “is not reasonably based upon legitimate environmental concerns,” yet since 2010, there have been over 3,300 leaks or ruptures of crude oil or other hazardous liquids from pipelines in the United States. These incidents have not only released toxic chemicals into soil, water, and air, but have also killed 80 people, injured 389 more, and collectively cost $2.8 billion in damages. Louisiana is not excluded from these pipeline disasters. Since 1996, there have been 391 significant pipeline spills or leaks in Louisiana, spilling 216,166 barrels of hazardous liquids, including crude oil, refined petroleum products, propane, ethane, etc. In just crude oil alone, there were 208 reported leaks or spills, resulting in 124,861 barrels released. The most recent oil spill from a pipeline in Louisiana was last September, in which over 5,300 gallons of crude oil was discharged, and 200 birds were oiled. In late July of this year, there were three pipeline spills in ten days. These are not uncommon incidents. In fact, the National Response Center receives approximately 1,500 oil spill notifications for Louisiana each year. This represents approximately 20 percent of all spills occurring in the United States. Supplementary to your concern for our “energy independence,” it might be noted that Dakota Access parent company Energy Transfer is also building the Bayou Bridge Pipeline here in Louisiana. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline that will cross 11 parishes in our state, displace 600 acres of wetlands, cross 700 bodies of water, and endanger life and livelihoods of fisherfolk in the Atchafalaya Basin. The end point for this sister pipeline to Dakota Access is being constructed with the singular goal of Energy Transfer and its partners receiving opportunity for the best refining cost for their product, before exporting through our ports to foreign countries across the globe. Both the Dakota Access and the Bayou Bridge Pipelines are for the profit of this corporation only. However, we will agree with you on one thing with regard to your report. “Facts do not weigh in favor” of the tribe or the water protectors, or the State of Louisiana - but only when you refuse to see them. Further, we stand with you when you say that it is “time for everyone to move on in reference to the Dakota Access Pipeline and stop putting further strain on the citizens and law enforcement officers.” It is time to end both the Dakota Access and the Bayou Bridge pipelines. #NoDAPL #NoBayouBridge #WaterisLife Sincerely, Monique Verdin Citizen of the United Houma Nation Cherri Foytlin Louisiana Resident State Director of Bold Louisiana Tags:  DAPL Bayou Bridge Pipeline climate and environment police 3 Dec

Civil Rights Reporter Offers Lesson for A Present That Threatens to Become Eerily Like the Past - Race and Racial Justice NEW YORK — The story might sound familiar. A white couple, Harry and Doris Hopper, residents in a quiet suburb of Macon, Georgia, urgently called the police one evening to report a crime. Someone had broken into her car and stolen her handgun, a .22 caliber pistol, from the glove compartment. The police, two officers, arrived and asked Doris Hopper if she could identify the thief. It was a young black man, she said. The officers, James L. Durden and Josh T. Brown, asked the Hoppers to climb into their cruiser to look for the suspect and point him out if they saw him. After driving around for a while, the officers checked at the schoolyard behind the G.W. Carver Elementary School on Hazel Street. “That’s the man,” Doris shouted, pointing to A.C. Hall, a 17-year-old who was standing with his girlfriend, Eloise Franklin, who had sat down to rest her feet during a walk home and to remove some dirt that worked its way into her shoe. The cruiser pulled up, its headlights illuminating the couple. Hall saw the police car and pleaded with Franklin to run. She did not. Hall did. One of the officers started shooting before he got out of the car. Hall was shot through the back, a bullet piercing his heart. He fell beneath a streetlamp and died. “I pulled out my gun and held it to the left side,” Officer Brown would later say. “I was shooting to the left side, just pulling the trigger fast as I could pull it because whenever he turned, first thing that popped in my mind was the danger that we was in and Mr. and Mrs. Hopper was in the car with us.” It might be easy to think that between the recent wave of high profile deaths of young black men and teens killed by law enforcement  -- of Ramarley Graham and Eric Garner at the hands of police in New York City, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Walter Scott in North Charleston -- that this fatal shooting of this particular young black man may have slipped through the cracks.. Another young black man was shot by the police but there were no Black Lives Matter protests. That civil rights organization wouldn’t come into existence for more than five decades. Hall was killed on Oct. 13, 1962. A coroner’s inquest found the police officer murdered Hall, nearly unheard of in the Jim Crow south, and the officers were suspended. But a grand jury disagreed. They produced no true bill, and the officers were reinstated. There was outrage from the local community. More than 100 black Macon residents organized protests and boycotts. They brought a petition to the City Council and urged them to take action against the officers who killed Hall, but it was to no avail. Years later, one of the officers would become a mayor. Never Run Again Hank Klibanoff an author, as well as the project managing editor of the  Civil Rights Cold Case Project at Emory University, recounted this story at the Pulitzer Hall at Columbia University Thursday afternoon. The event was sponsored by the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, the Polk Fund and the Columbia Journalism Association of Black Journalists.   Klibanoff gave a presentation, one part history lesson and one part warning shot to future journalists, titled “Exposing Racism: The Role of the Press in Covering, Exposing, or Ignoring the Race Story.” Klibanoff, who won a Pulitzer for the book he co-wrote with Gene Roberts, “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” talked about an added urgency to covering the race beat in the wake of the election of Donald Trump. Trump rode into office on a wave of racist rhetoric and appointed Steve Bannon, the architect and executive chairman of Breitbart News, an “alt-right” website that advocates rabidly white supremacist viewpoints, as a chief counselor and strategist with an office in the White House. The moderator asked Klibanoff about the title of his book, and wondered whether he thought 2016 — with Trump’s election — would be another awakening in America over race. “I think it’s a real gobsmack, and I don’t know how long it takes us to wake up,” Klibanoff said to a crowd of several dozen attendees. “People don’t just wake up one day understanding everything and they’re going to vote their fears, as long as there’s someone to play their fears. I saw it in the South.” Klibanoff belongs to a community of journalists, investigators and filmmakers spread throughout the country and the continent who are dedicated to the twin goals of solving racially motivated crimes in the South and in small towns and cities along the Gulf, and unearthing civil rights killings that have been covered up by law enforcement and citizens in towns that kept quiet. There have been names of victims added to increasingly growing lists that groups like Southern Poverty Law Center out of Montgomery and the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University’s College of Law have been compiling. The FBI has a list that is part of the Emmett Till Act, but most experts say that list is incomplete, and the FBI has not added names that researchers and investigators have uncovered in their own efforts. There are still crimes that remain not only unsolved, but unreported -- especially in smaller towns near the Gulf that were not at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement like Selma, Alabama or Oxford, Mississippi or Little Rock, Arkansas. Take the small town of Marianna in the Florida panhandle -- the seat for Jackson County that sits about 70 miles west of Tallahassee and 30 miles south of the Georgia and Alabama border. Of the four victims of unsolved racially motivated crimes in the entire state two of them come from Marianna, and another, the murder of a teenager last seen in the back of a Sheriff’s car in the early 1960s -- remains a mystery that has never surfaced in any official records. The more they look, the more they expect to find. Experts suspect that the list has a lot of room to grow. Klibanoff runs the Civil Rights Cold Case Project, a seminar class at Emory that digs into these old civil rights cases and tries to fill the void left by law enforcement, which in many cases has abandoned these cases of racially motivated killings during the Jim Crow and Civil Rights Era. His presentation ranged from the past to the present, from the violence visited on blacks and the efforts of law enforcement to cover up the crimes, to the shootings of police sometimes playing on social media. He stressed the importance of continuing to investigate these old cases, even if there is no hope of a prosecution, insisting that the surviving families and demands of justice deserve the truth. He encouraged the budding journalists in the audience who have the desire to cover the race beat of the present to take lessons from the past. “You never want to tell someone that their fears are unfounded and you never want to tell anyone that their fears are exaggerated. And there’s going to be some mean things happening in the land over the next few months, I’m not saying mean things won’t happen,” he said. “But I don’t mind saying, and I don’t care if you’re a journalist or you’re selling insurance, we all have to decide if we’re going to live our lives in fear -- and I don’t.” He talked about the threats faced by journalists covering the pressing issues of the day -- from savage killings to the swirl of violence and rage around integration. He said the threat was especially acute for members of the black press, who he said were instrumental to informing the black community and getting the story into mainstream metropolitan dailies. He showed pictures of one of the most influential members of the black press, L. Alex Wilson, risking his life to tell the story. The photograph shows Wilson, a reporter and manager for the Memphis Tri-State Defender getting beaten by grinning white hooligans, some holding bricks, during the Little Rock Nine Crisis when nine black students tried to enroll at Central High School in 1957. “I know this has some pertinence today,” he said, referring to the apprehension reporters have in a Trump administration. “Anyone who is my age cannot remember a time when they were not threatened on the streets. I must tell you that threats were real back then.” Klibanoff noted that every time he got knocked down, Wilson would pick himself up,  crease his hat, put it back on his head and keep walking. Other reporters had run, but Wilson refused. “He vowed as a kid that when he ran from the klan in Leesburg, Florida, that he would never run again so he doesn’t run this day,” Klibanoff said. Wilson died a few years later, Klibanoff said, from the injuries he sustained covering the story. During a slideshow, Klibanoff, who was the managing editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, juxtaposed iconic photos from the 1960s and the 21st Century. First, he showed the gruesome picture of U.S. contractors hanging from a bridge in Fallujah. “I had to decide whether I was going to go with this picture on the frontpage of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It’s so shocking,” he said. “We called this terrorism.” Then he advanced the slide. “So if that’s terrorism, he asked, “is this?” The black and white image of two black corpses hanging from a tree appeared on the screen, with white people standing beneath. He used a red laser pointer to go over the white faces. “Look at the faces there. Is that shame? No,” he said. “So if this is terrorism, a burning bus bombed in Karachi, Pakistan wasn’t this -- a Freedom Ride bus going through Anniston, Alabama?  So make no mistake we had terrorism in this country and if you were on the wrong side, your life was in danger every day.” He had another lesson from the past for journalists. He showed one of the iconic pictures of two German shepherds attacking a young black man in Birmingham. It was the biggest story in the country. The New York Times ran three pictures on its frontpage, so did the Washington Post. But, then Klibanoff put a slide of the frontpage from the local paper, the Birmingham Post. There is a picture of two white girls smiling and a headline about a local school aid bill. The afternoon paper, The Birmingham Post which Klibanoff delivered at the time as a paperboy, was no better. He said that later a room full of the pictures of the hoses and the beatings and the dogs taken by staff photographers was discovered. They were never published. “You could read all the papers in Alabama back then and you wouldn’t find a picture of a dog except for the pet of the week,” he said. “This is a complete abdication of a journalist’s responsibility of the most important story in the country.”   We Regret to Inform You... Nearly five decades after the killing of Hall, the Department of Justice reopened the case and conducted an investigation. On July 27, 2011 DOJ Attorney Cristina Gamondi submitted a Notice to Close File on the police killing of AC Hall. Even though the report was released nearly five decades after the fatal shooting it remains rife with redaction. Many of the names of the interested parties are labeled with some combination of Xs. For instance, in a section of the DOJ report that talks about officer Durden’s recollections in combination with other witnesses -- presumably the Hoppers as well as a shrimp boat captain nearby -- the use of Xs reaches an almost operatic level of absurdity: “The FBI determined that subject Durden died on September 24, 2009.  Subject XXXX, who is still alive and XXX years old, was interviewed by the FBI in 2011.  Although XXXX could not remember many of the details of the incident, X gave an account consistent with his 1962 statement.  In particular, XXXX recalled that XXXX pointed the victim out as the person who had broken into their car and that the victim turned toward the officers, pulling an arm from behind his back.  In his 2011 interview, XXXX stated that the victim actually pulled a gun and that Durden yelled at XXXX that the victim was about to shoot the officers.” Despite that many of the facts of the case have been in the public domain, both at the time of the shooting, and in the years since when it has become the subject of inquiry for cold case investigators, the DOJ in its official notice remains steadfast in covering up the names of the killers and the witnesses, whose report to the Macon Police Department of a “colored boy” stealing their gun set in motion the events of that October evening. A reader needs to carefully wade through the redactions to reach the conclusion, which is that, then, as now, it is rare, extremely rare, to prosecute white cops when they shoot a black teenager.  Even though several generations separate the shooting of Hall and the DOJ’s decision to close the case on his killers, the language remains startlingly similar. Ultimately, the stated reasons for closing File NO. 144-19M-1756 are that the officers claimed they had a reasonable suspicion that Hall was reaching for a gun as he was running away from the  officers. “Based on the foregoing, this matter lacks prosecutive merit and should be closed,” the report states. When investigators conclude an investigation into one of the 126 cold case civil rights killings that are on its official list they send a letter to any surviving  family. They are impersonal and nearly identical in every death. This one read: “We regret to inform you that we are unable to proceed further with a federal criminal investigation of this matter because the applicable five-year statute of limitations has expired and because, even if not barred by the statute of limitations, there is insufficient evidence to prove a violation of the relevant federal criminal civil rights statutes, beyond a reasonable doubt.”   ‘The Vilest and Ugliest in Our Hearts and in Our Souls’ These days, there is a lot of talk about “draining the swamp” in Washington, D.C. It was a popular refrain at campaign rallies, an indication that then presidential nominee Trump would clear out the lobbyists, careerists and establishment elites. That phrase has been invoked as now President-elect Trump has put together his transition team. But in 1964 the federal government was in the business of actually draining swamps in Mississippi, or at least dredging them. President Lyndon Johnson deployed hundreds of sailors to dredge every swamp and waterway in the state to look for the bodies of James Chaney, 21, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, who were working to get blacks registered to vote as part of the “Freedom Summer.” They had been missing for 44 days. There was talk from the Governor at the time that the three young men, two white and one black, who had been arrested and then released to much fanfare, had slipped off to Cuba to drink cocktails with Fidel Castro. Johnson had his suspicions. Eventually they found a body. It was black. They thought that was Cheney. Shortly thereafter another body was found. Everyone assumed it would be white, since the other two missing men were white. “It’s not,” Klibanoff said. “It’s another African-American. So suddenly there’s this, you can imagine, this national gasp. You mean you can dredge every body of water down here and find someone?” The two 19-year-old men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, were college students who had been hitchhiking. Two Ku Klux Klansmen, James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards, saw the men along the highway, one wearing what we would know call a du-rag, and suspected them of being associated with some black nationalist organization. They had nothing to do with activism, but that did not matter to Seale and Edwards. “They kidnap these two kids and they take them out to a refuge, a forest and they strap them to a tree, they take these long reeds, they strip them of their leaves and they beat these two guys senseless lashing them,” Klibanoff said. One of the Klansmen, Edwards, had to leave for work. So they throw Dee and Moore in the trunk of their car and drove them down to the river. “They they strap one to an engine block and one to some engine ties and throw them in the river where they drown,” he said. The killers would not be tracked down until 41 years later when Thomas Moore, Charles Eddie Moore’s brother, and a Canadian filmmaker tracked them down and “cracked the case.” That case motivated Alberto Gonzales, the US  Attorney General at the time, to start the Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative. But the Department of Justice never made the cold cases a priority and never made it clear that there were funds available to local law enforcement agencies to investigate these old murders from the civil rights era. “The FBI in my opinion did nothing after that,” Klibanoff said. “Their goal was just to close the cases to apprehend that there are no living perpetrators, and they were very quick to judge. They’re in the business of prosecuting. I as a teacher do care because we can continue to delve into these cases even if there are no living perpetrators.” Adn that, he said, was the birth of the project at Emory. He told the assembled crowd that it is important that if you are going to do this work you can’t fall prey to what he called “presentism.” “You don’t ever want to be guilty of applying present day standards of what people were like in 1962 to today,” he said. He added that today’s demagoguery is nothing new. He listed all the Southern governors who challenged the federal government and lost. “It was pretty clear,” Klibanoff said. “Everyone was going to lose if you were going to stand up to the federal government. They were all demagogues. They all appealed to the most basest interests of people, the vilest and ugliest in our hearts and in our souls. And they all lost.” Tags:  Civil Rights Cold Cases 1 Dec

Africatown Experiences a New Beginning - Culture and Traditions The Historic Community of Africatown experienced several occurrences this summer that could be looked upon as a new beginning, as our community continues to do things it hope will contribute to the revitalization and growth of Africatown that will help in the revitalization, growth and tourism of the entire city of Mobile, Alabama. Although the following events are small, they are huge to the residents of Africatown, considering the fact that since our Historic Community voted to annex itself to Mobile in the late 1950's, the only capital improvements made to the community were completed before 1980. The community leaders voted to annex to Mobile because Mobile promised to pave roads and connect residents to water and sewer. Which they did. Over they next 20 years the only other capital improvements were the construction of a Community Center and Swimming Pool. Nothing more had been done until this summer. Image: Still from a video of Africatown's Community Day. WALKING TRAIL A two mile Walking Trail was constructed throughout the grounds surrounding Africatown's Community Center. Although it is not much, it is a beginning and shows a promise of more to come. Councilman Manzie has listened to Africatown's residents and has promised to make positive improvements to the community. When William Carroll was councilman, he laughed me out of his office when I spoke of tourism in Africatown that included capital improvements. He had a poor vision of Africatown's future. Councilman Manzie gets it. The primary threat to the future of Africatown still remains THE INDUSTRIAL INVASION OF AFRICATOWN.  SIDEWALKS IN AFRICATOWN Africatown may be one of the only communities in the entire United States without sidewalks. This summer, part of Africatown's Capital Improvement program included the construction of sidewalks within the community. There are several disabled residents in Africatown that have had to ride their wheelchair in the streets to get around. Hopefully, the addition of different types of hiking and walking trails that have been promised throughout the community will also make things better for all residents. Additional night lighting has also been promised. AFRICATOWN'S COMMUNITY DAY For the second straight year, the revised LABOR DAY AFRICATOWN COMMUNITY DAY OUTING  was held with outstanding results. Thanks to the efforts of Lamar & Chiguitte Howard, Africatown's Community Day was twice as large as last year. Over 200 people rolled through the community to enjoy free food,drinks,music and fun. Most came with their tents and camped around the perimeter of the community play area to cook-out on their own, meet friends and enjoy themselves. The original Africatown Community Day was started by union members that worked at I.P. and Scott Paper Mills and was held at Mount Louis Island on Labor Day.  AFRICATOWN'S FREEDOM BELL The Mobile County Training School Alumni Association has secured another "Freedom Bell" and intends to dedicate it on Reunion Weekend, Saturday November 26th, 2016. "The Bell" is said to be the only item saved from the slave ship Clotilde before it was set afire and sank in the middle of The Mobile Bay. The Bell was removed from the school by The Mobile County Public School System and never returned. Efforts in the past to find the bell have been unsuccessful. The successful return of a duplicate bell would mean a lot to the overall positive morale of The Africatown Community.  BUST OF CUDJO LEWIS The membership of The Union Baptist Church of Africatown have taken it upon themselves to replace the vandalized and stolen "Bust" of Cudjo Lewis. Led by Rev. Derek Tucker and others, the church has set into motion things that should replace one of Africatown's historic landmark very soon. Cudjo Lewis was the last surviving member of America's last shipment of slaves, dying in 1935.   The items mentioned above might seem small to most, but to those of us born in Africatown they mean a lot to a community that has been ignored by local government for nearly 40 years. Other community assistance has been promised and it is up to Africatown residents, Africatown natives and Africatown supporters to hold all local and state politicians accountable but not depend on them to do some things that can be accomplished without their help. Tags:  africatown Places:  Alabama 2 Nov

The Louisiana Governor and Big Oil’s Slippery Slope - It’s an incredible moment in Louisiana. Our Governor, at great political risk, has stepped forward to say that the oil industry should repair the damage it has done to our Louisiana coast. Here’s his reasoning as documented in the New Orleans Times Picayune. "I don't know that we are going to be well-received by the folks in Congress when we go ask taxpayers from Iowa and elsewhere around the country to chip in to help us pay for the cost of coastal restoration," our Governor said. Governor John Bel Edwards was making the point that our requests for federal aid for coastal restoration will ring hollow unless we do our part: hold the oil industry accountable for its destruction. The oil industry has acknowledged that its operations played a significant role in coastal loss, and Hurricane Katrina provided a crash course in the need for a healthy coast and wetlands that protect us from storms. But the oil industry, through efforts like the Americas Wetlands Foundation, has done a masterful public relations job.  Thanks to their duplicity and the willingness of civic, academic, business and elected leaders to go along with the oil industry’s snow job, the call to “save our coast” has been remarkably divorced from the reality of just why our coast is destroyed. Governor Edwards is now leading on this issue. We’ve known about the problem for decades, yet it is only this Governor who has stepped forward to say the obvious: that the oil industry should pay for the damage it has done to our coast. If the industry won’t do so willingly, Governor Edwards says the state will sue. It is a remarkable moment, one worth pausing for and noticing. The Louisiana Governor is standing up to the oil industry. The Louisiana Governor is standing up to the oil industry. The Louisiana Governor is standing up to the oil industry. This isn’t just some dream. It is reality. The odds against Governor Edwards are daunting. All the money and political might that the industry can muster will be used against him. The Grow Louisiana coalition, a faux grassroots group funded by the oil industry, has already started. Its TV ads feature good ol’ boys – hunters and fishermen with Cajun accents -  praising the industry for all they do for our state. There is no mention of the canals they didn’t fill in, no mention of the miles of channels they carved in our wetlands, no mention of the subsidence that has accelerated because of industry activities.  These ads, now friendly, will no doubt turn viscous as our Governor continues to take a stand. The oil industry realizes it’s teetering on the edge of a slippery slope, for the vacuous “save the coast” isn’t the only falsehood it peddles. Industry leaders deny the impacts of climate change and pollution. Look no further than Don Briggs, the President of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. In an opinion piece after the recent flooding in south Louisiana, he ignored the fact that scientists – including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - attributed the flooding in our state to the warming of our planet. This warming is directly attributable to the burning of his product. Mr. Briggs’ piece is full of outrage that we environmentalists would dare to point out that drilling = flooding. We point it out because it’s true.  The fact is that the oil industry has created many problems for Louisiana and for the planet. Like climate change. And the 42,000 oil spills in our Gulf of Mexico over the last 40 years.  And our destroyed coast. The oil industry is fighting the Governor despite the facts. People like Don Briggs know that if the truth gets out about the coast, other truths may follow. And then their whole story about their benevolence in Louisiana and how great the industry has been for our region will unravel.   Tags:  oil and gas industry Louisiana 28 Sep

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UN Security Council and Obama Revive Palestine Mandate Solution - United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed on 23 December 2016 has buried any lingering hopes for the creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine in addition to Jordan (”the two-state solution”).07:05

Senator Ted Cruz: Eliminate US Funding Of The UN07:01

NPR artifact Diane Rehm starved husband to death, bored millions into comas, mercifully retires - National Public Radio mainstay Diane Rehm, who did Hollywood a disservice by missing her calling as a horror movie voice actor, has at long last retired after nearly four decades of boring and infantilizing helpless Washington, D.C. area taxi fares.07:00

Illogical liberals - First, Merry Christmas and happy 2017!  Thanks to all our readers and listeners for making our information platforms a collective success! We will continue to tell you the truth in 2017 and beyond!06:55

Ze ugly truth - Sane people use language to communicate and express ideas and concepts so that others understand what they’re saying.06:40

Hillary donors freak out - Donors to Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign are demanding a “dispassionate, centralized analysis” of how Clinton so badly misread polling data and the mood in battleground states, writes Emily Zanotti at Heat Street.24 Dec

By Obama Stabbing Israel in the Back, Obama Doubles Down on Political Stupidity - In my book, (written and published before the election), “Trump: How He Captured The Trump White House,” I write at length how Obama will be considered one of the most over-rated and politically incompetent presidents since World War II. Obama’s most recent UN blunder just further destroyed Obama’s political reputation.24 Dec

Trolling Ivanka - But once you have won and routed the enemy and made sure he can’t rebuild his armies, then the only thing to worry about is the king and his family. Eliminate them and no one else can threaten you since no one commands the loyalty of the people. — Niccolo Machiavelli As Donald Trump’s inauguration draws nearer, the Left is lashing out not just at the president-elect but at members of his immediate family.24 Dec

Unto You Is Born This Day A Savior - That Christmas Eve, Jaybird leaned on the porch rail, looking across Mississippi Delta cotton fields he had worked for seventy years. In moon-blanched stillness, the rich soil was taking its winter rest.24 Dec

Merry Christmas! Again - It is mighty nice to have Jesus back in the fold again, so to speak – just in time for His birthday too! After many (way too many) years of American Christianity being subtlety and not so subtlety attacked by forces inimical to Jesus/God, it is with joyous expectation and relief that “we the people” look forward to President-Elect Donald J. Trump (and VP-Elect Mike Pence) reinstating “Merry Christmas!” while showing “Happy Holidays” the door.  We look forward to them ushering in a period of grace where Jesus and His teachings once again serve as a lodestone and compass for America to steer by24 Dec

Centinel2012

The Radical Jesus: How Would The Baby In A Manger Fare In The American Police State? - by Tyler Durden Zero Hedge Dec 24, 2016 10:10 PM Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,   “Jesus is too much for us. The church’s later treatment of the gospels is one long effort to rescue Jesus from ‘extremism.’”—author Gary Wills, What Jesus Meant Jesus was good. He was caring. He had powerful, profound things to say – things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. He went around helping the poor. And when confronted by those in authority, he did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Jesus was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. But what if Jesus, the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet, had been born 2,000 years later? How would Jesus’ life have been different had he be born and raised in the American police state? Consider the following if you will. The Christmas narrative of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one. The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable, where Mary gave birth to a baby boy. That boy, Jesus, would grow up to undermine the political and religious establishment of his day and was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be. However, had Jesus been born in the year 2016… Rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000. Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery. Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed. Then again, had his parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they would have been turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill. From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses. Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone. Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us. From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations. Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.” While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies. Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled. Viewed by the government as a dissident and potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery. Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored. Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach. Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait. Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. Currently, 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books. Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error. Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square. Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs. Either way, whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state. Indeed, as I show in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what Jesus and other activists suffered in their day is happening to those who choose to speak truth to power today. Thus, we are faced with a choice: remain silent in the face of evil or speak out against it. As Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus proclaimed: Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this? 24 Dec

Donald Trump Signals Willingness to Engage Arab Israeli Peace Effort… - This tweet from President-elect Donald Trump directly implies his willingness to lean into the problem: And President-Elect Donald Trump is not alone carrying optimism: Source: Donald Trump Signals Willingness to Engage Arab Israeli Peace Effort… 24 Dec

KOMMONSENTSJANE – IS OBAMA THROWING A PITY PARTY FOR THE DEM’S – STINKIN’ THINKIN’ - Excellent words to read and listen too! kommonsentsjane Is Obama Throwing a Pity Party? kommonsentsjane If your theme song has become “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to,” you need to get a new song. by Michelle Medlock Adams Mar 16, 2015 Are You Throwing a Pity Party? My mama was a hoot. You might say, she called ‘em like she saw ‘em–especially when it came to her children. She was an encourager and a cheerleader, but when we needed tough love, she wasn’t afraid to dish out a big helping. And I needed a helping from time to time. Whenever I would get down about something or start saying negative things, she’d listen and encourage for a bit. Then she’d say, “Listen, Poor Pitiful Pearl, nobody wants to come to your pity party.” As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. The only ones showing up at a pity party are… View original post 525 more words 24 Dec

Shifting Power: Visualizing The World’s Largest Cities For The Last 6000 Years - by Tyler Durden Zero Hedge Dec 24, 2016 9:30 PM In 300 B.C., Carthage was one of the world’s largest cities with up to 700,000 people living within its walls. The Carthaginian republic was a force to be reckoned with, controlling inconceivable amounts of wealth and land all around the Mediterranean. However, just over a century later in 146 B.C., Carthage was burnt to the ground by the Romans. The destruction of Carthage was so thorough that many things are still not known about their civilization today. Carthage went from being a major power to literally being wiped off of the map. A few decades after the annihilation of Carthage, it was Rome’s turn to become the world’s largest city for close to 500 years. Of course, Rome itself would fall by 476 A.D. for a variety of reasons. And so the title of the world’s largest city would transfer again, this time to Constantinople across the Mediterranean. The World’s Largest Cities Throughout History In the grand scheme of history, things change quite fast. As Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins explains, one cataclysmic choice or event can turn even the greatest empire into a heap of rubble. Sometimes the decline of a world-class city is more gradual – and it is over time that it loses its title to another place in a far and distant land. The following animated map from KPMG Demographics tracks the world’s largest cities from 4,000 BC to today, and it shows how temporary a city’s rise to prominence can be. (Keep in mind that there is some disagreement by historians over which cities were the biggest in certain time periods.) The power of industrialization and technology can be seen here. Up until the 1800s, it was almost unfathomable to have a city of more than a million inhabitants. Sanitation was a major limiting factor, but other issues like transportation and a lack of density also made it a challenge. The Industrial Revolution changed that, and starting in the 1800s you see cities like London, New York, and Tokyo taking the title in an exponential fashion. It caps off with Delhi in 2050, expected to have a whopping 40 million inhabitants by that time. 24 Dec

The U.S. Interfered in Foreign Presidential Elections 81 Times from 1946-2000 - Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, by Mike Krieger Something we should all be aware of. From the LA Times: The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into … Source: The U.S. Interfered in Foreign Presidential Elections 81 Times from 1946-2000 24 Dec

President Elect Donald Trump Attends Christmas Eve Midnight Mass in Palm Beach… - Mr. President-elect Donald J Trump and Mrs. Melania Trump together with their son Barron, will be attending midnight mass Christmas services at The Church of Bethesda by The Sea in West Palm Beach … Source: President Elect Donald Trump Attends Christmas Eve Midnight Mass in Palm Beach… 24 Dec

Paul Joseph Watson | 🎄🎄🎄 Stefan Molyneux Christmas Spectacular 🎄🎄🎄 - 24 Dec

KOMMONSENTSJANE – OBAMA LOST 1,030 DEMOCRAT SEATS DURING HIS EIGHT YEARS IN OFFICE. - I don’t know how they get the high ratings for Obama but the loss of the House the Senate all the state switches and now the nail in the coffin we elected Trump show what the real rating is and its near zero! kommonsentsjane Perhaps the most remarkable twist of a shocking political season? Even as voters chose to elect a successor who vows to undo most of Obama’s legacy, his approval rating remains the highest it’s been since the spring of 2009. (The main stream media is lying again – his rating could not be the highest it’s been since the spring of 2009.  That is fake news for sure – not with the way people dislike him.) As Obama accomplished policy goals, his party floundered LISA LERER, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — In boasting about his tenure in the White House, President Barack Obama often cites numbers like these: 15 million new jobs, a 4.9 percent unemployment rate and 74 months of consecutive job growth. There’s one number you will almost never hear: More than 1,030 seats. That’s the number of spots in state legislatures, governor’s mansions and Congress lost by Democrats… View original post 972 more words 24 Dec

Would Hillary Really Have Won If Election Was Based On Popular Vote? - by Tyler Durden Zero Hedge Dec 24, 2016 12:55 PM Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com, Without a doubt, Trump campaigned much smarter than Hillary.  Now Michael Moore and his ilk are upset because Trump lost the popular vote. Had the rules been different, Trump would have campaigned differently. Salil Mehta at Statistical Ideas explores that question in Popular Vote Besotted.  No one complained in early October about the Electoral College rules, no one complained that Russian President Putin was hacking our election system, no one complained that the results would be illegitimate if too many Whites versus Blacks come out to vote, and no one complained that Americans were going to have a negative view of Hillary’s e-mails (from servers, to leaks). When asked at the 2nd presidential debate whether the election outcome would be accepted, it was Clinton to had to call Trump’s response “horrifying” and a “taking down of our democracy”. Why not; it was game over after that Access Hollywood gift, and it’s time to plan expensive fireworks over the Hudson River on election night. Those fireworks never happened. Who campaigned more prudently? We have been hearing Donald Trump’s side claim that he was simply more ingenious in picking the “key” states to campaign in, and if the traditional rules were to win the popular vote then he would have changed his overall strategy to win that way. Since Kellyanne Conway emerged as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, more than a couple months prior to election, we have a record of all the major campaign appearances for both candidates in order to see who took advantage of the vote decision-making time better. Hillary Clinton simply went to 2/3 as many appearances, and each time to smaller audiences, versus her rival. But she did appear from time to time at some music concerts, confidently assuming that was enough (it wasn’t and outside of millennials, she lost the popular vote in the rest of the age spectrum). We also know that there were 6 economically worse-off states that flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. She campaigned with less appearances in each of these 6 states. No that’s bad and indefensible. As a portion of all of her appearances, her relative efforts were competitive in five of these 6 states and very strong in Ohio. Yet even in for Ohio’s growing population, her total votes fell ruinously, and her popular vote margin was even more disastrous: from (Obama +3%), to (Clinton -8.1%). Hillary Clinton wasted nearly 7% of her campaigning in two blue states [California and New York], only to increase her popular vote margin by a total of 1m! But for no good reason as the popular vote margin % was already in the low-20s% in her favor. So this is just another example of unwise campaign strategy. What if the original rules were the popular vote, then what likely changes would have happened among these two tough contenders? What if Donald Trump spent less time in the 6 states noted above, and instead campaigned harder in states such as California (he never did), and Texas (only one appearance). This would be sufficient to wipe out the current lead Hillary Clinton has in the popular vote, simply by blunting the margin difference between elections (seen in map below). Not enough to suggest Mr. Trump would have had an easy advantage however. So this is where we need to take an additional leap, from probability theory to game theory. We would have to assume the magical change for 2016 would have spurred up additional voter turnout in these otherwise disparate large states, as they did in the manufacturing, Rust Belt states. The messaging would have therefore have needed to be altered, and there is every reason to believe Donald Trump would have been able to be at least enough effective in that to be successful on the popular vote metric. Whether this means 70% chance, or 55% chance, it is still an effective consideration. Excellent Analysis once again by Salil Mehta. Nate Silver totally blew this election from start to finish. 24 Dec

Obama Quietly Signs The “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” Into Law - by Tyler Durden Zero Hedge Dec 24, 2016 1:29 PM Late on Friday, with the US population embracing the upcoming holidays and oblivious of most news emerging from the administration, Obama quietly signed into law the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which authorizes $611 billion for the military in 2017. In a statement, Obama said that:  Today, I have signed into law S. 2943, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.” This Act authorizes fiscal year 2017 appropriations principally for the Department of Defense and for Department of Energy national security programs, provides vital benefits for military personnel and their families, and includes authorities to facilitate ongoing operations around the globe. It continues many critical authorizations necessary to ensure that we are able to sustain our momentum in countering the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and to reassure our European allies, as well as many new authorizations that, among other things, provide the Departments of Defense and Energy more flexibility in countering cyber-attacks and our adversaries’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles.” Much of the balance of Obama’s statement blamed the GOP for Guantanamo’s continued operation and warned that “unless the Congress changes course, it will be judged harshly by history,” Obama said. Obama also said Congress failed to use the bill to reduce wasteful overhead (like perhaps massive F-35 cost overruns?) or modernize military health care, which he said would exacerbate budget pressures facing the military in the years ahead.  But while the passage of the NDAA – and the funding of the US military – was hardly a surprise, the biggest news is what was buried deep inside the provisions of the Defense Authortization Act. Recall that as we reported in early June, “a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth had been quietly introduced in Congress. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.” Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT. “Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.” Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda. In short, long before “fake news” became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label “fake news.” * * * Fast forward to December 8, when the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. And now, following Friday’s Obama signing of the NDAA on Friday evening, the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is now law. * * * Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the singing into law of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of “disinformation and propaganda” and is shut down by the government. President Signs Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill into Law Portman-Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has been signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower our allies overseas to defend themselves from foreign manipulation. It will also help foster a free and vibrant press and civil society overseas, which is critical to ensuring our allies have access to truthful information and inoculating people against foreign propaganda campaigns. “Our enemies are using foreign propaganda and disinformation against us and our allies, and so far the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel,” Portman said. “But today, the United States has taken a critical step towards confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us by our enemies overseas. With this bill now law, we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on. I am confident that, with the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against us, our allies, and our interests will fail.” “The use of propaganda to undermine democracy has hit a new low. But now we are finally in a position to confront this threat head on and get out the truth. By building up independent, objective journalism in places like eastern Europe, we can start to fight back by exposing these fake narratives and empowering local communities to protect themselves,” said Murphy. “I’m proud that our bill was signed into law, and I look forward to working with Senator Portman to make sure these tools and new resources are effectively used to get out the truth.” NOTE: The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation from our enemies: The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering THE foreign propaganda and disinformation being wages against us and our allies by our enemies. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China as well as non-state actors. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations by our enemies and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests. Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process. * * * And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate “Russian Propaganda” with “fake news” (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially “fake“), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also “fake news” and thus falls under the “Russian propaganda” umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be “foreign propaganda.” Just like that, the US Ministry of Truth is officially born. 24 Dec

Chicago Boyz

Christmas 2016 - Newgrange is an ancient structure in Ireland so constructed that the sun, at the exact time of the winter solstice, shines directly down a long corridor and illuminates the inner chamber. More about Newgrange here and here. Grim has an Arthurian passage about the Solstice. Don Sensing has thoughts astronomical, historical, and theological about the Star of Bethlehem. Vienna Boys Choir, from Maggie’s Farm Lappland in pictures…link came from the great and much-mourned Neptunus Lex Snowflakes and snow crystals, from Cal Tech. Lots of great photos In the bleak midwinter, from King’s College Cambridge French Christmas carols Rick Darby has some thoughts on the season. More here. A Christmas reading from Thomas Pynchon. The first radio broadcast of voice and music took place on Christmas Eve, 1906. (although there is debate about the historical veracity of this story) An air traffic control version of  The Night Before Christmas. Ice sculptures from the St Paul winter carnival O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, sung by Enya Gerard Manley Hopkins Margaret Soltan writes about poetry for those cold dark late December days A Christmas-appropriate poem from Rudyard Kipling The story of electric Christmas tree lights Mona Charen, who is Jewish, wonders  what’s going on with the Christians? 24 Dec

A Christmas Eve Story: Father Christmas and the Provost - (This is a short-story version of an episode in Adelsverein: The Sowing, which I reworked as a free-standing Christmas story a good few years ago, for a collection of short stories. The scene; the Texas Hill country during the Civil War – a war in which many residents of the Hill Country were reluctant to participate, as they had abolitionist leanings, had not supported secession … and had quite enough to do with defending themselves against raiding Indians anyway.) It was Vati’s idea to have a splendid Christmas Eve and he broached it to his family in November. Christian Friedrich Steinmetz to everyone else but always Vati to his family; once the clockmaker of Ulm in Bavaria, Vati had come to Texas with the Verein nearly twenty years before with his sons and his three daughters. “For the children, of course,” he said, polishing his glasses and looking most particularly like an earnest and kindly gnome, “This year past has been so dreadful, such tragedies all around – but it is within our capabilities to give them a single good memory of 1862! I shall arrange for Father Christmas to make a visit, and we shall have as fine a feast as we ever did, back in Germany. Can we not do this, my dears?” “How splendid, Vati! Oh, we shall, we shall!” his youngest daughter Rosalie kissed her father’s cheek with her usual degree of happy exuberance, “With the house full of children – even the babies will have a wonderful memory, I am sure!” Her older sisters, Magda and Liesel exchanged fond but exasperated glances; dear, vague well-meaning Vati! All of Gillespie County was under martial law and Duff’s Partisan Rangers had despoiled so many farmsteads, claiming they were owned by Union sympathizers. Men of the town had been arrested for refusing to take the loyalty oath, refusing service in the Confederate Army, for even speaking against secession or refusing to accept Confederate money. How could a happy Christmas make up for all that? “For the children, then,” Magda sighed. She was thin and dark and thoughtful; widow’s weeds did not suit her in the least. As if there were anything that would take away the memory of her husband, taken away by the hanging band and murdered early in the spring; his only crime being suspected of Union sympathies. Shortly thereafter, all of his property was confiscated by the Army. Magda and her four children – three living and the one in her belly – had no other choice but to return to Fredericksburg, to Vati’s timber and stone house at the corner of Market Street and San Antonio Street. “I will make a plum pudding, and all the dishes that the children like the best!” Liesel was plump and pretty, even after bearing eight children, the youngest of them brought forth at almost the same hour as Magda’s youngest daughter. Liesel’s husband, Hansi Richter was on the hanging band’s list. A blunt and outspoken man, he refused to take the loyalty oath to the Confederacy or to join their army. He had brought his wife and their children to take refuge at Vati’s. Magda did not want to know where he was living – rough in the woods, she thought, eluding the provost marshal’s men and sneaking back to tend his derelict farm whenever he could. Such woes this dreadful war had brought to them! Their property confiscated or abandoned, her children orphaned, Liesel’s husband on the run, living like a wild animal in the woods; how could Christmas, even the most splendid Christmas make up for all of that? “It will be as wonderful as it ever was!” Rosalie exclaimed, as excited as one of the smaller children herself. “You’ll see!” “We’ll do what we can,” Magda answered with faint reproof, “I suppose the boys can fund a nice cedar tree for the parlor – not too far distant from town, I hope!” Her sisters continued in a merry mood during the weeks that they made preparation for a wartime Christmas, although Magda worried over Liesel. Better that she should be so merry over Christmas, decided Magda eventually, rather than pine away with worry over her fugitive husband. Liesel was extreme in her moods, either on top of the tallest tower or deep in the cellar. And now it was the afternoon of Christmas Eve! The house was redolent with the scent of ginger, with the smells of baked goods and roasting meat, steaming plum-pudding in the boiler, all overlaid with the sharp green scent of cut-cedar garlands and branches. Liesel sent the children upstairs to their rooms, all but the babies, Lottie and Grete sleeping peaceably in their cradle in the parlor. Since the older children knew very well that it was time for the Christmas tree to be set up in the parlor, they went eagerly. When the children were all safely upstairs Magda and Vati slipped out the back door. Magda’s son Dolph and his cousin, Liesel and Hansi’s son Jacob had left the cut cedar tree standing in a bucket of water in the stable, behind the house. “It’s a fine tree,” Vati noted, with satisfaction but it slipped from his arms as he tried to lift it and Magda said in exasperation, “Vati, I can manage this end…we don’t want to damage the branches,” “Oh, let me carry it,” Hansi Richter said from the stable doorway and they both turned in delighted astonishment, “I thought ‘who would be looking for bush-men on Christmas Eve?’ so I thought I’d take the risk. Besides, I wanted to surprise Lise and the children.” “She will be surprised, indeed,” Vati beamed, while Magda said, worriedly, “You’re sure no one saw you?” “It’s Christmas Eve and bitter cold,” Hansi answered as he easily balanced the length of the cedar tree over his shoulder. “Everyone is inside tonight, with the shutters drawn tight… the one night I might spend safe under a roof, hey? I am sure no one saw me; collar up to my ears, hat drawn down to them; if anyone was looking out a window, they never got a look at my face.” He looked very wearied, but exuberant, his clothes worn but clean. He had contrived to wash and barber himself, wherever he had been hiding. Magda was torn between worry and gratitude for having him there, strong and competent with shoulders like a bull-buffalo. How had he dared, when the Confederate authorities hunted him and the other draft-dodgers in the German settlements? “Liesel will be overjoyed!” She said, finally – it seemed the safest and most honest answer. Beaming, Hansi carried the tree into the parlor and set it upright in the corner, deep-sunk in a heavy pot of river-sand waiting there for it. His and Liesel’s eldest daughter Anna knelt on the floor, sorting out the long strands of seed-garlands and setting little candles into the holders intended for them. She did not look up until Hansi spoke.“Hello, my sweet-dumpling!” he said, as Anna sprang to her feet and flung herself into his arms, with a brief cry of joy and surprise. “How can I celebrate Christmas, away from home, then!” “Oh, Papa, we have such plans,” Anna exclaimed, “Captain Nimitz is going to come dressed as Father Christmas and Mama has made a plum pudding!” Captain Charley Nimitz kept Fredericksburg’s one hotel, a sprawling edifice on Main Street, set in a garden of roses and hop-vines. Charley was one of their oldest and dearest friends, even though he had chosen to take the Confederate loyalty – their friendship went deeper than the present uncertainty. Once he had courted Magda, remaining a friend even though she had chosen another. “Glad I’m here in time,” Hansi said, with a broad grin, “I’d have hated to miss all the fun! Charley was always good at theatrics; remember the time he played Falstaff in love for the theatrical society? Liked to have us all rolling on the floor! I want to surprise your mother,” he added impishly, “Where is she?” “She’s in the kitchen with Rosalie, fixing supper,” Anna answered, “And the children are all upstairs, waiting for the Christmas tree.” “Good! I’ll surprise them all,” Hansi said and left them in the parlor to cope with the tree. They heard the kitchen door open and close and a sudden squeal of delight from Liesel, followed immediately by a sudden crash, as if a pot or plate had fallen on the floor. Magda flinched, murmuring, “I so hope that wasn’t breakable!” as she knelt where Anna had been among the little paper cornucopias and candle-holders. In a moment, Rosalie appeared in the parlor, pink of cheek and flustered, wiping her hands on her apron. “Well, really,” she said and Anna asked in amusement, “What are they doing, then, Little Rose?” There was only a matter of a year or two between Anna and Rosalie. They were more like sisters than aunt and niece. “They are kissing each other,” Rosalie looked even more embarrassed when Vati and Magda laughed, adding indignantly, “Really, it’s quite unseemly . . . they’re your parents!” “I imagine that’s how they became my parents,” Anna murmured. Rosalie flushed even more deeply pink as Vati said, “I don’t think Liesel will let supper spoil. Shall we start with the tree, then, my dears?” Within five or ten minutes and long before Magda thought she might tap on the kitchen door and remind Hansi and Liesel about the tree and the children and Christmas Eve supper, there came a louder tap on the on the back door. “It must be Charley,” Magda said, “But why he would come around through the garden…” “I have barred all the doors,” Vati fussed, as the tapping sounded louder. He stood festooned with garlands, which he was holding for Rosalie and Anna to loop around and around the spreading cedar branches. “I’ll see to it, Vati,” Magda said, and stepped out into the dim stair-hall to unbar the door. Upstairs, she could hear the muffled laughter of children; they could hardly wait for much longer. Her breasts ached also, telling her that Lottie could hardly wait much longer either. Charley was through the door almost as soon as it was latched, uncharacteristically grim-faced. He was a short, fair-haired man with merry features and bright blue eyes with squint-lines around them as if long-used to bright sun and long distances. “Is he here?” he demanded, as she latched the door after him, “Is who here?” Magda stammered. What had times come to, when she couldn’t bring herself to answer straightly to an old friend! “No time to waste with this nonsense, Magda. Hansi. Is he here?” Charley sounded as if he were grinding his teeth. Magda saw that he carried a large bag in his arms; something bulky but light. Before she could open her mouth, the kitchen door opened, and Hansi himself put his head around it, asking quietly,“ Charley… what’s happened?!” “The provost’s men know you’re here,” Charley answered, unsurprised. “I heard them talking in the tap-room. They’re watching the street on either side. I came along the back as soon as I heard them talk of you.” Hansi made as if to bolt towards the back door, as Liesel appeared in the square of light from the kitchen door behind him, her hands at her mouth in horror, “You must go, then, quickly!” she cried. Charley blocked the door with his body. “No,” he answered, “It’s already too late. They’ll be watching the outside in about three minutes now that they have the streets covered. You’re only chance is to sit still and bluff it out. I’m so sorry, Hansi. I advised you badly, this time.” “How?” Hansi asked, as Anna came out of the parlor, saying, “Is that Captain Nimitz? We’re ready to light the candles.” She looked at the grim faces of the men and at her aunt and mother. “What has happened, then?” “The provost is going to come and arrest your father,” Charley answered. Liesel began to cry as he added, “Unless we can put on a very good show.” “What show?” Magda never thought it possible to shriek in a whisper, but she did now. Charley lifted up the bag that he held, “Imagine – who would have the nerve to arrest Father Christmas – on Christmas Eve?” A wide, reckless grin split his face. “You have five minutes to clean up and get into costume, Hansi.” “But the children!” Magda began, and Charley commanded, “Tell them what you need to, to go along with it. Just have them all downstairs admiring the tree and Father Christmas by the time you open the door to the provost. And,” he looked purposefully at Hansi, “For the love of god, man, get Mrs. Liesel to stop wailing, and put on a cheerful face. They’ll take one look at her and know something is off.” Magda took her sisters’ hand, and ordered, “Go into the parlor, and nurse Grete. If you sit in the corner, they’ll hardly dare look at you, lest they see your bosoms out.” “Well, really!” Liesel sniffed, but she obeyed. Magda closed her eyes briefly, recalling that nightmare moment when the hanging-band broke into her house and took away her husband. Please god that should not happen again. She could not endure that; just barely strong enough to endure her own sorrows, but not her sisters’ as well. Liesel trembled, clinging desperately to her hand. “Tell Opa to light the tree,” Anna’s light footsteps were already pattering on the stairs. She looked over her shoulder to Magda, “I’ll bring the children down, as soon as Papa is ready.” Anna, tiny and indomitable possessed something of her mother’s light-hearted charm but all her father’s stubborn sense of purpose. “Good girl,” Charley gathered up his bag, and nudged Hansi with his shoulder towards the kitchen. “She’s a clever one, your oldest, Hansi. Quick to pick up on a plan.” Magda followed her sister into the parlor, where Vati and Rosalie disputed amiably over the best positioning of the candles. The tree stood nearly ready, a vision of plenty and riches, a red-felt blanket around the base of it, branches weighted with paper cornucopias filled with gingerbread and sweetmeats, gilded nuts and Vati’s polished metal stars. “On the ends of the branches, dear child… on the ends,” Vati insisted, as Magda said, “Vati, there’s not much time. The children will be coming downstairs.” “So soon?” Vati blinked in amiable puzzlement. “But the clock is yet fifteen minutes from striking – surely we have a little more time?” “No, Vati. The children are much too excited to wait any longer.” It was on the tip of Magda’s tongue to explain to Vati, but there was no time and he was as unworldly as a child. He would never be able to put on a convincing pretense to the Provosts’ men. “Well then,” Vati sighed, “Rosalie my child, I will tidy away the scraps, while you light the candles, but be most careful.” Liesel took Grete out of the cradle and sat herself on the chaise. Grete fussed as Liesel unbuttoned the front of her dress and draped a corner of Grete’s blanket over her shoulder. She had stopped crying, but her face was still streaked with tears. Magda’s heart sank. Liesel trembled still, like a poplar-leaf in a breeze. Her sisters’ nerves were all but shattered; she would never be able to put on a pretense of normality. She bent over the cradle to check on Lottie, who was stirring but not fussy. The serene blue eyes which so resembled her fathers’ examined the parlor ceiling overhead with mild curiosity and Magda thought the baby nearly smiled, recognizing her mother. “I’ll be back in a little moment, sweetness,” Magda whispered to her daughter, and turned to Liesel. “Lise, darling – I’m going to see if Charley and Hansi need any help, but I’ll bring you a handkerchief; you need to wipe away your tears. I’ll sit with you, all the time the provost is here, but you must compose yourself!” Liesel nodded mutely, mechanically undoing the ribbon that held her shift closed, and lifting Grete’s head to her bared breast. She had gone from her high-tower mood, into the blackest corner of her dark-cellar, all in the space of ten minutes. “Try to be calm,” Magda urged, helplessly, “Think of what the baby is taking in . . . do you want her to be colicky and screaming all night?” She fled into the kitchen, where all the dinner preparations had been swept aside to make way for Charley’s theatrics. Charley was saying to Hansi, “Sorry, this is going to hurt like hell, when you take it off, but there’s no time for a barber.” He looked over his shoulder at Magda. “Good. Can you take away our coats and hang them up? We’ve got to look as if we’ve been here for a while.” He was industriously attaching wads of white wool to Hansi’s chin, upper lip and eyebrows with spirit gum, to make a long white beard, mustache and eyebrows. “Hold still, man . . . ” he added as Hansi tried to smile reassuringly at Magda. He had already taken off his own overcoat, and put on Father Christmases’ long mantle, a voluminous green wrap trimmed in white fur which came down to cover his boots. Charley shrugged out of his own coat, even as he continued dabbing with the spirit-gum brush. Magda took it off his shoulders, and gathered up Hansi’s from where it lay discarded on the kitchen table, next to Father Christmases’ green-velvet peaked cap, and wide leather belt. “One more thing,” Charley added, urgently as he looked very straightly at Magda, “There’s no sign upstairs of a man having lived here, other than your father, I mean. No shaving kit, no men’s clothing, nothing of the sort? They may want to search the house.” “No,” Magda shook her head. “Vati sleeps in his workroom now.” “Good,” Charley nodded his head. “Are they ready in the parlor?” “Almost,” Magda’s nerves were drawn as tight as fiddle-strings; more so as Charley seemed quite exhilarated, as if he was having the time of his life. “We still have my husband’s revolvers,” she said, through dry lips, past the pain in her throat whenever she thought of him and Charley snapped, “For the love of god, leave them where they are. It would only make matters worse, Mrs. Magda.” He opened a little jar and smudged the barest bit of lamp-black under Hansi’s eyes, then stood back and looked critically at his handiwork. “Good,” he said again. “Now, with the hat, and do up the belt. I’ll let them in, when they knock on the door. Let me do the talking.” Hansi wrapped the velvet robe around him and fastened the belt around his waist, while Charley arranged the vast woolen beard to best effect on Hansi’s breast. The hat had more wool batting sewn under the brim, obscuring practically everything but Hansi’s nose. “It looks very good, you can hardly see a bit of his face,” Magda said. Charley answered, “You’re still here? Go bring the children downstairs, now!” She hurried away, with her arm full of coats to hang on the pegs in the hallway. As the door fell behind her, she could hear Charley saying, “If they ask, I’ll tell them that you’re Hermann Leibgott, who used to work for me. He’s taken the oath and he’s away with the frontier battalion anyway . . . ” She didn’t hear Hansi’s reply, if he made one, for she also thought she could hear noises from the street just outside, of men’s footsteps and voices and horses’ hoofs. She ran up the stairs and along the landing to the room that she and Liesel shared. A handkerchief, a handkerchief . . . a plain one of Liesel’s, dabbed with a splash of rose-flower water from the blue-glass bottle of it which Liesel so treasured. She caught up the handkerchief and went to find the children. They were gathered in Rosalie and Anna’s bedroom, crammed tightly together on the two beds with their backs towards the door, listening gravely to Anna. She stood with her hands on the foot rail of her bed, and her knuckles were white with the strength of her grip, but her voice was quiet and level. “…You see, you must pretend as hard as you can, for Opa,” Anna was saying as Magda came to the door. “He took a very great trouble to arrange this with Captain Nimitz, so you must not seem to recognize the man dressed as Father Christmas. It’s all a pretend . . . but Opa would be so pleased, if you are all fooled.” Her eyes went to Magda, and it seemed that Anna’s voice quavered just the slightest, as she added. “It’s important. It would mean so much to Opa. Are they ready, downstairs, Auntie?” “Yes,” Magda said, and Anna smiled, that wonderful merry smile that lit up her eyes and showed the dimples in her cheeks. She lifted her arms, sweeping them toward the children as if shooing them like chickens towards the door, saying, “Well, then go! The Christmas tree is ready and Father Christmas is lingering downstairs to see how well you like it… go, go!” The children needed no urging; they tumbled off the bed, and jostled each other through the doorway and down the stairs, where Charley stood in the hallway with his hand on the parlor door. “Ready?” he asked the children, and grinned cheerfully at the chorus of impatient assurances that they were most ready and eager. “I guess you all have been good children!” He opened the parlor door, looking over their heads and nodding towards Magda and Anna, just as someone outside pounded heavily on the front door. Magda’s heart fairly jumped into her throat at the sound of it. “Places ladies, places please,” Charley murmured, encouragingly as they followed the children. “Let tonight’s performance begin!” “Smile, Auntie,” Anna whispered as Charley patted her shoulder and called to Vati, “Someone’s at the door… don’t worry, I’ll answer it.” Magda wondered how on earth Charley managed to sound so casual, as if there were nothing on earth to worry about. Hansi was right; he was a very good actor. Inside the parlor, the tree shimmered with the light of a hundred tiny candles, like golden stars against the dark, pine-scented branches, a fairy tree in Vati’s parlor. For this one evening, Magda and Rosalie had decided to splurge on using their precious stock of wax candles. The parlor was filled to overflowing with their gentle, golden glow and the chorus of awed exclamations from the children, not least as they caught sight of Hansi standing motionless a little beyond the tree. “It really is Father Christmas!” breathed Magda’s daughter Hannah in wondering delight, echoed by her cousin Christian. Three-year-old Willi, the youngest of Liesel’s children save for the baby sat abruptly down in the middle of the parlor rag rug, awed to silence by the sight of the tall and motionless figure. Hansi loomed impossibly tall, impressively white-bearded, the candle-light adding a rich burnish to his fur-trimmed velvet robes. “Who are these children?” He boomed. Small Willi began to sob, while his older siblings and cousins chorused their names. “It’s Father Christmas, Willi!” Vati cried, and lifted his grandson into his arms, “See! There’s nothing to be frightened of!” But Willi turned his face into Vati’s shoulder and continued wailing as Hansi continued, “Who has been most particularly good this year?” Magda slipped around behind the ecstatic children; she was certain she could hear voices in the hallway, Charley speaking English, a harsh voice answering him in the same language, barely heard above the merry clamor. She sat next to Liesel. Taking the handkerchief from her sleeve, she dabbed at Liesel’s reddened eyes with it. “They are at the door,” she whispered, hardly daring to move her lips, “Charley is talking to them. When they look into the parlor, Lise . . . they must see only happy faces, happy children!” “Who is this pretty maid?” Hansi boomed exuberantly as he drew Anna to stand before him. The children chorused, “Anna! Her name is Anna, Father Christmas!” Anna curtseyed, laughing with apparent openness. “Well, then, since my assistant Ruprecht has been so delayed upon the journey we must make – he went back for another load of trees, you know – then I must ask Miss Anna to help me reward the good children here, and to punish the bad!” Father Christmas scowled so fiercely that Willi sobbed even more. Vati pleaded with him, “Willi, Willi… it is Father Christmas, nothing for you to fear!” “They are doing very well, Liesel. I verily believe they do think him to be Father Christmas!” Magda tucked away the scented handkerchief and took Lottie to her lap. She hesitated to nurse her, reluctant to unbutton her bodice while there were strangers in the house. “Sit down,” Commanded Father Christmas and the children obeyed with eager anticipation. From across the room, Magda met Dolph’s eyes; he was half smiling, obviously enjoying the reaction of the younger children. He and his cousin Jacob were too old to indulge in this fantastical charade of Father Christmas bringing gifts to children; rather of the age to join with the adults in encouraging the younger ones to believe. Her son watched intently, as if he were storing up every tiny detail in memory, too taken up with it to pay much mind to a half-heard knock on the door. Charley appeared in the doorway, saying casually as if it were of no account at all, “Mr. Steinmetz, there’s an officer here . . . from the provost. They say they’re looking for a deserter, and searching every house. D’you mind if I let them in to search? It shouldn’t take but a moment?” “We’re sheltering no deserters,” Vati said, and Magda noted the exact moment of realization. Vati paled and his voice hesitated. He gaped for a moment like a fish, as he looked wildly around the room, holding Willi to him before he added, “Rosalie, my dear…” “I’ll show them around, Vati,” Rosalie sprang up from where she sat among the children, as if she were given a cue/ Hansi said very loudly, “Well, they must be very bad children, for I haven’t brought them any presents at all!” The children laughed with gleeful pleasure. Still watching her oldest son from across the parlor, Magda saw him started up from his seat but she caught his eyes with hers and made a small gesture with her hand. Dolph realized what was happening; now he looked tense and unhappy under his pretense of Christmas cheer. She held Lottie to her shoulder, carefully lowering her head to shield her face from the candle-light and grateful that she and Liesel had withdrawn to a corner of the parlor. “The officer; he is watching us, from the hallway,” she whispered to Liesel. “I think Charley knows him. They are talking like friends.” Liesel nodded, her head also down. “I brought a gift for Marie, who has been the best of little girls!” Hansi announced, as Anna’s younger sister Marie arose from where she sat on the rug with her brothers and Hannah. He lifted her up and kissed her cheek, while she squealed and laughed. As he set her down in a swirl of skirts and petticoats, Anna handed her a little parcel wrapped in tissue. One by one, the children were called up to Father Christmas, to receive their presents, the little toys and sweets so lovingly constructed by their mothers and grandfather during the last few weeks. Magda kept her eyes lowered, as aware as she would be of a thorn in her foot, of the baleful eyes of the provost officer. He stood in the hallway with Charley, but he looked into the parlor now and again, in mild curiosity. Gradually Magda’s heart ceased to hammer quite so loudly. She tried to listen to what he said to Charley and what Charley said to him in reply, but over the cheerful clamor of children’s voices, she made out nothing more than that they spoke in English and Charley sounded genial, quite unworried. Now, she heard Rosalie’s voice, all happy chatter and she came down the stairs, with heavy footsteps following after her. When Magda glanced upward, she caught a glimpse of Rosalie and two bashful soldiers as Rosalie opened the door into the kitchen. Grete finished feeding. Liesel laid her back in the cradle, moving as slowly as if she were in a dream. She clutched at Magda’s arm like a lifeline which kept her from slipping into deep water. “I think they are more smitten with our little Rose than interested in looking for deserters,” Magda whispered to her sister. That brought a momentary strained smile to Liesel’s face, until it vanished as if it had never been. “Dear god, Magda! He is looking at Hansi,” she gasped. Magda stole another glance at the doorway; yes – the provost officer stood full in the doorway with his eyes on Hansi as Hansi announced, “I know of a little chap named Wilhelm, who is too small to be anything but the best-behaved of little boys.” “Go to Father Christmas,” Vati urged helplessly as Willi buried his face even further into Vati’s shoulder. Vati tried to set him on the floor but Willi clung to his legs. “He brought a present for you, Willi,” Anna called, wooingly. She picked up her little brother and carried him to Father Christmas, but Willi screwed up his face and howled. “Not such a good boy, then,” Hansi made a great show of looking in the pockets and in the breast of his robe for one last present. Anna brought Willi to the chaise in the corner where Liesel and Magda sat with the babies. “That may have been good,” she breathed, as she set her little brother down. Willi burrowed underneath the chaise, sheltering behind their skirts, “Acting as though Father Christmas is a stranger!” The provost officer had indeed moved away from the door, as if he had lost all interest. He spoke to his two soldiers as Hansi called, “One last present, have I, for a very good little girl named Rose.” Rosalie pealed with delighted laughter, as she stepped back into the parlor. “Father Christmas has brought a present for me?” she asked and Hansi made a show of looking her up and down in mock astonishment. “Little Rose is not such a little rose any more,” he said, to more happy amusement from the children. He drew a last small package from the sleeve of his robe and held it out for her, adding, “I have brought this present all the way from the East!” He held it teasingly over her head. Rosalie stood a-tiptoe, begging fruitlessly. “Oh, please Father Christmas, may I have it?” Hansi kissed her cheek and gave it to her, appearing unaware that in the hallway, Charley was seeing the provost officer and his men out into the street while a much puzzled Vati wrung his hands, lingering in the doorway. Magda wasn’t aware that she held her breath, until the door closed to with a thud. Beside her, Liesel closed her eyes and sagged against the back of the chaise. There was some ado with fastening the bar that secured the door, Charley’s voice and Vati’s out in the hall, before Charley returned to the parlor with a broad grin on his face. “Well done, all! Go on with the merriment, lest they are listening at the windows.” He commanded with jubilation. He, Anna and Hansi all looked at each other and roared with unashamed laughter, as if they had just shared the most exhilarating and enjoyable experience. Vati and Rosalie looked from one to another in bafflement. The children laughed, but only because the adults were doing so. “Have you all gone mad?” Vati asked, in distress. “Who were they searching for? Is that why Hansi dressed as Father Christmas?” “They were looking for me,” Hansi finally answered “No deserter, but me, Vati! Unless by refusing to serve their wretched army, I am a deserter . . . ” he made a motion to divest himself of the robe, but Charley cautioned, “Best stay in costume for a while. Behave absolutely as if normal.” He slapped Hansi on the shoulder. The two of them laughed again as Hansi pulled at his wool beard and complained, “I’ll have a devil of a time eating, in this god-be-damned thing!” “An artist gives all to his art,” Charley said, heartlessly as Rosalie gasped, and whirled around, “The pudding!” She dashed out of the room. Liesel began to weep as if a dam had suddenly burst. “God save us, there she goes again,” Charley said. “Better now than five minutes ago.” He and Hansi exchanged one of those looks that men give to each other when indulging their wives. Hansi knelt at the foot of the chaise, arranging his robes around him with great difficulty and took her hand in his, “It’s all right, now, Lise! We took no more hurt from this than their muddy footsteps on the stairs – stop crying, then!” Liesel clung to him as if she were about to drown. Finally, Hansi rose to feet and half-carried her from the room. The smaller children were looking from one to another and towards Vati, Magda and Anna, puzzled and distressed. “What is the matter with Aunt Liesel?” Hannah asked, anxiously. Anna answered with brisk affection, “She had an awful fright, Hanneleh – thos24 Dec

Trolling the UN Security Council - Given the recent passage of UN Security Council resolution 2334 condemning Israel for its settlement policy, I look forward to the US putting forward fair and even handed resolutions in the Security Council regarding the settlement of people. That would be perceived, rightly, as trolling on the part of the Trump administration. There’s a good amount of potential here. There are the religious fatwas condemning the sale of PA land to infidels. Separately, selling to jews is officially a death penalty crime. Then there’s the two tier refugee system of the UN itself where all refugees except for Palestinions are processed under one set of rules while Palestinians have a separate and unequal system. It will be fascinating to see how the double standard is defended by people who claim to view even handed and fair treatment as a core value. Then there’s the insistence that all jews currently living in PA territory leave without exception even for those whose historical ties to the area predate the creation of Israel. The point isn’t to actually pass any such resolutions but to destroy the shield of silence held in protection over these existing positions and practices that would have trouble surviving honest scrutiny. Who would vote in favor of maintaining a double standard for refugees? We actually don’t know right now because we don’t call out the double standard and force people to take a position. The double standard is just the way things have always been. 24 Dec

What Chicago Boyz Readers Are Reading (October and November 2016) - Below is a list of the books, ebooks, music and videos that Chicago Boyz readers viewed and/or ordered in October and November 2016 via Amazon links on this blog. (A cumulative list of Chicago Boyz readers’ Amazon purchases is here.) Your book and non-book Amazon purchases help to support this blog via the Amazon Associates program. Chicago Boyz earns a percentage on all of your Amazon purchases as long as you get to the Amazon site by clicking on Amazon links on this blog (including the Amazon banner in the blog header, the link under the Amazon banner, and even Amazon links on Chicago Boyz for products other than the ones that you want to buy). —- Books“Trickle Down Theory” and “Tax Cuts for the Rich” 1984 (Signet Classics) A Midsummer Night’s Scream A Season for the Ages: How the 2016 Chicago Cubs Brought a World Series Championship to the North Side Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea Elementary Geometry from an Advanced Standpoint (3rd Edition) Elephant Man Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant (Princeton Science Library) God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye Happy Odyssey Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease Ice Is Nice!: All About the North and South Poles (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library) Impossible Languages (MIT Press) In the Beginning…was the Command Line Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 2 The Hammer of Thor Of Mice and Men PRISONERS OF HOPE (Pen & Sword Paperback) Pea and Lentil Cookbook: From Everyday to Gourmet Religion and American Culture Take Heart, My Child: A Mother’s Dream The Enlightenment in America The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan The Magic Circle: Stories and People in Poems The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party Timmy Failure: The Book You’re Not Supposed to Have Tornadoes Welcome to the Symphony: A Musical Exploration of the Orchestra Using Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 Wilderness Medical Society Practice Guidelines, 2nd DVDsA Little Chaos (DVD) Gotcha! The Great Courses: Geometry: An Interactive Journey to Mastery Digital Music‘Cross the Green Mountain (From Gods and Generals Soundtrack) I’m Not There Kindle eBooksAlive for Now (The Infected Dead Book 1) America: A Prophecy American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 Blue Plague: Hope: Book Seven Catholic Perspective on Paul Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman Happy Odyssey In the Beginning…Was the Command Line Long Road To Abilene: The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue People’s Republic Red River Revenge (Remington Book 1) Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms The Chronicles of Luna City The Clausewitz Roundtable The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity (The Origins of Catholicism Book 1) The Deadly Thirst: A WJ Lundy Short The Eternal City: Rome & the Origins of Catholic Christianity The Last Town #5: Fleeing the Dead The Outcast (The Empire’s Corps Book 5) The Road Back: A Novel The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End War Stories: 50 Years in Medicine Winter Apocalypse: Zombie Crusade V Items with no ordersIn the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire THE HELLHOUND OF WALL STREET: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance 4th Generation Warfare Handbook A History of the Future: A World Made By Hand Novel A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier A Time For Audacity: How Brexit Has Created The CANZUK Option A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America’s War on Terror Accept No Substitude Adelsverein: The Complete Trilogy Adelsverein: The Gathering Adelsverein: The Harvesting Adelsverein: The Sowing After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street-and Washington Alas, Babylon Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history) America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century?Why America?s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration Apocalypse in Islam Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business Bitter Waters: Life And Work In Stalin’s Russia Canon PowerShot ELPH 100 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 4X Optical Zoom (Grey) (OLD MODEL) Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan-And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 Conspiracy Theory in America (Discovering America) Counting by 7s Country – Mother Earth Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis DAEMON Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance–and Why They Fall Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past) Defying Hitler: A Memoir Defying Hitler: A Memoir Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam Discovering H.P. Lovecraft Eggs are Expensive, Sperm is Cheap: 50 Politically Incorrect Thoughts for Men Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present Engineers of the Southwest Pacific 1941-1945. Vol IV. Amphibian Engineer Operations. Every Man Dies Alone Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant (Princeton Science Library) Give Us This Day (Swann Family Saga Book 3) Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography Ham on Rye: A Novel Herman the German: Just Lucky I Guess Hollywood vs. America: The Explosive Bestseller that Shows How-and Why-the Entertainment Industry Has Broken Faith With Its Audience Homemade SongsCome See About Me How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed I Knew Hitler (The Third Reich From Original Sources) I Knew Hitler: The Lost Testimony by a Survivor from the Night of the Long Knives (The Third Reich from Original Sources) In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire In The Here And Now Japan Through the Looking Glass Land of the Bottom Line Last to Die: A Defeated Empire, a Forgotten Mission, and the Last American Killed in World War II Little Man, What Now Lone Star Sons Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry Luna City 3.1 (The Chronicles of Luna City) Many Unhappy Returns: One Man’s Quest To Turn Around The Most Unpopular Organization In America (Leadership for the Common Good) Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too My Many Sons Netatmo Weather Station for Smartphone Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot Not For Tourists Guide to Brooklyn 2016 Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 Patton’s Air Force: Forging a Legendary Air-Ground Team Pericles (Folger Shakespeare Library) Proofs Without Words II: More Exercises in Visual Thinking (Classroom Resource Materials) (v. 2) Purgatory Illustrated by the Lives and Legends of the Saints RACE WARS: Season Ten: Episodes 55-62: “The Battle” Rhetoric (Dover Thrift Editions) Rockets and People Volume I Romertopf 99302 Classic Cook Book Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains Shanghai: The Architecture of China’s Great Urban Center Sunset & Steel Rails That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (The Space Trilogy 3) The Afghan Campaign: A Novel The Age of Longing The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto) The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto) The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine The Brother’s Karamazov (The Unabridged Garnett Translation) The Culture of Capitalism The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why The Indo-Europeans: In Search of the Homeland The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War The Kingdom of Speech The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War The Mass: A Study of Roman Liturgy The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare Made Easy) The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates The Quivera Trail The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate The Seven Military Classics Of Ancient China (History and Warfare) The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture The Sword of Honour Trilogy (Everyman’s Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) The Three-Body Problem The true blue;: The life and adventures of Colonel Fred Burnaby, 1842-85 Theirs Was the Kingdom (Swann Family Saga) Time’s Arrow (Vintage International) Totalitaria: What If The Enemy Is The State: BREXIT Edition: Look What’s Coming Trench Warfare: 1850-1950 Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires We the Living When Globalization Fails: The Rise and Fall of Pax Americana Witness Wolf Among Wolves World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability X-Day: Japan: Front Line Reporting at the Greatest Invasion and the Dawn of Nuclear Warfare Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age Zao Wou-Ki Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future how nature works: the science of self-organized criticality20 Dec

Espresso Update 2 - Chicagoboyz is making millions in Amazon referral fees, at least as measured in Venezuelan currency. However, in the interest of honesty we must acknowledge that our recommended cheap espresso machine has bought the farm for the second time in its warranty period. Third time may be the charm but we suggest looking at alternatives. Chicagoboyz reader PenGun mentioned his good experience with this Breville model and indeed the Breville line has a good rep. I myself just ordered a Nespresso combo as a gift, based on its generally good reviews. Nespresso may be a good option if you prefer the convenience and consistency of packaged coffee cartridges. It’s a jungle out there, YMMV, choose wisely, and whichever machine you buy make sure to give it a good workout during the seller’s return period. I can vouch for DeLonghi’s warranty, so my original recommendation is still a good bet if you’re willing to roll the quality-control dice. Happy caffeinated holidays and feel free to leave your own suggestions in the comments.20 Dec

Video Review: A French Village - I’m currently on Season 5 of this series, which ran for 6 seasons on French TV.  Set in the fictional town of Villeneuve during the years of the German occupation and directly afterwards, it is simply outstanding – one of the best television series I have ever seen. Daniel Larcher is a physician who also serves as deputy mayor, a largely honorary position.  When the regular mayor disappears after the German invasion, Daniel finds himself mayor for real.  His wife Hortense, a selfish and emotionally-shallow woman, is the opposite of helpful to Daniel in his efforts to protect the people of Villaneuve from the worst effects of the occupation while still carrying on his medical practice.  Daniel’s immediate superior in his role as mayor is Deputy Prefect Servier, a bureaucrat mainly concerned about his career and about ensuring that everything is done according to proper legal form. Daniel’s brother Marcel is a Communist.  The series accurately reflects the historical fact that the European Communist parties did not at this stage view the outcome of the war as important–it was only “the Berlin bankers versus the London bankers”…but this is a viewpoint that Marcel has a hard time accepting. In addition to his underground political activism, Marcel works as a foreman at the lumber mill run by a prominent local businessman, Raymond Schwartz.  A strong mutual attraction has developed between Raymond and Marie Germain, a farm wife whose husband is away with the army and is missing in action. Much of the movie’s action takes place at the local school, where Judith Morhange is the (Jewish) principal and Lucienne Broderie is a young teacher. Jules Beriot, the assistant principal, is in love with Lucienne, but hopelessly so, it seems. German characters range from Kurt, a young soldier with whom Lucienne shares a love of classical music, all the way down to the sinister sicherheitdienst officer Heinrich Mueller. The characters include several French police officers, who make differing choices about the ways in which they will handle life and work under the Occupation. The series does a fine job of bringing all these characters–and many more–to life.  Very well-written and well-acted, well-deserving of its long run on French television. Highly recommended. In French, with English subtitles that (unlike the case with many films) are actually readable.  Season 1 is available on Amazon streaming, and seasons 2-5 are available there in DVD form.  MHZ Networks is another available source for the series.  (Season 6, which I believe is now running in France, is not yet available in translation.) Not to be missed.19 Dec

We Are The Home Depot - 19 Dec

There Is No Possible Reform for HUD - “The Department of] Housing and Urban Development has done an enormous amount of harm. My god, if you think of the way in which they have destroyed parts of cities under the rubric of eliminating slums … there have been many more dwelling units torn down in the name of public housing than have been built.” ~ Milton Friedman, Interview, Hoover Institution, February 10, 1999 President-elect Trump’s appointment of Dr. Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is being criticized on the grounds that he lacks the requisite administrative experience. More likely, Carson’s affront was to question why HUD exists. Republican presidents have been ambivalent. Having bigger fish to fry, President Reagan appointed Sam Pierce HUD Secretary so that he could ignore it. George H.W. Bush repaid Jack Kemp’s political opposition by first making him HUD Secretary and then frustrating his attempts to eliminate the Department. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, appointed by George W., was allegedly focused on participating in the traditional kickback schemes while his Assistant Secretary for Housing pursued homeownership policies that contributed mightily to the financial crisis of 2008. Democratic presidents have used it as a platform to pursue other agendas. Jimmy Carter’s HUD Secretary Patricia Harris introduced Fannie Mae housing goals – quotas – as punishment for not appointing a woman to the Board of Directors. Between scandals, Clinton’s HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros promoted the homeownership goals that left both the financial system and the new mortgage borrowers bankrupt. HUD’s budget is relatively small as compared to other federal departments, but it has always punched far above its budget weight in destructive power. To put HUD’s annual budget of about $50 billion in perspective, the cost of the homeowner mortgage interest tax deduction is two to three times greater, but HUD’s “mission regulation” of financial institutions has given it influence or control over trillions more. The initial political interest in housing during the Great Depression was entirely Keynesian, i.e., related to the short-term potential to create jobs and relieve cyclical unemployment – the “infrastructure investments” of that era. The Democrat’s approach to construction, management, and allocation of public housing was generally implemented to benefit builders and rife with corruption. FHA and Fannie Mae were chartered mostly as off-balance sheet financial institutions to stimulate housing production on the cheap. The problem of urban development, as many politicians and urban analysts saw it in the 1960s, stemmed from the 1956 Eisenhower initiative to build highways financed by the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, a byproduct of which was that more affluent people commuted from the suburbs while leaving poorer families behind. The pursuit of the American Dream of homeownership left city administrations accustomed to cross-subsidizing municipal services in fiscal distress, creating a vicious cycle: as services declined, more affluent households moved out. The Housing and Urban Development Act in 1965 established HUD as a separate cabinet department as part of LBJ’s Great Society to give a greater priority to housing and urban issues. HUD inherited a mishmash of various New Deal federal programs, ranging from public rental housing to urban renewal, as well as financial oversight of FHA and Fannie Mae. Faced with steep “guns and butter” budget deficits, LBJ focused on ways to further encourage off-balance-sheet financing of housing construction through “public-private partnerships.” Republicans, led by Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, convinced by academic studies that the urban riots of the 1960s were the direct result of poor quality housing and the urban environment and by lobbyists for housing producers, supported the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968. The “goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family” was first introduced in the 1949 Housing Act. Title XVI of the 1968 Act “Housing Goals and Annual Housing Report” introduced central planning without specifying the goals, a timetable for implementation, or a budget. In the late 1960s, the Weyerhaeuser Corporation produced a forecast of single-family housing production in the coming decade to assist with tree planting. Congressional math wizards divided the total forecast by 10 to produce HUD’s annual housing production goals for the nation. For the next decade, HUD Secretaries were annually paraded before their Senate oversight Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to explain why they did or did not meet these production goals. Republicans have historically supported rental housing vouchers for existing private rental units for privately built housing to minimize market distortions. Republican HUD Secretary Carla Hills in the Ford Administration pushed HUD’s Section 8 subsidies for existing housing – something arguably better administered as a negative income tax – as a political alternative to the Democrats’ push for a return to public housing construction. But as a further political compromise, the largely autonomous local public housing authorities would administer these vouchers, leading to the same concentration of crime and urban decay as public housing. To borrow a phrase from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Republican social engineering” isn’t necessarily better than “Democratic social engineering.” The economic goals of “affordable” housing have generally been in direct conflict with urban development. When I proposed demolishing the worst public housing projects and redeveloping the land, using the proceeds to fund subsidies for existing private market housing (something partially achieved during the Reagan Administration), Clinton Administration officials scoffed at the idea. HUD combines socialist goals and fascist methods that seriously distort and undermine markets. There is neither market nor political discipline on the enormous scope of its activities. HUD met unfunded goals through financial coercion, undermining both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and their commercial banking competitors, with the collusion of the Senate Committee responsible for both financial and housing oversight, leading to the sub-prime lending debacle of 2008. There is no economic rationale for a federal role in housing or urban affairs in a market economy. HUD represents a continuing systemic threat for which there is no cure. May it RIP. Kevin Villani Kevin Villani, chief economist at Freddie Mac from 1982 to 1985, is a principal of University Financial Associates. He has held senior government positions, been affiliated with nine universities, and served as CFO and director of several companies. He recently published Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue on the political origins of the sub-prime lending bubble and aftermath. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. 17 Dec

History Friday — Revisiting the P-51 Mustang Historical Narrative - James Perry Stevenson and Pierre Sprey recently (Dec 2, 2016) wrote a column over on the War Is Boring media blog titled “Arrogant U.S. Generals Made the P-51 Mustang a Necessity — With better leadership, the iconic fighter plane might’ve been unnecessary” that used my September 2013 Chicagoboyz blog post “History Friday: Deconstructing the P-51 Mustang Historical Narrative” as a basis for a lot of their article with a link back to my Chicagoboyz post with a comment to the effect that it was a “detailed post.” Given who those two men are, that is the military history good housekeeping seal or approval. *** Yeah Me!! — Glyph of a middle age fat man doing a happy dance! Go over and check it out at this link: “Arrogant U.S. Generals Made the P-51 Mustang a Necessity — With better leadership, the iconic fighter plane might’ve been unnecessary” A 150/165 Gallon Lockheed Drop Tank in front of a P-38 Lightning Fighter. Production of the tank increased from 300 in September 1943 to 22,000 in December 1943. That said, it turns out their closing paragraph, “Arnold’s midset, which caused him to forbid drop tank development in 1939, doomed thousands of unescorted bomber crews throughout all of 1943 to death and dismemberment. This needless slaughter remained unrelieved until the belated deliveries in 1944 of adequate quantities of drop tanks — and of long ranged P-51B’s. ….and my Sept 2013 blog post are going to need a rewrite thanks to my research partner Ryan Crierie’s latest find, a September 1943 fighter range chart from the Gen. Hap Arnold Microfilms Reel 122. The “truth in the details” is that the tragically poor decision General Hap Arnold made in 1936 to halt the use drop tanks in the US Army Air Force that made the disaster the 2nd Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission inevitable was also the decision that made the P-51B technically possible. The 2nd order effects of that procurement decision on the USAAF’s “technological development tree” gave Wright Field fighter development engineers the “design chops” to place in the P-51B the additional 100 gallon internal fuel tank Mustangs used to reach Berlin in 1944, when it was needed in late 1943. -more- HIGH TECH WARFARE & THE P-51B High technology warfare, whether of the 1940’s or the early 21st century is a three legged stool made up of technology, doctrine, training with a logistical support structure capable holding the three legs stable and properly balanced.  This is why the German Panzer Divisions with pop-gun 37mm gun armed tanks could overwhelm large numbers of the Soviet Union’s T-34 and KV-1 tanks in Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa).  The Soviet tanks lacked the proper balance of doctrine, training and logistics to take advantage of their superior tank technology. Similarly, the Eight Air Force’s October 14, 1943 Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission was where the USAAF’s adequately trained, logistically well supported bomber force, flying the superbly designed B-17 bomber and using the flawed self-escorting heavy bomber doctrine met a Luftwaffe that had put together the complete aerial combined arms team, a high tech “three legged stool” of radar controlled heavy rocket fighters (ME-110) and lighter Me-109/FW190 fighters with a doctrine of choreographed large formation attacks.  The results — 60 lost heavy bombers —  speak for themselves. The Luftwaffe demonstrated that it could destroy any unescorted Eight Air Force heavy bomber combat box formation, no matter the size, that lacked fighter escorts through out the entire mission. The Luftwaffe’s Heavy twin and light single engine combined arms fighter force trumped an American single arm heavy bomber force. To quote the Australian Airpower Expert Carlo Dr Carlo Kopp, Associate Fellow AIAA, Senior Member IEEE, PEng and Co-founder, Air Power Australia: http://www.ausairpower.net/ The heavy bombers did inflict the critical attrition on the production base and POL. But they did so only once they were properly supported by escorts. Air power performs best when operated as an integrated whole. The ideologues tend not to accept this. Yes the historical record is unambiguous. It took months after the 2nd Schweinfurt–Regensburg for the Eight Air Force to deploy it’s own “three legged stool” of fighter drop tanks, training in “Long of lean” fuel management techniques, and a _doctrinal change_ that allowed the use of existing fighters with droppable auxiliary fuel tanks. Fighters with drop tanks were used in three shifts to cover the bomber formations during Penetration of enemy air space, At the target area and During withdrawal, …too which the long range P-51 was added. The three shift fighter escort doctrine allowed USAAF fighters to drop external fuel tanks and dog fight for 30 minutes with full engine power with German fighters, while still protecting the bombers. Enemy fighters that attacked American fighters were not attacking US bombers, and enemy pilots dying in such fights did not come back to kill anything. Drop tanks were the technological glue that allowed a USAAF offensive aerial combined arms team to develop.  Only large numbers of American daylight heavy bombers could deliver the payload to damage oil and aircraft production plant targets badly enough to make Luftwaffe fighters come up and fight. Only American fighter escorts could break up Luftwaffe fighter formations before they could organize a combined arms attack large enough to break bomber “combat box” formations. The fighter penetration missions — organized in shifts — to cover the bomber formations required long range radar, VHF band frequency crystal modulated radio and radio intercept stations to track both our own aircraft and enemy fighter reaction to get the penetrating fighters to shield the bomber streams.  (The best resource I’ve found that explains the development of this  doctrine is Stephan McFarland and Wesley Phillip Newton’s “TO COMMAND THE SKY – The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942-1944” from the Smithsonian History of Aviation Series.) However, the P-51B would still not have been able to play a role in this team – even with drop tanks – without the second order effects of Gen. Hap Arnold’s 1939 decision. For which, see Ryan Crierie’s slide below: A September 1943 range chart from General Hap Arnold Microfilm real 122. It shows various radius of action for fighters with combinations of internal fuel tank kits and the Lockheed 150 gallon drop tank. THE ROLE OF THE USAAF TEMPORARY INTERNAL FUEL TANK The September 1943 slide above shows that both the P-51B and P-38J’s fighters needed internal fuel tank kits to function as long range escorts.  And that new production P-47D’s could, with two 150 gallon Lockheed external tanks, escort B-17’s the distance.  General Arnold acted swiftly after seeing that slide. Between September 1943 and December 1943 the 150 gallon Lockheed external tank production went from 300 a month to 22,000!!!  And hundreds of internal tank fuel kits were airlifted to England. These internal tanks were added to P-51B’s in English fighter depots and shipment processing centers in the fall/winter of 1943-1944.   These were the planes that made the P-51 legend. (The P-38J, on the other hand, was snake bit.  Its C-54, carrying all the available internal fuel tank kits for several months production, was shot down by the RAF in a friendly fire incident in the late fall of 1943.) The story behind those kits comes from General Benjamin S. Kelsey in “THE DRAGON’S TEETH? — The Creation of United States Airpower in World War II,” and General Mark Bradely’s story “Bradley Vs. the P-75” in Penn Leary’s (editor) “TEST FLYING AT OLD WRIGHT FIELD – By The “Wright Stuff” Pilots and Engineers.” General Kelsey explained in his book that while external drop tanks were outlawed, the operational requirement to move short ranged fighter’s long distances inside America remained.  To take up the slack of the now outlawed external tanks. Wright field engineers developed a series of temporary internal fuel tank kits replacing guns, ammo and just plain empty internal spaces for long range ferry flights. This was a pain to do and finally Kelsey got General Arnold to reverse his safety policy by dint of pointing out the wartime requirement for shipping fighters to Europe versus the lack of shipping tonnage for same.  Arnold approved the use of Lockheed external fuel tanks for P-38 and P-47 ferry flights to Europe in 1943.   A 1943 ferry flight of a P-47D in Iceland with the early 150-Gallon version of the Lockheed drop tank, later uprated to 165 Gallons. — Page 16 “P-47 Thunderbolt in Action” Aircraft Number 67, Squadron/signal Publications” General Mark Bradley’s tale is the story of his involvement with getting the 100 gallon fuel tank the P-51B because, after the experience of test flying the General Motors XP-75 Eagle.  The “Eagle” was as misnamed a fighter design as could be imagined, it was built around a 24 cylinder Allison R2600-20 engine that was supposed to deliver 3,000 horsepower, but barely made 2,300 HP.  Its air frame had the wings of a P-40, the center section of a Vought design for the Navy and the tail of a Navy SBD dive bomber. It was big, clumsy, unstable in flight and its six bladed counter rotating prop was too heavy.  Even if it could get the range needed for a long range escort, it could not defend itself when it got to a German target. Bradley’s P-75 experience saw him become part of the P-51 mafia and he saw to it that the 100 gallon tank was added to the P-51B and tested at Wright Field. Wright field engineers, without  the 1936 to 1943 experience with internal fuel tank kits caused by General Hap Arnold’s 1930 decision, likely would not have been in the position to rapidly make the P-51 into the long range escort fighter it eventually became. And now you know why James Perry Stevenson and Pierre Sprey and I need to do  article rewrites.   -END- ***  James Perry Stevenson is the former editor of the Topgun Journal and the author of The $5 Billion Misunderstanding and The Pentagon Paradox. . Pierre M. Sprey is a co-designer of the F-16 fighter jet, was technical director of the U.S. Air Force’s A-10 concept design team, served as weapons analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for 15 years and has been an active member of the military reform underground for the last 35 years.   Sources and Notes                 Mark Bradely “Bradley Vs. the P-75” pages 23 – 26 in Penn Leary’s (editor) “TEST FLYING AT OLD WRIGHT FIELD – By The “Wright Stuff” Pilots and Engineers,” Wpasb Educational Fund; 2nd edition (May 1995), ISBN-13: 978-0961791728 Robert A. Eslinger , “THE NEGLECT OF LONG–RANGE ESCORT DEVELOPMENT DURING THE INTERWAR YEARS (1918–1943)”, 1997 (E-book) and 2012 (Paper) ISBN-13: 978-1249415558, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a393237.pdf “Drop Tanks Adding external fuel tanks to existing pursuit aircraft seemed like a logical solution to extending pursuit range. Making the tanks dropable in flight preserved maneuverability and performance when required for combat. Experiments with dropable fuel tanks had been conducted throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s. The greatest concern about drop tanks was the hazard of fire. In February 1939, Curtiss–Wright wanted to test a 52–gallon tank mounted on the bomb rack of a P–36C, but the “Chief of the Air Corps directed that no tactical plane be equipped with a dropable fuel tank” because of the potential for fires.18″ COL. WALDO H. HEINRICHS, A.C., A.U.S.,, INTELLIGENCE OFFICER (A-2) 66TH FIGHTER WING “A HISTORY OF THE VIII U.S.A.A.F. FIGHTER COMMAND,” WITH A FOREWORD BY MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM E. KEPNER, COMMANDING GENERAL, dtd 31 OCT 1944, link: http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p4013coll8/id/317/rec/116 Accessed 9/21/2013 Benjamin S. Kelsey, “THE DRAGON’S TEETH? — The Creation of United States Airpower in World War II,” C 1980 Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington D.C. ISBN 0-87474-574-8 Stephan McFarland and Wesley Phillip Newton’s “TO COMMAND THE SKY – The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942-1944” Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight (Paperback) (Book 45879), University Alabama Press (March 6, 2006), ISN-13: 978-0817353469 Trent J. Telenko, “History Friday — MacArthur’s Fighter Drop Tanks,” 12 July 2013, http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/37362.html Trent J. Telenko, “History Friday: Deconstructing the P-51 Mustang Historical Narrative, September 27th, 2013, http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/38801.html16 Dec

Fake News - The concept of “fake news” appears to be the meme du jour among the serious internet news set … well, the serious mainstream news set, anyway. Calling it the meme du jour is merely a kinder way of describing the mainstream media’s primal scream of denial. Me – I have become extremely suspicious when a meme suddenly pops up all over the national mainstream news and entertainment media and social media takes it up as if they were junior fashionistas entranced with Kim Kardashian’s latest exercise in stuffing ten pounds of avoirdupois into a five-pound sack. It’s as if there were some kind of coordinated list of talking points, similar phrasing, and suggested party lines being surreptitiously circulated among influential cognoscenti … like there was some kind of briefing paper being circulated. But that’s my nasty, cynical mind speaking there. They might have a new name for “JournoList” and circulate it by other means, but yes, that playbook is still operative. The Primal Scream of Denial from the establishment media is all the more bitterly amusing – because they themselves played a huge part in destroying their own credibility with those citizens of Flyoverlandia who tended to vote for Trump. (With varying degrees of reluctance, I should make it clear. For every voter who went out and voted for him wholeheartedly, there must be at least one who held their nose as they voted for him, and another who regarded a Trump vote as being one big middle finger of protest, extended towards the bicoastal ruling elite.) In this latest kerfuffle, those major news establishments continue damaging themselves in the eyes of news junkies and bloggers who have been paying rapt attention since the rise of the internet as an internet news provider and fact-checker. The damage is ongoing, and perhaps accelerated to light-speed by the very Primal Scream of Denial. For anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade or even longer – there has been a long, long and sorry series of ‘fake news’ generated, perpetuated and splashed all over Page 1 above the fold, the endlessly hyped headline story on the evening news, or the one promoted in breathless ads for the investigative programs like 60 Minutes. The long list of so-called ‘fake news’ might be said to begin with Walter Cronkite declaring that the US had lost South Vietnam in the Tet offensive. Four decades before the establishment of internet-enabled alternate news sources, it took years for it to emerge that no – the Tet offensive had been a disaster for the Viet Cong. But Walter Cronkite spoke … and such was his, and the national media’s authority – that saying made it so. So the established national media maintained the grand castle of their authority … for a while, until bloggers, commenters, and interested parties had the ability to publicly report, comment, fact-check and criticize. I’d date this from the early Oughts, just around the time of 9/11, which is when I became acquainted with the concept, although for some who were more technically adept, it may have been a thing for several years before then. For me, the biggest crack in mainstream news credibility was the Dan Rather/TANG memo debunking in 2004. Here was a huge story, broadcast practically on the eve of the election, a story based on documents of a deeply uncertain provenance, relayed to a Bush-hating reporter by a man with a grudge against Bush. It came over as a breathtakingly audacious attempt to throw an election based on forged memos. Worse; I began to wonder how many other stories that 60 Minutes had broadcast over the years were built on just as shaky a foundation … which had gone unremarked, as interested amateurs with specific knowledge had never gotten a chance to examine the evidence for themselves. The list of other fake news perpetuated by the mainstream media is frankly overwhelming to contemplate; fabulists, fakes, and selective omission. I’ll skip making a comprehensive list of them, as it would make this post the length of one of my books, and those of us of a libertarian/conservative leaning have our own lists readily in mind. It’s only gotten worse in the last election cycle, seeing that so many media establishments and reporters were so in the pocket for Hilary Clinton – as revealed by the Wikileaks memos. This had been suspected – yea, assumed – for the last decade, at least, but to see it all laid out in detail – names, networks, publications and favors rendered – was depressing in the extreme. I don’t see that the mainstream media can fight their way out of the tangle they backed themselves into. Their credibility with the conservative portion of the population is sunk as deeply as the Titanic. Once-respected weekly news magazines like Time and Newsweek are a thin shadow of what they were, once. Newspapers are shrinking, television news is going shriller, more partisan and fragmented. It may be as Sarah Hoyt observed – organizations tend to turn hard-left, just as they self-destruct. Your thoughts?16 Dec

Climate Change Dispatch - Climate Dispatch

Mongolia’s nomad herders facing winter disaster as temperatures plunge - Mongolia's traditional nomads are facing a natural disaster known as "dzud", where frigid temperatures and heavy snow cause widespread livestock deaths, threatening herders' livelihoods. To read full article, please click on article title.23 Dec

Polar Bear Population Is Rising, Despite Green Fears - Polar bears are much more resilient to changing levels of sea ice than environmentalists previously believed, and numerous healthy populations are thriving. To read full article, please click on article title.23 Dec

Bone-chilling temps sink to -80 degrees F in Siberia, shattering records - Western Siberia is currently stuck in a mini Ice Age as temperatures plummeted to nearly -80 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking all previous cold records. And meteorologists say that even icier weather is coming. Temps tumbled to -62 degrees Celsius (-79.6°F) at the Bolshoe Olkhovskoe oilfield in the Khanti-Mansi region this week. And the Kazym village in the Beloyarsky district showed a biting -58... To read full article, please click on article title.23 Dec

Why Nobody Needs To Freak Out Over The North Pole’s Higher Temps Right Now - Much has been made about the well-above-average temperatures the Great White North has experienced this year and during the winter of 2015. For example, The Washington Post ran a story on December 20 titled “Pre-Christmas melt? North Pole forecast to warm 50 degrees above normal Thursday.” To read full article, please click on article title.23 Dec

Obama Issues Last-Minute Rule, Wants to Finish Off U.S. Coal Industry - In a rather vindictive move, his Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is out with a broad new “stream rule” that could potentially designate as much as two-thirds of U.S. coal reserves off-limits to mining. To read full article, please click on article title.22 Dec

Congress: Obama Fired Scientist to Advance “Climate” Agenda - The Obama administration fired a top scientist, intimidated other staff, censored important information from Congress for political reasons, and waged “a reckless and calculated attack on the legislative process itself,” U.S. lawmakers concluded in a blistering new report To read full article, please click on article title.22 Dec

The Hockey Stick Collapses: 50 New (2016) Scientific Papers Affirm Today’s Warming Isn’t Global, Unprecedented, Or Remarkable - In 2016, an examination of the peer-reviewed scientific literature has uncovered dozens of paleoclimate reconstructions that reveal modern “global” warming has not actually been global in scale after all, as there are a large number of regions on the globe where it has been cooling for decades. To read full article, please click on article title.22 Dec

Activists Set Up A ‘Hotline’ For Climate Scientists To Tattle On Trump - Environmentalist worry over President-elect Donald Trump reached new heights when activists set up an anonymous hotline for government climate scientists to report “political meddling” by the incoming administration. Bloomberg reports “outside scientists are setting up an anonymous hotline for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s employees to report political meddling” over... To read full article, please click on article title.22 Dec

Enviros Launch Lawsuit Against Justin Trudeau-Approved Oil Pipeline - Environmentalist are attacking a Canadian oil pipeline approved by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a self-proclaimed climate change warrior. Activists with the Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the approval of the Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipeline, a $6.8-billion project tripling the capacity of the northern Alberta-to-Burnaby... To read full article, please click on article title.22 Dec

The ‘climate’ thought police - No longer does the Catholic Church hold sway over Christendom and even over the whole world, but an ersatz religion that demands that we all believe that Mankind is polluting the Earth by burning fossil fuels and thereby releasing Carbon Dioxide into the Atmosphere now holds sway. To read full article, please click on article title.22 Dec

Climatism

Polar Bear Population Is Rising, Despite Green Fears - “Scientists, however, have increasingly been questioning alarmists as there are way more polar bears alive today than 40 years ago.” The poster child of “global warming” catastrophe alive and thriving! Yet another alarmist dud-prediction used to scare and brainwash the gullible into CAGW belief. Merry Xmas Paul. Thx for all your great work this year! NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT By Paul Homewood http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/22/polar-bear-population-is-rising-despite-green-fears/ From the Daily Caller: Polar bears are much more resilient to changing levels of sea ice than environmentalists previously believed, and numerous healthy populations are thriving. View original post 317 more words 24 Dec

Merry Christmas to Stop These Things’ Followers & Happy Fourth Birthday to STT - “In our travels we’ve met plenty of people that started out in favour of wind power and turned against it. But we’ve yet to meet anyone who started out opposed to wind power, who later became a supporter. Funny about that.” That has been the experience with the climate change/global warming “theory” in general – none have started as sceptics and ended up believing the hoax. The exact opposite in every case I’ve known or read about. Telling. —– Thanks for your brilliant and tireless work STT. Probably the most detailed, informative, reasoned and fact based source of information on the wind farce anywhere. Merry Xmas and a safe and happy NY to you all and look forward to joining with you in celebrating the end of the “unreliable” energy scam in 2017. STOP THESE THINGS Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings to all of our dedicated band of followers, all around the World. And it’s Happy Birthday to STT: Boxing Day 2016 marks 4 years of giving the beleaguered wind industry and its dwindling band of parasites and spruikers hell. We’ve clocked over 1,700,000 views and given our loyal readers 1,530 posts – which spell out – in clear and simple terms – the economic and environmental nonsense that is wind power – and the perfectly avoidable harm these things cause to rural communities around the world. And, we keep picking up dedicated followers – more than 29,800 so far, from all corners of the globe, including a bunch of canny Scots, Canadians, Americans, English, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Finns, Danes, Germans, Greeks and plenty from Downunder. Those that watch us include lots of political staffers and journos. STT’s posts are a staple diet for plenty of… View original post 2,816 more words 24 Dec

How reindeer help protect the North Pole from climate change – study - How other people’s (taxpayers) money is wasted, by the BILLIONS, on climate-change-obsessed ‘studies’… Tallbloke's Talkshop Image credit: BBCNo it’s not April 1st and we’re not making it up. It’s Christmas but the climate propaganda machine has to keep churning out the pop stories, however absurd they may sound. Reindeer play an important role in assisting Santa, but it’s their vital work in protecting the North Pole from climate change which scientists are keen to highlight this Christmas, says The Daily Telegraph. Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen and the rest of the gang’s heavy grazing helps make the surface of the North Pole more reflective – also known as “albedo”. “Our theory was that heavy grazing by reindeer increases summer albedo, through a reduction in shrub height, abundance and leaf area index (LAI),” she said. View original post 100 more words 23 Dec

Snow falls in Sahara Desert – first time in 37 years - *Disclaimer: hot = climate, cold = weather. Watts Up With That? From Wire and Twitter reports: We know the northern hemisphere has been getting colder, for example we reported earlier this week that the USA was colder than any time last year with an average temperature of 16 degrees F. It isn’t just the USA, in northern Africa, reports suggest that it is only the second time in living memory that snow has fallen on the Sahara desert. The last record is for February 18, 1979, when the snow storm lasted just half an hour. Snow falling on the Saharan mountain ranges is very rare, let alone on the sandy dunes of the continent’s largest desert. Photo by Karim Bouchetata of Meteo Algerie Amateur photographer Karim Bouchetata says he took the incredible pictures of snow covering the sand in the small Saharan desert town of Ain Sefra, Algeria, on December 19. The unforgiving red dunes looked pristine and picturesque. “It looked… View original post 66 more words 21 Dec

Homogenization of Temperature Data By the Bureau of Meteorology - “None of these organizations will say or explain what they are doing or are being vague when asked. Raw data is being removed from public scrutiny and no one knows if it is actually being destroyed. Officially they are providing no scientific basis for making these adjustments.” “Once you start introducing reasons to make adjustments then it becomes too easy to use them as an excuse to adjust everything to suit a purpose. It becomes easy to allow for political interference. Political interference should be impossible.” Welcome to the political, pseudoscientific world “man-made” global warming… Watts Up With That? Guest essay by Brendan Godwin Background I worked for Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology – BOM for 2 years from 1973 to 1975. I was trained in weather observation and general meteorology. I spent 1 year observing Australia’s weather and 1 year observing the weather at Australia’s Antarctic station at Mawson. As part of it’s Antarctic program, Australia drills ice cores at Law Dome near it’s Casey station. On our return journey in 1975 we repatriated a large number of ice cores for scientific analysis. The globe’s weather and climate records are stored in these ice cores for the past 1 million years approximately. Australia’s Antarctic program went by the name of Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition or ANARE for short. This is now known as Australian Antarctic Division or AAD. Returned expeditions formed a club called the ANARE Club of which I have been a member since 1975. Members have… View original post 2,046 more words 21 Dec

A must read: Obsolete Climate Science on CO2 - This one paragraph of a “must read” essay by Stanford University’s Richard A. Epstein, IMHO sums up the “climate change” aka “global warming” fiasco/scam/scientific scandal that has snowballed into an out of control ideological behemoth. The new fashionable religion of our age, with its High Priests and clergyman ruthlessly dismissive of counter-evidence, new or contradictory ‘science’ and viciously scornful of real-world observations that mock the holy (corrupt/overheated) computer models that underpin the faith… “This dismissive attitude is fatal to independent inquiry. No matter how many times the president claims the science is rock-solid, the wealth of recent evidence gives rise to a very different picture that undercuts the inordinate pessimism about climate change that was in vogue about 10 years ago. The group convened in the Obama administration never examined, let alone refuted, the accumulation of evidence on the other side. Indeed, virtually all of its reports are remarkable for the refusal to address any of the data at all. Instead, the common theme is to refer to models developed by others as the solid foundation for the group’s own work, without questioning a word of what those models say.” Watts Up With That? Obsolete Climate Science on CO2 by Richard A. Epstein, Stanford University Tuesday, December 20, 2016 The incoming Trump administration has promised dramatic transformations on many vital domestic issues. The best gauge of this development is the fierce level of opposition his policies have generated from Democratic stalwarts. One representative screed is a New York Times Op-Ed by Professors Michael Greenstone and Cass Sunstein, who lecture the incoming president on climate change: “Donald Trump Should Know: This is What Climate Change Costs Us.” Greenstone and Sunstein have a large stake in the game: During their years in the first Obama administration, they convened an interagency working group (IWG) drawn from various federal agencies that determined that the social cost of carbon (SCC)—or the marginal cost of the release of a ton of carbon into the atmosphere—should be estimated at about $36 per ton (as of 2015). Choose that number… View original post 496 more words 21 Dec

King Canute versus the climate planners - “The idea that any panel of global experts, working with appointed diplomats and bureaucrats, can have the requisite knowledge to make such grand and final decisions for the globe is outlandish and contrary to pretty much everything we know. Hayek explains further: “To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.” Top read… Climate Etc. by Judith Curry On sea level rise, President Obama and King Canute. View original post 1,067 more words 20 Dec

Arctic Ice Extent Quickly Recovers From November Lows - How inconvenient for the “Super Heated Arctic” catastrophists. NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT By Paul Homewood http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php It was only a few weeks ago that we were being told about record heat and ice melt in the Arctic! Meanwhile, all that has happened in the last couple of months is that a lot of heat has escaped from the ice free ocean and radiated into space. View original post 20 Dec

California Climate Secession Threat - California can secede from the Union if that makes them feel all warm and fuzzy. But, if that is the virtuous “save the planet” path they want to take, they must secede/divest 100% from all fossil fuel use and live in the ‘Green’ bubble they yearn for so hysterically. See how long that warm and fuzzy feeling lasts. “Last year (2015) California imported 99,210 GWh (33%) of their electricity from out of state, mostly from the South West, up from 25% in 2010. ” Cheap, reliable, life-saving fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere soon, no matter how many petroleum-based plastic placards are waved around. Watts Up With That? Protest against Proposition 23 (2010), calling on California to suspend emissions targets until unemployment dropped below 5.5%. The measure was defeated by a wide margin. Guest essay by Eric Worrall A small but vocal group of Californians want to secede from the Union, to avoid President-elect Trump’s climate policies. Climate Change Secession Some private citizen groups in California, distraught at the prospect of an America under President Donald Trump, are advocating that the state secede from the union. Constitutional scholars (and most Californians) assure us the separation is not going to happen. But is there any instance in which California could go its own way? What if Trump withdraws the nation from the United Nations Climate Change Accord and rejects the validity of the global warming threat altogether? Could and should that set the stage for environmentally precocious California to break ranks with the president and join the Climate… View original post 355 more words 20 Dec

South Australia’s Repeated Wind Power Blackouts Force Retreat to Fossil-Fuels: Base-load Gas Plant Ordered to Run Constantly - So, it took job losses, heavy-industries to close and relocate, fuel poverty, economic ruin, environmental destruction, bird and bat slaughter, infrasound health atrocities, numerous multi-million dollar blackouts and the internationally famous September statewide blackout, not to mention the international trashing of SA’s business reputation for Australia’s climate-obsessed Government(s) to finally realise that *fossil fuels* are the ONLY genuine source of reliable baseload energy?! What a disastrous joke the windmill and solar-panel experiment has truly become. But fear not! Wind weasels and the eco-brainwashed will press on and most likely double-down on their insistence for “unreliable” energy sources in their religious quest to “SAVE THE PLANET”. Even if saving-the-planet means being 100% reliant on fossil fuels – the very energy source they despise! Let that sink in for a minute. STOP THESE THINGS AEMO prescribes gas for Jay Weatherill’s fatal case of wind. *** Clueless and desperate, Australia’s political leaders are fiddling while Rome continues to burn. The calamity that is South Australia’s self-inflicted power pricing and supply chaos, threatens to spread across state borders like a malignant tumour. While State Labor governments in Queensland and Victoria continue to talk the talk about their desire to carpet their states with tens of thousands of these things, it’s apparent that they’re not so keen to walk the walk. Rocketing power prices, routine load shedding and statewide blackouts have not only rendered South Australia an international laughing stock, but make it a prescient warning about what happens when ideology trumps common sense, market economics and sound engineering. The politicised nonsense keeps spewing forth, however.  Twaddle about batteries providing some kind of solution; and pie in the sky waffle about building interconnectors that cost $billions and… View original post 2,528 more words 20 Dec

RSS

Awkward Racists, Angry Mosquitoes, And Climate Change From Space: 2016's Best Videos - For your viewing pleasure. For your viewing pleasure.It's been a tough year. How about some of our most popular videos to relax? Just maybe not the one with the close-up of a mosquito sawing through human skin. Or the ones of climate change ravaging the planet.Read Full Story23 Dec

Extreme Heat, Melting Ice, And An Uncertain Future: 2016 In Climate - Silver lining: renewable energy is exploding. Silver lining: renewable energy is exploding.In 2016—almost certain to be the hottest year on record for the planet—a heat wave melted roads in India and killed hundreds of people. Climate change claimed its first extinct mammal. Arctic sea ice shrunk to a new record low; the Great Barrier reef suffered the worst die-off of coral on record.Read Full Story23 Dec

A Lot Of Opinions On What, When, And How To Eat: 2016 In Health - At the same time, we recommend the spectacular benefits of non-exercise. At the same time, we recommend the spectacular benefits of non-exercise.Health starts with what you put in your mouth, and how you burn off the calories that you put in your body—and so we found a lot of tips this year about what to eat, how to cook it eat, and even when to eat it. We found out that the Mediterranean diet isn't just better for you, but cheaper than the typical American diet. We also learned that cow's milk can be replaced with pea milk, but also that maybe we should eat a little dairy after all, because a fully-vegan diet might destroy the planet.Read Full Story23 Dec

Welcome To The Anthropocene: 2016 In Environment Stories - It's very hot here. It's very hot here.It's late December, but I'm sweating. In my case, it's because I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, where it's summer. But there's a very good chance you could be sweating no matter where you are. 2016 is on track to be the hottest—and perhaps worst—year on record. Air and ocean temperatures hit record levels, passing 2015's historic highs. (See all the places in America that smashed heat records this summer.) Sea levels kept rising, too, and there was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than ever before.Read Full Story23 Dec

How We Made Sense Of The Election And Began To Plan For The Next Four Years - What will you do? Here are some tips. What will you do? Here are some tips.Donald Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 election by a bigger margin than any other U.S. president. For the millions of Americans who voted against him—and against his xenophobic, misogynist, Islamophobic policies—the result of the election was a call to action.Read Full Story23 Dec

Renewables Are Winning, But The Fight Just Got Harder: 2016 In Energy - Most countries, cities, and companies now agree: We need a carbon-free economy and it will actually be cheaper to get there. There's only one problem... Most countries, cities, and companies now agree: We need a carbon-free economy and it will actually be cheaper to get there. There's only one problem...2016 saw the world of energy moving in two opposing directions. On one hand, we have Donald Trump doubling down on fossil fuels and pulling back from climate commitments. On the other, technologies like solar panels, smart meters and home batteries are shifting the system away from dirtier, centralized power generation. The question for 2017: will Trump or technology be more important for energy?Read Full Story23 Dec

Watch Out, There's A Robot Behind You: 2016 In Automation - The only solution to robots is a basic income. The only solution to robots is a basic income.Automation continued to be a hot topic in 2016. It backgrounded the political campaign and stoked fears of unemployment. New artificially intelligent devices (you know, robots) appeared constantly, stacking boxes, patrolling parking lots, diagnosing disease, looking after old people. American factories continued to produce more goods, but with fewer people. Automation made our lives easier, and increasingly safe, but also reduced the need for human beings and the need for humans to think for themselves.Read Full Story23 Dec

An Underground Park And Paris Without Cars: 2016 In Urban Innovation - Plus a trip to Rotterdam, the surprising world capital of sustainable urban design. Plus a trip to Rotterdam, the surprising world capital of sustainable urban design.In the future, more and more people will live in cities. They're efficient and, despite appearances, a pretty green way to manage millions of people. But they can also be bleak, noisy, dirty placers to live and work.Read Full Story23 Dec

Litterless Lunches And Urban Farm Schools: 2016 In Education - Did you know that in Denmark, they let 5-year-olds bike to school alone? Did you know that in Denmark, they let 5-year-olds bike to school alone?Education remains one of the greatest keys to future success and stability in this country, but getting it remains a huge hurdle for many (and it's not worth as much if you're poor). So it's a continuing quest to make sure more of the population takes advantage of our educational system.Read Full Story23 Dec

Tiny Houses, Green Houses, Houses Made From Water Bottles: 2016's Best Buildings - Lots of projects are working on housing the homeless in tiny, prefab houses. Will any of it work? Lots of projects are working on housing the homeless in tiny, prefab houses. Will any of it work?The world is changing fast. And when you look back at this year, the change that's all around us clearly hasn't been all good. Human ingenuity will have to be our saving grace. Perhaps there's nowhere that's more evident than in our buildings, whether you're looking at sustainable designs (see the best here) or state-of-the-art building materials (like insulating carbon foam made from burnt toast or ultra-reflective surfaces that send heat back into space). Even the CDC is getting into the mix with its new healthy building certification.Read Full Story23 Dec

The Council of Canadians

London chapter at 59th weekly sit-in vs Hydro One privatization - December 23, 2016 - 3:32pm The Council of Canadians London chapter protested at Ontario Deputy Premier Deb Matthews' constituency office against the privatization of the publicly-owned provincial electricity utility Hydro One for the 59th week in a row today. The outreach for today's sit-in noted, "59th WEEK!!! Party at Deb's Place! A 'DebYouTaunt' Ball. WEEKLY HALF HOUR HYDRO ONE NOT FOR SALE SIT-IN. MPP Deb Matthews Office, 242 Picadilly St., London. Friday December 23, 2016, 12 noon to 12:30 pm. Let Deb Matthews know that this sell-off is a Bad Idea." The London chapter was also present at Matthews' office this past Wednesday. The outreach for that had noted, "Hydro rates got you down this Holiday season? Well you're not the only one! Recently CBC covered a story about families unable to turn on their Christmas lights due to the outrageous prices of Hydro. Shame! The good news is: Premier Kathleen Wynne admits this energy crisis is 'her mistake'. We think it's time for this Liberal Government to take responsibility and clean up this mess they've created. Please join Hydro One Not For Sale & We Own It for a quick half hour event. We'll enjoy some hot chocolate and good company while driving home our import message to the Liberals: Hands off our assets!!!" Earlier this month, the Canadian Press reported, "The Canadian Union of Public Employees said that its lawsuit against the Ontario premier and two Liberal cabinet ministers over the sale of Hydro One is finally headed to court. CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn said the suit, officially filed on [December 6], is aimed at stopping the sale of any more shares in the giant electricity transmission utility before private owners have control of its board. The government has already sold about 30 per cent of the shares in Hydro One, and plans to sell another 30 per cent to raise a total of $9 billion to pay down debt and to fund public transit and infrastructure projects." That article adds, "In September, CUPE served the Ministry of the Attorney General with a notice of intent to sue Premier Kathleen Wynne, Finance Minister Charles Sousa and former Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli for misfeasance. The union claims the Liberals inappropriately mixed government and party business by holding fundraisers with cabinet ministers, including one $7,500-a-ticket event with Sousa and Chiarelli that was attended by bankers who profited from the privatization of Hydro One. Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake found that Sousa and Chiarelli may have benefited politically by attending the fundraiser with bankers involved with the sale of Hydro One, but they didn’t contravene the Members’ Integrity Act. However, he also said the legislature should consider clarifying the law to include the apparent conflicts of interest, not just actual ones." In a Toronto Star op-ed this summer, Linda McQuaig noted, "Internal polling done for the Wynne government — released under Access to Information — found that 73 per cent of Ontarians oppose the government’s plans to privatize Hydro One, the key transmission arm of the original public utility. It’s striking that Ontarians still favour public ownership, given that the dominant ideology of our times has vilified government and the public sector, while celebrating the alleged superiority of the private sector. ...In privatizing, a government surrenders important levers over public policy, and it’s hard to imagine an area where surrendering control is riskier than energy." Related to that, hydro privatization has trade implications too. Lawyer Steven Shrybman has argued, "There is a very serious concern with respect to the impacts of privatizing Hydro One, in light of Canada’s obligations  to foreign investors and service providers under international trade law." He notes, "In respect of transmission and distribution services, such measures [that could be challenged for offending investor rights] could include a mandatory obligation to connect renewable energy generators, to prioritize interconnections with other provinces rather than the United States, to conduct environmental assessments for new facilities, or to protect habitat in citing or maintaining those facilities." For other blogs about the London chapter's campaign against the privatization of Hydro One, please click here. Tags: chapters23 Dec

Trudeau ratifies WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation - December 23, 2016 - 3:19pm The Trudeau government continues to pursue a neo-liberal agenda of free trade agreements that result in lost jobs and increased income inequality. Tax-News reports, "Canada has ratified the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA). Canada's legislation to implement the TFA received Royal Assent on December 12, 2016. The TFA will enter into force once it is ratified by two-thirds of [the 164] WTO members. As of December 13, 2016, 102 of the required 110 WTO members had ratified the agreement." The World Trade Organization website notes, "In December 2013, WTO members concluded negotiations on a Trade Facilitation Agreement at the Bali Ministerial Conference. The Trade Facilitation Agreement contains provisions for expediting the movement, release and clearance of goods, including goods in transit. It also sets out measures for effective cooperation between customs and other appropriate authorities on trade facilitation and customs compliance issues. It further contains provisions for technical assistance and capacity building in this area." As noted in this December 2013 campaign blog, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow has commented, "This was not a historic win for developing countries at the WTO. They scrape by with modest and temporary protections for food security policies that should be completely excluded from corporate trade rules, which are still biased in the interests of corporations and rich countries. The bargain, if you can call it that, also came at the high price of agreeing to a trade facilitation agreement that further locks in a neo-colonial trading system that has condemned much of the world to poverty." At that time, the Associated Press also reported, "Critics say WTO rules may hinder countries from setting their own priorities in environmental protection, worker rights, food security and other areas. And they say sudden reductions in import tariffs can wipe out industries, causing job losses in rich and poor countries." Last week, Toronto Star national affairs columnist Thomas Walkom wrote, "Justin Trudeau promised neo-liberalism with a human face. Those weren’t the words he used. But the phrase expresses the gist of the election campaign he successfully waged just over a year ago. In that campaign, Trudeau said his Liberals would pursue most of Conservative Stephen Harper’s economic goals — including resource exploitation, pipelines and free trade. But they would do so in a way that distributed the proceeds more equitably. In effect, he promised to be Tony Blair to Harper’s Margaret Thatcher — doing much the same as his political nemesis, but in a more acceptable manner." Walkom adds, "The Liberal government continues apace with its overarching globalization plans. The free trade and investment deal between Canada and the European Union is closer to fruition. A similar deal with China is on the agenda, as is some kind of free-trade relationship with Japan. Are the rewards from Trudeau-style neo-liberalism being shared more equitably? As for the hallmark of neo-liberal economies — the precarious workplace of low wages and multiple jobs — the advice from Finance Minister Bill Morneau is hardly encouraging. In effect he has said: Get used to it." A Tufts University study on the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) projected a net loss of 23,000 jobs in Canada in the first seven years of CETA. That study also projected that with CETA the average income in Canada could fall by $2,650 by 2023. And it found that CETA will exacerbate inequality because any economic net gains from CETA will flow overwhelmingly to the owners of capital rather than to workers. Another Tufts University study found that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would cost Canada 58,000 jobs and increase income inequality. The study estimates that the 12-signatory countries would lose a net total of 771,000 jobs in the 10 years after the TPP comes into force. Last month, Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland testified before the Senate and stated, "At a time when so many other countries are being torn apart by ugly and polarized politics, I'm really pleased to be able to be here with you and to strongly support the [WTO's Trade Facilitation Agreement], which was struck by the previous government." Taking a contrary view, our ally UK-based War on Want trade campaigner Mark Dearn has warned that free trade policies that generate inequality fuel the racist right that we are increasingly seeing in Europe and the United States. 23 Dec

Victoria chapter calls for spending on public transit, not urban highway expansion - December 23, 2016 - 1:14pm Eric Doherty The Council of Canadians Victoria chapter says all levels of government should shift money away from road projects that increase carbon pollution and spend those funds instead on public transit. In a Vancouver Sun opinion piece, Victoria chapter activist Eric Doherty, who is also transportation planning consultant and a founding member of the Better Transit Alliance of Greater Victoria, writes, "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Christy Clark and most of Canada’s premiers recently signed the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. 'Framework' is a good title for this agreement — it is barely a start on what is needed. But it contains a policy shift that could dramatically reduce climate pollution from transportation." Doherty notes, "Over the past decades the federal government has funded transportation infrastructure with little or no regard for climate pollution. They spent billions of public dollars every year on projects that increase climate pollution, such as urban highway expansion. And since projects are usually cost-shared, one billion of federal money is often matched by two billion from the province and region or municipality. Largely as a result of this perverse spending, between 1990 and 2014 climate pollution from transportation increased 32 per cent." He adds, "Trudeau’s first budget allocated new money to a public transit fund, which can reduce CO2, but there was no commitment to shift money away from projects that increase pollution. Now there is a commitment, of sorts, in the fine print of the climate framework. The framework commits the federal and provincial governments to 'shift from higher- to lower-emitting types of transportation, including through investing in infrastructure'. The examples include shifting from driving to transit and cycling, as well as shifting freight from trucks to rail." Doherty concludes, "When governments bury a policy in the fine print, it usually means they have little intention of following through. ...[But] everyone who wants better transit has a new tool to help ensure our public funds are not spent to make the climate crisis worse. The first step is to get your municipality and regional district to endorse this new policy of shifting money away from road projects that increase pollution to public transit. Then be prepared to demand that your mayor and councillors actively oppose the next polluting urban-highway-expansion project that the provincial government announces." The Delta-Richmond and Vancouver-Burnaby chapters have been vocal opponents of the proposed ten-lane Massey Bridge in Metro Vancouver and have called on the Trudeau government to withhold federal infrastructure funding from the project. Construction on that bridge is scheduled to begin in 2017. For blogs on that campaign, please click here. The Council of Canadians supports the Leap Manifesto demand for affordable public transit in place of more cars.   Tags: chapters23 Dec

Thunder Bay chapter comments on Canadian Environmental Assessment Act review - December 23, 2016 - 1:10pm Rod Northey, Renée Pelletier, Johanne Gélinas, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, Doug Horswill. The Council of Canadians Thunder Bay chapter has submitted written comments to the federal panel reviewing the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Water campaigner Emma Lui and Prairies organizer Diane Connors have written, "The Trudeau government committed to 'review, modernize, and restore' environmental and regulatory processes. In June 2016, six federal ministers whose mandates impact the environment announced they would review environmental legislation gutted by the former Harper government. The reviews are to include consultations through the fall in four areas: 1) the National Energy Board, 2) the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 3) the Fisheries Act, and 4) the Navigation Protection Act." Chapter activist Ruth Cook writes, "Social justice and environmental justice go hand-in-hand, and the TBay Council of Canadians believes strongly that these are two ideals worth striving for, and that should be reflected in the Act under discussion. Implicit in this statement is the recognition of our concomitant responsibility to make every effort to ensure that our social, political and legal processes, systems and institutions are directed and operated in such a way as to allow justice to be served. Recent political developments in various countries around the world underscore this as imperative." Cook then highlights the chapter's support for these five actions that have also been endorsed by 1500 scientists: Seek and act on the best available evidence (from all available sources) Make all information from environmental assessments permanently and publicly available Assess cumulative environmental effects from past, present and future projects and activities across multiple scales Work to prevent and eliminate real, apparent, or potential conflicts-of-interest by requiring public disclosure Develop explicit decision-making criteria and provide full, transparent rationale of factors considered And she highlights, "We recognize that the implications of a number of different Acts comes into play in any discussion about the environment. Many other Acts, regulations, commission and agency mandates and so on will need to be amended, or repealed and replaced so as to avoid confusion, conflict, and loopholes which can arise when government processes are not all on the same page. The Mining Act, the Forestry Act, the former Navigable Waters Act are just a few which will require attention. Neither the public nor the government can act purposefully and efficiently in any processes until the legal framework is consistent, timely, and transparent." The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is being reviewed through a public consultation process with an expert review panel. The Financial Post has reported, "Montreal-based strategist and consultant Johanne Gélinas with Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton will chair the panel, which will also include former [mining giant] Teck Resources executive Doug Horswill, aboriginal lawyer Renée Pelletier and Toronto-based environmental lawyer Rod Northey." The review panel will report by January 31, 2017.   Tags: chapters23 Dec

Canadian Blood Services says paid plasma clinics are harming voluntary donations - December 22, 2016 - 11:01am The Council of Canadians has been opposing Canadian Plasma Resources opening for-profit blood plasma collection clinics since March 2013. Now CBC reports, "The head of Canadian Blood Services (CBS) says [there are] signs it is losing volunteer donors to a for-profit clinic that pays people to give plasma. Canadian Plasma Resources, a private operator that gives gift cards to plasma donors, opened a collection facility in Saskatoon in February. 'There's marked confusion as to who is operating in the Saskatoon market', said Dr. Graham Sher, CEO of CBS. Donor numbers have also dropped in that city." Dr. Sher says, "We've begun to see some early impacts of having this private, for-profit enterprise operate in our jurisdiction. It is early evidence, but it's certainly consistent with what other countries are seeing when you see large-scale ramp-up of the paid plasma industry side by side with the blood industry. We in Canada are at risk, if we don't collect more of our own plasma, that we're not going to be able to access the global supply of these plasma drugs. We have to collect more plasma, control it, and keep it in Canada for Canadian patients, which the private industry is not obligated to do. They will sell to the highest bidder." The Trudeau government approved the private, for-profit plasma collection clinic in Saskatoon this past February despite opposition from the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, and the Council of Canadians, including the Regina chapter. The CBC article adds, "Blood Watch, an advocacy group that represents tainted blood victims across Canada, [has] called on federal Health Minister Jane Philpott to revoke the licence for the Saskatoon facility. [They] would also like to see a moratorium on approving more paid plasma clinics. Canadian Blood Services is also lobbying for a moratorium." Canadian Plasma Resources plans to open a for-profit plasma collection clinic in Moncton in March 2017. Clinics could also be opened in British Columbia and Nova Scotia. This past April, the Council of Canadians, Blood Watch and the Nova Scotia Citizens' Health Care Network organized a public forum in Halifax against for-profit plasma clinics. The Council of Canadians has also expressed its support for Bill 43, legislation introduced by the Nova Scotia NDP that would protect the voluntary system and prohibit the sale of blood and plasma in the province. The Council of Canadians was also part of the successful broad-based effort in 2013-14 to ban for-profit plasma clinics in Ontario. Council of Canadians health care campaigner Michael Butler says, “Plasma must be treated as a public resource, not an opportunity for pharmaceutical industry profits, There is no reason jeopardize the safety and integrity of our voluntary blood system. Public, not-for-profit, voluntary blood and plasma collection is the safest and most ethical method of collection." To read more on this issue, please click here. 22 Dec

Council trade campaigner challenges the TPP in Tokyo - December 22, 2016 - 10:16am Council of Canadians trade campaigner Sujata Dey gave an 80-minute presentation against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at the National Diet (legislature) Members' Building in Tokyo today. Dey was there at the invitation of Uchida Shoko of the Tokyo-based Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC). Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been a vocal proponent of the TPP and Japan ratified the deal on December 9, but Dey highlights, "The TPP is unpopular here and all the opposition parties are against the deal." While US president-elect Donald Trump has said that the United States will withdraw from the TPP on "day one" of his presidency, Council of Canadian chairperson Maude Barlow has commented, "I've watched these trade agreements for a long time. The TPP is not dead til it's dead." It has also been reported that Canada will not withdraw from the TPP until February 2018, the two-year deadline that had been set by TPP countries when they signed the deal in Auckland in February 2016. The Council of Canadians has raised numerous concerns about the TPP including: JOB LOSS Tufts University says, "TPP would lead to employment losses in all countries, with a total of 771,000 lost jobs. The United States would be the hardest hit, with a loss of 448,000 jobs. Developing economies participating in the agreement would also suffer employment losses, as higher competitive pressures force them to curtail labor incomes and increase production for export." HIGHER DRUG COSTS It also includes a provision that extends patents for pharmaceutical corporations. In her comments on the TPP, Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, has stated, "If these agreements open trade yet close the door to affordable medicines we have to ask the question: is this really progress at all." CORPORATE RIGHTS And it contains the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says, "It used to be the basic principle was polluter pay. If you damaged the environment, then you have to pay. Now if you pass a regulation that restricts ability to pollute or does something about climate change, you could be sued and could pay billions of dollars." While many have clearly voiced their opposition to the TPP at hearings, consultations and protests, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has commented, "In our conversations with Canadians, with industries which are ongoing, there are a lot of people in favour of it and there are a few who have real concerns and we’re looking at understanding and allaying certain fears and building on some of the opportunities." For more on our campaign to stop the TPP, please click here. 22 Dec

Trudeau supports Trump on Keystone XL pipeline - December 21, 2016 - 10:18pm Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he backs incoming US President Donald Trump's declaration of support for the 830,000 barrel per day Keystone XL pipeline. CBC reports, "During a question and answer session following his speech at the [Calgary Chamber of Commerce], Trudeau said he supports a renewed push to get the Keystone XL pipeline built, a project Trump has vowed to approve shortly after he takes office. Trudeau told the business audience that he and Trump discussed Keystone in their first conversation after the U.S. election. 'He actually brought up Keystone XL and indicated that he was very supportive of it', Trudeau said during a question-and-answer session after his speech. 'I will work with the new administration when it gets sworn in ... I'm confident that the right decisions will be taken.'" In October 2013, when Trudeau visited Washington, CBC reported, "The Montreal MP said during the talk that he supports TransCanada’s proposed pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast because it would be good for Canada and the U.S. He acknowledged that his position may have surprised some in an audience that would have included strong critics of the project." Trudeau highlighted, "My support for Keystone is steadfast. ...The fact that I'd be talking positively about the project I think got people thinking about the fact that perhaps it's not as bad as it's been caricatured." And then when President Barack Obama rejected the pipeline in November 2015, Trudeau stated, "We are disappointed by the decision but respect the right of the United States to make the decision." As early as May 2016, CBC reported, "Trump said that he would approve TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline proposal if elected, reversing a decision by the administration of President Barack Obama to block it over environmental concerns. 'I would absolutely approve it, 100 per cent, but I would want a better deal. I want it built, but I want a piece of the profits. That's how we're going to make our country rich again.'" And on December 11, Trump stated, "The Keystone pipeline, you’re going to have a decision fairly quickly. And you’ll see that.” TransCanada is pushing for approval of the pipeline too. On November 9, just hours after Trump's election win was announced, the Canadian Press reported, "TransCanada Corp. says it’s evaluating ways to engage the newly elected Donald Trump administration on the potential benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline. Company spokesman Mark Cooper said that TransCanada remains fully committed to building the controversial project that U.S. President Barack Obama rejected last year." Filling the Keystone XL pipeline with tar sands crude would facilitate a 36 per cent increase in current tar sands production and increase greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 22 million tonnes a year. The 1,897 kilometre pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Houston, Texas would also - just like the Dakota Access Pipeline - cross numerous waterways and put drinking water at risk. The Trudeau government has already approved the 890,000 barrel per day Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and the 760,000 barrel per day Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. Trump's statements and his appointment of an Exxon executive as US Secretary of State all but guarantees the 830,000 barrel per day Keystone XL will be approved quickly. On top of that, the Trudeau government has just appointed new members to the National Energy Board to enable the review of the 1.1 million barrel per day TransCanada Energy East pipeline to proceed. The Council of Canadians travelled to Washington numerous times to join protests against Keystone XL, including calling on the Canadian embassy in August 2011 to demand that they stop lobbying for the pipeline, participating in the Surround the White House action in November 2011, and the Forward on Climate protest in February 2013. We will continue to work in the new year with our allies to stop Keystone XL. 21 Dec

European Court of Justice advocate-general ruling says trade deals must be ratified by 38 national & regional parliaments - December 21, 2016 - 5:15pm The Council of Canadians welcomes the European Court of Justice ruling that suggests 'free trade' agreements must be ratified by all thirty-eight national and regional parliaments in the European Union. The Guardian reports, "Eleanor Sharpston QC, an advocate general at the European court of justice, argued in a ruling released on Wednesday that an EU trade deal with Singapore could only be finalised by the EU and member states, and not by Brussels institutions acting alone. In practice, this means the deal may have to be ratified by at least 38 national and regional parliaments, including the EU’s 28 national parliaments, at least five regional and linguistic parliaments in Belgium and at least five upper houses, including those of Germany and Italy." The ruling states, “While the advocate general notes that difficulties may arise from a ratification process involving all of the member states alongside the EU, she considers that that cannot affect the question of who has competence to conclude the agreement." Her full opinion can be read here. The UK edition of The Sun notes, "While Sharpston ruled that the EU was able to ratify parts of the agreement as a single body, she found that member-states’ approval will be needed in the areas including air and maritime transport, labour and environmental standards, social policy, some aspects of intellectual property rights and dispute settlement [which would include the controversial Investment Court System]." Cambridge University Professor of European Union Law Catherine Barnard says the ruling would hand a veto over 'free trade' agreements to a total of 38 national and regional parliaments. Specifically, this ruling would apply to the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). That confirms that EU member states (and regions) other than Belgium could scuttle CETA. This past October, just after the CETA signing ceremony in Brussels, The Globe and Mail reported, "[It has] emerged [that CETA] could be scrapped at any time before final ratification. [That's because] the EU and Belgium have now agreed that any one of Belgium’s regions can scrap CETA at any time before the final ratification vote if MPs don’t believe CETA is working. That would effectively kill the treaty because it would mean Belgium couldn’t ratify it." Beyond Belgium, there are indications that CETA is facing a tough road to ratification in several other EU member states. Notably, there will be a referendum in the Netherlands that is likely to produce a strong 'no to CETA' vote. The Guardian has also reported, "Activists in the Netherlands have gathered almost two-thirds of the signatures needed to lay the groundwork for a referendum on [CETA]. The petition can only be launched once parliament has ratified the deal, something that is not expected before parliamentary elections due in March 2017." Today's Guardian news report adds, "Sharpston’s opinion does not bind the Luxembourg-based court, which is expected to issue its judgment in early 2017. But the court follows the views of advocate generals in a majority of cases." Bloomberg notes, "While the opinion is non-binding until a final ruling in several months’ time, the Luxembourg-based court follows such legal advice in the majority of cases." And The Wall Street Journal highlights, "The ECJ will publish its final ruling in three to six months, which are typically in line with that of its top adviser." CETA faces a ratification vote in the European Parliament (now scheduled for February 1-2), but Greenpeace EU trade policy adviser Shira Stanton says, "The European Parliament and the commission should not ignore this opinion, and should wait for the court’s final decision in 2017 before taking any further decision on CETA." The Council of Canadians will continue to active in both Canada and Europe to stop CETA and the economic inequality it would bring. 21 Dec

The Council calls on Trudeau to support listing asbestos in Rotterdam Convention - December 21, 2016 - 4:03pm The Council of Canadians welcomes a ban on the "manufacture, use, import and export of asbestos-containing products", but insists that the Trudeau government also agree to listing asbestos in the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. The Globe and Mail reports, "Canada will ban asbestos use by 2018, in what many health advocates hail as a victory for public health, albeit one that is long overdue. The decision brings Canada in line with more than 50 other countries, that have banned the known carcinogen and comes after decades of lobbying from health experts, labour unions and those who have lost family members to asbestos-related diseases. For years, both provincial and federal governments had staunchly supported the country’s asbestos-mining industry, despite mounting evidence of the health risks the mineral poses." Our ally Kathleen Ruff, a longtime anti-asbestos activist, says, "All those who have been and continue to be involved in the struggle to end the asbestos tragedy in Canada and around the world will rejoice that Canada will now, at long last, join the over fifty countries who have banned asbestos." However, The Globe and Mail also notes, "On the global stage, the federal government plans to 'review its position' on the listing of asbestos as a hazardous material before next year’s meeting of parties to the Rotterdam Convention, which is an international treaty. For years, Canada had opposed such a listing. The government didn’t clarify whether it will now support a listing." The Council of Canadians has opposed the Canadian government’s support of the asbestos industry for more than sixteen years: In September 2000, national chairperson Maude Barlow wrote then-Liberal trade minister Pierre Pettigrew stating, "Canada’s aggressive support of the asbestos industry and the pursuit of markets, in spite of the estimated and projected death toll from asbestos, is a disgraceful indication that Canada values trade in toxic materials above the health of its own citizens and the health of workers around the world." We also released a report that that called on the federal government to "plan for the global elimination of the asbestos industry and initiate a ‘just transition’ strategy for the industry and its workers." In June 2009, we joined with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, the Canadian Auto Workers (now Unifor), the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, MiningWatch Canada, and others to demand that Canadian parliamentarians heed the call to ban Canadian asbestos. In July 2010, Political Director Brent Patterson and Blue Planet Project campaigner Meera Karunananthan met with Stephen Hughes, a British Member of the European Parliament, in Brussels to discuss asbestos and the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Hughes highlighted that the European Union had banned all use of asbestos and extraction, manufacture and processing of asbestos products in 2005. In November 2010, we signed on to a full-page ad that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. The RightOnCanada.ca ad said, "All asbestos kills. That’s why over 50 countries have banned it, and why the World Health Organization has called for an end to its use. That’s why no industrialized country, including Canada, uses it. That’s why we spend millions of dollars removing it from our schools, hospitals and homes. But Canada still exports asbestos to developing countries. Prime Minister Harper, stop exporting asbestos disease to the developing world." In April 2011, we highlighted media reports during the federal election that, "Harper has declared that Canada will not ban the export of asbestos - despite calls from health groups - because to do so would hurt Canadian industry. …He flatly said his government will not ban the sale of the product, which he preferred to call ‘chrysotile’ instead of asbestos." In June 2011, we encouraged our supporters to respond to an online action alert - in the critical days leading up to a meeting on the Rotterdam Convention - that called on Harper to, "Join the United Nations in banning the production and exporting of asbestos worldwide." Unfortunately, at that June 2011 meeting, Canada opposed listing asbestos as a hazardous chemical. In December 2016, The Council of Canadians - along with the Montreal, Prince Albert and Quill Plains (Wynyard) chapters - and about 60 other groups signed a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supporting a comprehensive ban on asbestos in Canada and proposing to establish an expert panel to review an Asbestos Management Regime in Canada. The Toronto Star has reported, "Listing asbestos on Annex III of the convention would force exporters such as Canada to warn recipient countries of any health hazards. Those countries could also then refuse asbestos imports if they didn’t think they could handle the product safely. Canada has twice before played a lead role in blocking the inclusion of asbestos under the Rotterdam Convention, which operates by consensus." The Rotterdam Convention Conference of Parties meeting will take place May 3-4, 2017 in Geneva, Swtizerland. 21 Dec

Slide - Unbottle water for Ontario’s communities - 21 Dec

Dublinmick's Breaking News » Feed

60 Minutes Australia: Special Investigation Spies Lords and Predators - “I wasn’t a person… I was an object.” Australian TV  was thoughtful enough to ignore the embarrassing fact that at the time Lord Greville Jenner allegedly slept with young kids in his marital bed, he was also the Chairman of the BOD, … Continue reading →00:00

FBI Insider: Clinton Staff Linked To Madeleine McCann Disappearance -   Posts According to FBI insiders, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and his brother Tony may be connected to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. According to investigators, the Podesta’s were in Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3rd 2007 – … Continue reading →24 Dec

Blocked- Locked- and Hacked: How They Are Shutting Down the Alternative Media Online - Dec 16, 2016 Melissa Dykes So this is what happened to us after we uploaded our last video. Our link was blocked on Facebook when I tried to share it in so-called “private messages” (obviously realizing that the idea of … Continue reading →22 Dec

Empire of Fear Porn - I have read some bullshit on the web lately but I am giving this one a gold star. Empire of Fear Porn * New Modes of Sophisticated Dissimulation: Who’s Encouraging Fear and Hatred between East and West – and Why? … Continue reading →18 Dec

Vaccination and Health Outcomes: A Survey of 6- to 12-year-old Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children based on Mothers’ Reports - Anthony R. Mawson1*, Brian D. Ray2, Azad R. Bhuiyan3 and Binu Jacob4 1Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health (Initiative), Jackson State University, USA 2National Home Education Research Institute, USA 3Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health (Initiative), USA 4Former … Continue reading →18 Dec

Choosing Stallone for NEA should Alienate Trump-Supporting Gun Owners - Appointing gun-grabber advocate and hypocrite Stallone to anything will be a slap in the face of every gun owner who voted for Trump. “Donald Trump has drawn ‘first blood’ in the search for his incoming administration’s senior arts role – … Continue reading →16 Dec

Canadian Pedophile News: #PROJECTSPADE Nearly 400 Children Rescued And 348 Adults Arrested in Canadian Child Pornography Bust - Published on Dec 15, 2016 The three-year project, named Project Spade, began when undercover officers with the Toronto Police Service Child Exploitation service made contact with a Toronto man allegedly sharing “very graphic images” of child sexual abuse in Oct. … Continue reading →16 Dec

Zuckerberg Has A New Plan To Block Truth -         Facebook Comes Up With a Plan to Fight ‘Fake News’ Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to crack down to fake news is pretty low-tech: Ask reporters and news writers if an article is fake, then request Facebook’s 1.8 … Continue reading →15 Dec

Rome on verge of WAR between migrants and the poor, mayor of Italy’s capital warns - ROME is on the verge of war as friction grows between poor Italians and and an increasing number of migrants, the city’s mayor has warned.   http://players.brightcove.net/2540076170001/NykPWQNal_default/index.html?videoId=5248260151001 Virginia Raggi told an immigration summit of European city leaders mayors need to … Continue reading →15 Dec

Midwives’ Flown From Africa to UK to Mutilate Young Girls - So-called midwives are being flown from Africa to carry out female genital mutilation (FGM) in towns and cities across the UK, a charity warns, despite it being illegal. The women, who are considered midwives among FGM practising communities, don’t have … Continue reading →14 Dec

Complementary Medicine / Alternative Medicine News From Medical News Today

Insufficient evidence to support use of homeopathy in livestock - Trials conducted under very specific conditions and design flawed in many cases, say researchers.14 Dec

What Vitamins Are Best for Psoriasis? - There are conventional treatments for psoriasis but what effect can vitamins have on psoriasis? Learn about vitamins A, D, C, E, and other nutrients.12 Dec

Memory recall, fear response influenced by breathing - Breathing is not just necessary for oxygen. New research finds inhalation synchronizes brain activity linked to memory recall and fear response. 9 Dec

Daily hour of yoga lowers blood pressure - New research presented in India suggests 1 hour of yoga each day significantly reduces blood pressure in patients with prehypertension. 8 Dec

Nail Psoriasis: Symptoms and Treatment - What is psoriasis and what is nail psoriasis? When should a doctor be consulted and what prescription and homeopathic treatments are available? 7 Dec

10 Home Remedies for Treating Psoriasis - Psoriasis may be treated by a number of home remedies, but what are they and how can they help? What medical therapy can help psoriasis? 7 Dec

Tai Chi may benefit veterans with PTSD - A small study of veterans with PTSD suggests the ancient Chinese exercise Tai Chi has the potential to help manage symptoms of the disorder. 5 Dec

Can Tea Tree Oil Help Treat Psoriasis? - What is psoriasis and what is tea tree oil? Learn how tea tree oil may be used for psoriasis as well as other natural remedies. Can lifestyle changes help? 4 Dec

Can Coconut Oil Help Treat Psoriasis? - What is psoriasis and what causes it? Learn about coconut oil, if it can be used to treat psoriasis, and other treatments that are available. 3 Dec

8 Herbs and Supplements to Help Treat Depression - What is depression, what are its symptoms, and when should a doctor be contacted? Learn about different herbs and supplements that may treat depression. 1 Dec

Electro-acupuncture for disrupted sleep in women with breast cancer - It's somewhat of a little-known adverse effect of having breast cancer, but studies suggest that approximately 30% to 40% of women with breast cancer report persistent hot flashes.30 Nov

Can Frankincense Treat Cancer? Get the Facts - Frankincense conjures up images of myth and ancient medicine. It has been hailed as an alternative cure for cancer and other conditions. Should we use it?28 Nov

Apricot Seeds: Cancer Treatment or Danger to Health? - Are apricot seeds an effective, alternative treatment for cancer? Learn about the nutritional content of apricot kernels and the risks of consumption.27 Nov

Can Apple Cider Vinegar Help Treat Psoriasis? - Some people use apple cider vinegar as a home remedy to treat their psoriasis. This article looks at whether it is effective, along with other options.24 Nov

Breathing-based yoga may help treat major depression - Sudarshan Kriya yoga - which focuses on controlled breathing - may be beneficial for patients with major depression who do not respond to antidepressants.23 Nov

Can Essential Oils be Used for Treating Asthma? - Can people with asthma use essential oils to treat their symptoms? Learn about which oils may be of benefit, along with possible risks and precautions.22 Nov

Ways to Induce Labor: Medical and Natural Options - Why might some pregnancies need to be induced and how is this achieved? Learn about the natural ways that may be used to induce labour.11 Nov

UPMC experts combat foot pain with fat injections - Patients who suffer from pedal fat pad atrophy, or the loss of fat in the ball of the foot, may benefit from an innovative new procedure that involves restoring the lost padding by grafting fat... 3 Nov

UCI study finds acupuncture lowers hypertension by activating natural opioids - Researchers with the UCI Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine have found that regular electroacupunture treatment can lower hypertension by increasing the release of a kind of opioid in... 2 Nov

Patients report symptom improvement following prolotherapy for knee osteoarthritis - Prolotherapy, an injection-based complementary treatment for symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, was associated with improved knee-specific symptoms, quality of life, and ability to participate in...27 Oct

World first porous acupuncture needles enhance therapeutic properties - A DGIST research team led by Professor Su-Il In, who developed acupuncture needles combined with nanotechnology, was recognized as the world's first application of this technology.19 Oct

PCOS: Red wine compound remedies abnormal hormone levels - A compound found in wine and grapes - resveratrol - has been found to help correct hormone imbalance and improve insulin sensitivity in women with PCOS.19 Oct

Can Castor Oil Be Used For Treating Constipation? - Constipation can conspire to ruin your day. What causes constipation and how can we prevent it? Learn how castor oil and other treatments may help18 Oct

The placebo effect: Knowingly taking sham pills may reduce chronic pain - New study suggests it is not the expectation that a 'dummy pill' is real that elicits the placebo effect, but rather the ritual associated with taking it.17 Oct

Can You Treat Psoriasis With Essential Oils? - Psoriasis is a common skin condition. What is it and what causes it? Learn how essentials oils and natural remedies may be used to treat psoriasis.17 Oct

Can Olive Oil Be Used to Treat Constipation? - Olive oil has long been used as a simple treatment for constipation. Learn more about this home remedy that gets stools moving again.12 Oct

Transcendental meditation may help ease trauma symptoms, stress - A study of more than 180 male prisoners reveals how a 4-month transcendental meditation program eased stress and almost halved symptoms of trauma. 8 Oct

Certain alternative therapies may help patients with bowel disorders - A new review looks at the evidence behind the effectiveness of complementary or alternative therapies - including probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, fiber, and herbal medicinal products - for the... 4 Oct

FDA warns against the use of homeopathic teething tablets and gels - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers that homeopathic teething tablets and gels may pose a risk to infants and children. 3 Oct

Mindfulness meditation helps to control emotions, says study - Brain studies suggest that mindfulness meditation can help to control negative emotions, even in people who are not 'mindful' by nature. 3 Oct

Some herbal and dietary supplements can be toxic to the liver - A new review based on a research symposium sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease and the National Institutes of Health highlights the potentially damaging effects of...29 Sep

TheCattleSite - Global Industry News Feeds

4th BIOMIN Front Runners Forum Held in Ooty, India - INDIA - Four years ago, BIOMIN India came up with a new concept to approach and provide solutions to our customers: the BIOMIN Front Runners Forum. This event supports our aim to be the knowledge and strategy partner to our customers, and to help them to become – and remain – market leaders in the livestock industry—in other words; get ahead of the crowd.23 Dec

Rodenticides Leaflet Explains Rule Change and Options - UK - Since 1 October 2016, a rule that buyers of stewardship-label rodenticides must show proof of competence certification means farmers, gamekeepers and pest controllers unable to do so cannot be supplied.22 Dec

US Renews Fight Against EU Ban on Hormone-treated Beef - EU - The United States said Thursday (22 December) it was relaunching a trade fight against a European Union ban on imports of hormone-treated American beef, raising the possibility of imposing tariffs on European goods.22 Dec

China Champion of Free Trade Since Joining WTO, Says Expert - CHINA - China has become a champion of free trade, boosting the global exchange of goods and services since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) 15 years ago, an Argentine expert in international law has said.22 Dec

WTO Decision Important for NZ Beef - NEW ZEALAND - Trade Minister Todd McClay today welcomed the World Trade Organization's (WTO) decision upholding New Zealand's challenge to 18 agricultural non-tariff barriers imposed by Indonesia.22 Dec

Beef Lags Behind as Dairy Births Jump - IRELAND - The number of beef births occurring on Irish farms this year has lagged considerably on 2015, figures from the ICBF show.22 Dec

Indonesian Farmers Losing Appetite for Fresh Milk Business - INDONESIA - The Indonesian Association of Dairy Cattle Farmers (APSPI) has predicted that the sluggish trend in domestic fresh milk production will continue next year as more local producers are likely to resign from fierce competition with imported dairy products.22 Dec

Japanese Group to Sell Stakes in Chinese Farm, Dairy Outfits - JAPAN - Asahi Group Holdings will unload its shares in a dairy company and farm business in China, as it realigns its assets to focus on strategic growth fields.22 Dec

EIB Loans 50m Euros to Polish Dairy Producer - POLAND - The European Investment Bank (EIB) said it loaned 50 million euros(52.27 million US dollars) to a heavyweight dairy producer in Poland to boost the country's dairy section on Thursday.22 Dec

Digestibility Is the Top Reason Livestock Producers Use Phytogenic Feed Additives - GLOBAL - Digestibility enhancement ranks as the number one reason that the livestock industry uses phytogenic feed additives (PFAs), according to a recent survey of more than one thousand agribusiness professionals.22 Dec

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Trump speaks with “president” of Taiwan, harasses her sexually - This is a guest post by a well-known political commentator, the father of Pajama Boy. He is a true “Obama patriot,” whose views should matter little after mid-day on January 20th. Here are the thoughts of President Reject Obama: President Elect Donald Trump … Continue reading → 3 Dec

Islamist Organization Threatens Violence against the Trump Administration - An article posted today by The Clarion Project — which supports the reformation of Islam and opposes Sharia law and Islamic jihad — states that an Islamist organization named “Muslims of America” is planning violent confrontations with the Trump administration. … Continue reading →28 Nov

Trump Won Fair and Square. Get a life. - Democrats, the lamebrain media (but I repeat myself), academics (Opps!  I repeated myself again) and others who should know better are protesting — often violently — against Trump’s victory. Trump Derangement Syndrome is upon us. Trump won fair and square. … Continue reading →20 Nov

America is addicted, sleepy and becoming comatose. - Hillary and her media titillate us with their sexual fantasies and put us to sleep with heroin for the body and heroin for the mind. Trump yells “Wake up and Fix our open borders!” Hillary mumbles “America is already great and … Continue reading →18 Oct

Who recorded the Pu**y Gate conversation? Who released it now and why? - The private conversation between Billy Bush and Donald Trump was surreptitiously recorded by someone. It was provided to NBC approximately eleven years later and shortly before the October 9th presidential debate. We have not been told by whom or why, … Continue reading → 9 Oct

PU**YGATE: Horrors! Trump Caught in Guy Talk! - The left apparently believes that the Trump campaign must end in disgrace because, in 2005, Trump was recorded (apparently surreptitiously) bragging in a private conversation with George H.W. Bush’s nephew, Billy Bush, about how he tried (but failed) to get a … Continue reading → 8 Oct

Trump should propose real debates - The first presidential “debate” was a farce. The next presidential “debates” will likely be as well. Rather than submit to biased mainstream media moderators (but I repeat myself), Trump should propose real debates, in addition to or as substitutes for … Continue reading → 4 Oct

Decline of the Empire

Catch-22 - Here I am staring at this blank page trying to figure out what I might say about anything. Obvious flatland fuck-ups were on display everywhere you looked this year. I am still sometimes surprised that I need to point them out to get a few humans to notice them. That's important to me, for others to see the same train wrecks I'm seeing. Only human after all. I suppose that's why I kind of lost it when I read that, for humans— Developing situational awareness ... will not require altruism or idealism or self-sacrifice, only accurate self-perception and enlightened self-interest. Sounds easy! No need for altruism! No need for self-sacrifice! Really, we humans just need a nudge in the direction of "accurate self-perception" and "enlightened self-interest". And then I remembered how hard I've worked on this blog with very little tangible reward to develop "situational awareness" in a few thousands of humans. And most of the time it didn't take. I'm not talking about awareness that humans are fucking up the biosphere—that's easy, Robert Scribbler can do that, even David Grinspoon can do that—but awareness that humans are the problem. That's the only "situation" that matters if you're looking for solutions. The "catch-22" here is that if humans are the problem—if humans do not have the required capacity for "accurate self-perception"—there are no solutions. And they do not have the required capacity, or so it seems to me. That's what I mean when I say humans are  "whistling in the dark." If you truly understand what I'm talking about, then you will also see that the human world necessarily consists of an endless stream of socially motivated filtered bullshit, something like this— And that's what I see everywhere I look. Good lord, if you didn't see the primates in 2016, you never will. Because it wasn't us, right? Russia did it  This is not "nihilism" as some humans would have it. That's reality. If some humans want to interpret that as nihilism, well, be my guest. Humans can misinterpret anything and almost always do. (Sometimes they get it right like a broken clock that's right twice a day.) Have a nice holiday weekend. Try to enjoy yourself. It needn't be a nihilistic weekend. 23 Dec

Our Foolish Species - Astrobiologist David Grinspoon, whose book Lonely Planets sits on my bookshelf, has a new take on the Anthropocene, which can be defined as the era of human dominance of the Earth. (Geologists argue about the dating.) Those few thousands of people (out of 7.4 billion) who understand the importance of maintaining a livable planetary environment regard the anthropocene as a total disaster for the non-human biosphere and, eventually, for Homo sapiens itself. Not Grinspoon. He is "a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and an adjunct professor of astrophysical and planetary science at University of Colorado. His popular writing has been featured in The New York Times, Slate, and Scientific American, among others. His latest book is Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future (2016). He lives in Washington, DC." Clearly Grinspoon has been a great social success among the humans. But, an astrobiologist who lives in Washington D.C? Maybe we've identified the problem right there. Anyway, here we go. Have a bucket handy. ... Making massive changes in landscapes is not unique to us. Beavers do plenty of that, for example, when they build dams, alter streams, cut down forests and create new meadows. Even changing global climate and initiating mass extinction is not a human first. Photosynthetic bacteria did that some 2.5 billion years ago. What distinguishes humans from other world-changing organisms must be related to our great cleverness and adaptability; Oh, my! Human "cleverness" is destroying the biosphere and human "adaptability" helps humans not to notice what they're doing. (Adaptability is ultimately a form of filtering.) ... the power that comes from communicating, planning and working in social groups; transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next; and applying these skills toward altering our surroundings and expanding our habitable domains. However, people have been engaged in these activities for tens of thousands of years, and have produced many different environmental modifications proposed as markers of the Anthropocene’s beginning. Therefore, those definitions strike me as incomplete. Until now, the people causing the disturbances had no way of recognizing or even conceiving of a global change. Yes, humans have been altering our planet for millennia, but there is something going on now that was not happening when we started doing all that world-changing. To me, what makes the Anthropocene unprecedented and fully worthy of the name is our growing knowledge of what we are doing to this world. Self-conscious global change is a completely new phenomenon. Regarding humanity as a whole, one might say alternatively that "self-conscious global change" is certainly something we might wish for, considering that it it does not exist. It certainly would be a "new phenomenon." But, hey, Grinspoon is on a roll. Who are we to disrupt his comforting fantasies? It puts us humans into a category all our own and is, I believe, the best criterion for the real start of the era. The Anthropocene begins when we start to realize that it has begun. This definition also provides a new angle on the long-vexing question of what differentiates our species from other life. Perhaps more than anything else, it is self-aware world-changing that marks us as something new on the planet. What are we? We are the species that can change the world and come to see what we’re doing. OK, I need to throw up ... that's better. By this alternative criterion, the true Anthropocene – what we might call the ‘mature Anthropocene’ – is just getting started. All of these earlier stages that have been suggested as start dates were a kind of preamble, an unconscious rather than conscious human remaking of Earth. The mature Anthropocene begins ... Yes, when does the 'mature Anthropocene' begin? ... when we acquire the ability to live sustainably, and become a lasting presence on this world. This epoch arrives with mass awareness ... Mass awareness? ... of our role in changing the planet. This is what will allow us to transition from blundering through inadvertent global changes to thoughtfully and deliberately controlling our effects on the planet. It starts with the end of our innocence. How do we lose our innocence? Good question! By developing situational awareness: by becoming cognizant of how we are behaving on a planetary scale, in space and time, and integrating that knowledge into our actions. This will not require altruism or idealism or self-sacrifice, only accurate self-perception and enlightened self-interest. Responsible global behavior is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become. What we are observing are the effects of not only a new geologic force, but a new type of geologic force. There has never before been a geological force aware of its own actions. Humanity has at least a dim, and growing, cognizance of the effects of its presence on this planet. The possibility that we might integrate that awareness into how we interface with the Earth system is one that should give us hope. No force of nature has ever decided to change course before. If we do not like some aspects of how this epoch is playing out, its outcome is not set in stone. With our foolish species, it is always the same. Humans hope for a bright future as they whistle in the dark. Grinspoon writes that there is a "dim and growing" cognizance of human effects on the planet. Dim? Yes. Hardly discernable, in fact. Growing? There is no empirical evidence whatsoever human self-awareness is growing. None. Zero, nadda, zip. "Accurate self-perception" is the one thing humans are not capable of. And Grinspoon, unwttingly of course, just demonstrated it. Really, what is this douchebag doing? He's selling his new book (video below). As I said, always the same. If you can even partially escape Flatland, at the appropriate level of abstraction, humans are utterly predictable. 21 Dec

Learned Helplessness - It is not much of an exaggeration to say that my Flatland model of how humans work was born of an ongoing sense of learned helplessness as my life progressed. What is learned helplessness? It is the existential experience that nothing good can or will happen. It is utter hopelessness, the very real experience that your choices don't matter much, or a recognition that you're not even making choices at all—you're locked in. I was taken aback when J.D. Vance used the definition above in his excellent Ted Talk America's forgotten working class (video below). But before I get into that, let me illustrate learned helplessness as I experience it. No doubt most (if not all) of you have had similar experiences. Recently I opened a renewal notice from my health care provider UPMC, which is located here in Pittsburgh. I am "locked in" to UPMC because their doctors are my doctors, I get my prescriptions from them, I have high blood pressure, I am a 63-year-old smoker who drinks more than he should. I live alone, and that's not good, so I go out for a few hours every day to the bar where I can see some people. Clearly I am at risk but I'm also clinging to life. My health care package has a fairly low co-pay, a very high deductible and doesn't pay for increasingly expensive drugs at all. Basically, it is a catastrophic care package if something really bad should happen. UPMC, in line with every health care provider in the country, had raised my monthly premium by 27% ($105/month). That's outrageous. It is based on nothing I did or any pre-existing conditions. UPMC, like every other provider in the nation, did this because they could. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Shopping around won't help. There's very limited competition in Pittsburgh, and what competition there is (Highmark) sucks. The monthly cost there would be approximately the same. I contacted my local newspaper and got into talks with a reporter there. I wanted the increase that I and some of my local friends experienced to be made public. (We are not for various reasons eligible for an Obamacare tax credit/subsidy.) In my back & forth with the reporter, who talked to UPMC, l learned that the bullshit rationalizations behind the huge increase did not hold water. As I said, they did this because they could get away with it. My choices? Keep the insurance and suck it up, or take the risk of going without. Those are not really choices at all, are they? Sucks either way. That's learned helplessness in a nutshell.  The direct connection to Flatland is that I am at the mercy in this world to predatory humans who don't give a fuck about me. And so are all of you to one extent or another. Now, there is far more to the Flatland model than this kind of predatory behavior, but it was my direct, existential experience of the world for over 30 years now that gave birth to that model. I wanted to understand how humans worked. Why was the human condition so fucked up? So I learned in a very real sense that there was nothing I could do about it. What I could do, and what I did do, was create a model (story) which explained it. And then I attempted to explain it to all of you. There is a Flatland theory called positive psychology (and here) which says that humans can be taught to get over or avoid leaned helplessness. It is bullshit of course because all of its techniques or prescriptions take place within the human condition, within Flatland, which itself is utterly hopeless. Of course all of you have learned helplessness to one degree or another, although some changes might work. For example, you can switch jobs and perhaps that will make a positive difference, or you can get divorced and find somebody new, or ... a thousand things. On the other hand, for example, the Flatland model tells you that human destruction of the biosphere is not something you can do anything about. That's going to happen whether you like it or not. That's going to happen regardless of the "choices" you make. And really, at least for me, living here in the United States, getting screwed by my health care provider is just like climate change in these respects. And so is the rise of Donald Trump. Which takes me back to J.D. Vance. If you want to understand why Donald Trump will officially become the president-elect today, you will want to watch the video below and read this interview with Vance, which was published in The American Conservative on July 22, 2016. About Donald Trump specifically, the Flatland model has nothing to say. About the possibility of there being some low-life Trump-like authoritarian, divisive and corrupt figure who will arise historically if the right pre-conditions are in place, the Flatland model has everything to say. The inevitable corruption and malfeasance of America's predatory elites fostered the neglect and structural economic problems which gave rise to learned helplessness (utter hopelessness) in the people of all those red states that went for Trump because they believed it was, for once, a positive choice they could make. When Trump spoke to their concerns, despite the fact that his leadership is already the biggest bait-and-switch in human history, that was enough to induce those people to vote for him. Bait and switch? Well, that's just one of the things unconscious self-interested humans do, isn't it? From a Flatland point of view, despite Vance's perspective (his fortunate personal experience) that people can sometimes change their fate in a positive way, all those misguided Trump voters are about to learn what existential helplessness is really all about. Here's J.D. Vance. 19 Dec

The 2016 Election In One Map - I was reading Ronald Brownstein's How Carbon Emissions Explain Trump's Win, which was just published in The Atlantic. Let's get right to it. Trump’s polarizing appeal has deepened the existing geographic and demographic fault lines in American politics into a chasm so imposing it could mark the border between two countries. On one side, Hillary Clinton routed Trump in the racially and culturally diverse metropolitan centers that are helping forge a globalized, information-based, and low-carbon economy. On the other, Trump posted crushing margins in the places that feel eclipsed, or threatened, by all of those trends. Later, Ronald refers to this Hillary's utopia—a globalized, information-based, and low-carbon economy—as the "post-industrial" economy.  Needless to say, such an economy does not exist and can not exist at a global scale. We need to change one word in that sentence describing the Trump dystopia. On the other, Trump posted crushing margins in the places that feel were eclipsed, or threatened, by all of those trends. Much better. What a difference a single word can make. I am going to ignore Brownstein's GDP/emissions decoupling nonsense, which is based on decoupling nonsense from Brookings. Instead, let's focus Hillary's utopia versus Trump's dystopia. Check out this map, which comes from a Washington Post column with the misleading title Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election. That column is based on another Brookings report. The divide is economic, and it is massive. According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America's economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country's economic activity last year. Clinton, in other words, carried nearly two-thirds of the American economy. Here's how the researchers, at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, visualized that. You can see immediately what's going on: With the exceptions of the Phoenix and Fort Worth areas, and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won every large-sized economic county in the country. [See Tankersley's article to see another county map]. A sea of red with specks of blue, many of which are on the coasts That map is self-explanatory. Economic elites, income inequality, etc. And then Tankersley writes, without a link or supporting evidence of any kind— But it's not the case that the counties Clinton won have grown richer at the expense of the rest of the country — they represent about the same share of the economy today as they did in 2000. I see. Nobody in New York or Washington, D.C. or Silicon Valley has grown richer at the expense of the rest of the country, right? And pigs can fly. Well, this is the Washington Post. All these sources, including The Atlantic and Brookings, have so much elite bias that their interpretation of that map or anything else is entirely worthless. Have a nice weekend.16 Dec

Can We Save The World? - Here's the last part of Tormod V. Burkey's essay Can We Save The World? (Stanford's Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere, December 13, 2016). “Can we save the world?” should be an important enough question to justify submitting it to our best thinking and a thorough review of everything we know that has bearing upon it. Perhaps it is one that we have shied away from, for fear that a negative answer would breed despair and passivity and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet it is hard to see that compiling everything we know in an accessible manner could be a bad thing, and realistically assessing the mechanisms that hamstring us when we want to save the world may help us find ways to get around them. I suggest we organize a seminar series with experts that have worked on mechanisms that hamper our efforts, and people with experiences with existing efforts, to ask the question: “Can We Save the World?” The results from such a seminar series should be contained in an edited book of the same title. Anyone willing and able to help make Can We Save The World? happen—whether it be planning, fundraising, organizing, participating, facilitating, brainstorming, providing a venue, publishing, whatever—please get in touch. Should I get in touch? Bonus Video 14 Dec

Shoot The Messenger - Climate scientists feel threatened. For good reason, I might add. Elizabeth Kolbert introduces today's topic. (I added the link.) Next week, the American Geophysical Union will hold its annual conference in San Francisco. The A.G.U. meeting is one of the world’s première scientific gatherings—last fall, some twenty-four thousand experts in fields ranging from astronomy to volcanology attended. This year, in addition to the usual papers and journals, a new publication will be available to participants. It’s called “Handling Political Harassment and Legal Intimidation: A Pocket Guide for Scientists.” The guide is the creation of a group called the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF). One of the group’s founders, Joshua Wolfe, and its executive director, Lauren Kurtz, made the decision to write it on the day after the election. “There is a lot of fear among scientists that they will become targets of people who are interested in science as politics, rather than progress,” Wolfe told me in an e-mail. With each passing day, that fear appears to be more well founded. The one quality that all of Trump’s picks for his cabinet and his transition team seem to share is an expertise in the dark art of disinformation... I am not going to get into the gory details of Trump's appointments and actions to date. Do the appropriate Google searches. There's nothing new about shooting the messenger. If some humans don't like what climate science is telling them, they will harass/fire/sue/de-fund the scientists giving them the bad news. One recommendation of the CSLDF is "Call a lawyer if in doubt." Call a lawyer? The last time I looked, lawyers charge money for their services. If a scientist calls a lawyer, the harassment is working. Lawyers aside, if you're fucked you're fucked in a world where might makes right. Still, climate scientists are getting ready to defend themselves. That defense begins, as all defenses do, with the required rationalizations. ... a Trump campaign adviser wrote that NASA should spend less on its armada of satellites that observe the Earth — and more on exploring outer space. Former NASA climate scientist Drew Shindell says that would be a mistake. "A shift away from focusing on data for this planet could really leave us in the dark on how to respond to climate change," he says. Moreover, Earth observations contribute to public safety and the economy, he says. "The same satellites that look down and tell us about ... climate, are the ones that tell us about storms and agriculture." Don't get me wrong—climate research has my unqualified support—but it is utter bullshit to say that "a shift away from focusing on data for this planet could really leave us in the dark on how to respond to climate change." Even in the best case where nobody wants to shoot the messenger, the disconnect between what climate scientists are actually recommending and what policymakers are actually doing is almost total. On the other hand, we may continue to get that NASA satellite data because "Earth observations contribute to public safety and the economy." Public safety and the economy are far more important to humans than further confirmation that humanity has no future.13 Dec

Advice For You Liberals Out There — Grow A Pair! - I will quote from Rolling Stone's Trump's Presidency Is Shaping Up to Be an American Tragedy—  Add it all up, and what do you see? A child who reacts to the slightest perceived attack with vicious vitriol. A vengeful president who is willing to violate basic rights. A government run by incompetents, racists, bullies and conspiracy-mongers. It's a formula for tragedy. No one can predict the future – we learned that lesson the hard way a month ago. But if you were to imagine what impending American fascism would look like, you couldn't place the pieces on the board any more neatly than they've been placed in the last year. There is no reason to believe Donald Trump understands or will accept the checks on an American president's power. There is no reason to believe he won't trample over the Constitution when it suits him. How far will he go? Is it impossible to imagine that the man who talked about "opening up" libel laws could start tossing journalists in jail? How about the guy who makes fun of him on SNL? Or anyone who criticizes him? How confident can we be that a man who spreads lies about illegal voters giving his opponent the popular-vote win and talks endlessly about rigged elections will give up power in four years if he loses? Or in eight years, just because some amendment says he's supposed to? Who will stop him from grabbing power he's not entitled to? The madmen he's surrounded himself with? The weak-willed leaders of the Republican majority in Congress who have yet to provide hardly any resistance to the things he's said and done, no matter how outrageous or un-American? OK, that's enough. This language expresses cowering fear. Yes, I know things look very, very bad.  But c'mon, are you going to just stand by and watch Donald Trump grab power he's not entitled to? And then complain about it? I have some advice for you liberals out there, you Hillary voters, you Democrats. You fucked up and you had better fucking acknowledge it. Do you remember Hillary telling Goldman bankers that the financial industry should regulate itself, and telling those same bankers that Dodd-Frank was enacted only because, politically, it was necessary to appease the American people?  What do such contemptible views mean to the people of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio? Nothing. You had nothing to say to them. And now you've got Donald Trump to deal with. Here's a message for you. Life goes on. Maybe. Are you going to just stand by and watch Trump trample over the Constitution when it suits him? In short, are you going to fuck up again? There's every indication that you're going to. Hence this post. I have called the people who will be running the country reptiles, and what do you do in a fight with reptiles? You liberals think of yourselves as the "reasonable" ones but there was nothing reasonable about the economic policies you pushed, the very same policies that screwed the people of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. So get over it! You're not "reasonable" at all. You're better than reptiles, but that's setting the bar pretty damn low. Let me tell you about your reptile problem. That will take all of 21 seconds. You liberals keep blaming Russia for your own fuck-ups. You keep complaining about the California popular vote. STOP IT. If you want to survive, GROW A PAIR.10 Dec

Fact-Checking In Flatland - Remember, I do not make this stuff up. This is a brief follow-up to Are We In The "Post-Truth" Era? OK, let's work through this. Here are two Flatland premises. In important realms like politics and economics, humans are inveterate bullshitters. They can't help it. Bullshit is the default case. Facts don't matter, or matter only in so far as they can't be used as weapons to push some largely unconscious agenda. In so far as fundamental behavioral changes are impossible for humans, they always assume that technology solves all problems. In Flatland, applying technology to everything is a feature, not a bug. Given these premises, how would humans go about fixing their so-called "fake news" problem? Use technology to detect bullshit  And thus we have The Atlantic's Algorithms Can Help Stomp Out Fake News. And I quote— This week, a BuzzFeed survey found that three in four American adults who see fake-news headlines headlines believe them. It’s not hard to see why: A website peddling made-up news stories can easily look nearly as polished as The New York Times, and it’s impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of bullshit information published online every minute. And when people believe fake news stories, real things happen—like an assault rifle-wielding man visiting a D.C. pizza joint because he appeared to think the restaurant was involved in a debunked Clinton-centered pedophilia conspiracy. Fact-checkers are overwhelmed... Fact-checkers need a hand if they’re going to catch up with the pace and breadth of bullshit material shared every day on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere around the internet. As soon as next year, they might get that help—in the form of computer algorithms and artificial intelligence. There are several ways to determine whether a story is true or not, says Carlos Castillo, a data scientist at a research center in Spain called Eurecat. The simplest is to just to consider the source: If the story was published in a prestigious newspaper, for example, or by a decorated journalist, it’s probably more likely to be trustworthy. Another method is to study the way a story is shared on social media: the kinds of words used to describe it, the sorts of users who post it, and the way people respond to it. And a third method is to examine the story itself, by analyzing its internal logic, combing it for claims, and checking those claims against known facts. Computers can help test stories in all three of these ways. Vetting stories solely by the publications they appear in risks oversimplifying the web by boiling it down into just “good” and “bad” sources—but it’s very easily done. New York magazine’s Brian Feldman cooked up a Chrome extension that uses a modified version of a media professor’s list of “fake, false, regularly misleading, and otherwise questionable ‘news’ organizations” to blacklist certain domains on the web. When you visit one of the blacklisted sites with the extension installed, your browser pops up a warning message. (For a taste of why this sledgehammer approach isn’t ideal, scroll through some of the comments on the extension’s download page.) Watching a story or a piece of information make its way across a social network is a more nuanced way of evaluating its trustworthiness—but it also demands more resources. This is where computers really come in handy. In 2010, a trio of researchers at Yahoo (including Castillo, who worked there at the time) studied how Twitter users in Chile responded to an enormous earthquake that rattled some of the country’s most populated regions. They found that tweets containing false rumors were far more likely shared skeptically—that is, with commentary that denies the rumor or questions it—than tweets that contained confirmed truths. In a follow-up paper published the next year, the researchers broadened their findings to show the sorts of characteristics that indicate a piece of information being shared is true: Factually accurate tweets about a news story are generally retweeted by users who’ve tweeted a lot in the past, for example, and by users who have more followers. Another study, this one from researchers at Indiana University Bloomington, found that examining the relationships between users that tweet a particular story can reveal whether it’s spreading organically, or if it’s being helped along by bots and offline collusion. “The task here is to discover anomalies in the way a content is propagating that makes it different from the way in which real contents propagate,” Castillo wrote in an email. Sorry, Mr. Castillo, that's not the task in question here. In Flatland, the task at all times and places is for humans to try really, really hard, using both hands, to find their ass. 8 Dec

Ah, The Good Ol' Days... - This is a reprint of my 2011 post The Authoritarian Personality (under the fold). This is one of the few times I wrote about reptiles on this blog. The context was the media reaction to the inept Occupy protests—remember them? The context is clearly dated, and even looks quaint in retrospect. However, now that reptiles are in charge, it is a good time to review this material. You can also see the roots of the present in the past (5 years ago). Ah, the good ol' days ... I'm already feeling nostalgic  It has been interesting to watch the reactions to the Occupy Wall Street protests, for they mirror what our society has become. There seem to be three broad types of reactions, all with a common theme. You can see all three in a recent Daily Show clip about the protests (video below). Clueless mainstream media types trying to figure out what exactly it is these people are protesting, so as to put them in some kind of political box they can understand Those supportive of the protesters who are trying to put them in a leftist/liberal political box Those disdainful of the protesters who are trying to put them in the same anti-right political box Those in the first group can't handle the ambiguity. They require specific goals and affiliations. Do these hippies want to redistribute the wealth? Do they want to get corporate money out of politics? Do they want X? How about Y? And I say: how about all of the above? As I said in a recent post, the protesters' message is America Sucks! Sucks Big Time! If you're asking what their specific goals are, you might as well use a process of elimination that begins with "well, what doesn't suck in America?" Those in the second and third groups are likely to say the protests are the liberal version of the Tea Party, which makes for easy comparisons. It thus becomes easier for them to put the protesters in a cardboard box, put some gift wrapping it, tie it all together with a ribbon and bow, and using the the United States Postal Service—if the post office no longer exists, you can use UPS or FedEx—mail them to: Lights Are On But Nobody's Home P.O. Box 666 Oblivion, The State of Denial U.S.A. 00000-0000 Jon Stewart belongs to Group #2 above, as you will readily see in the video below. He supports the protesters—I think he does, it's hard to tell—but wants to confine them to the anodyne world of the pre-packaged "Rally For Sanity" as quickly as possible. Stewart does his usual schtick, focusing on the dismissive reactions of Group #3—the Fox News/Tea Party/Ann Coulter/Sarah Palin/Sean Hannity/Mitt Romney/Herman Cain wing of American life. Thus Stewart seeks to box up (kettle?) the protests. For some time now I have been trying to properly characterize Group #3. Their hate-filled, over-the-top reactions to the protests seem to have concentrated my thinking along these lines. In the video below Ann Coulter compares the protesters to Nazis, whereas the psychological truth is just the opposite. Ann Coulter would make a splendid Nazi. In a standard list of psychological defense mechanisms, this is called projection, whereby Projection is the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those thoughts, feelings or impulses. Nazis (and fascists in general) were very much on everyone's mind in the 1950s, with World War II and the Holocaust still fresh in living memory. At that time, various psychologists developed the concept of the Authoritarian Personality, by which they meant the type of person who is prone (or susceptible) to fascism. These psychologists came up with elaborate theories purporting to explain how such people come into being, but these theories are jargon-bound, and unimportant for our purposes today. Let's simply describe the authoritarian personality and compare it to the sort of people we see on Fox News. Here's the dictionary definition. A personality pattern reflecting a desire for security, order, power, and status, with a desire for structured lines of authority, a conventional set of values or outlook, a demand for unquestioning obedience, and a tendency to be hostile toward or use as scapegoats individuals of minority or nontraditional groups. [My note: like the #occupywallstreet protesters.] Here's another description. The authoritarian personality does not want to give orders, their personality type wants to take orders. People with this type of personality seek conformity, security, stability. They become anxious and insecure when events or circumstances upset their previously existing world view. [My note: like the #occupywallstreet protests.] They are very intolerant of any divergence from what they consider to be the normal (which is usually conceptualized in terms of their religion, race, history, nationality, culture, language, etc.) They tend to be very superstitious and lend credence to folktales or interpretations of history that fit their preexisting definitions of reality... They think in extremely stereotyped ways about minorities, women, homosexuals, etc. They are thus very dualistic- the world is conceived in terms of absolute right (their way) Vs. absolute wrong (the "other" whether African American, liberal, intellectual, feminist, etc.) And here's a list of characteristics. Those with an authoritarian personality tend to be: Hostile to those who are of inferior status, but obedient of people with high status Fairly rigid in their opinions and beliefs Conventional, upholding traditional values Ethnocentric, i.e. the tendency to favour one's own ethnic group Obsessed with rank and status Respectful of and submissive to authority figures Preoccupied with power and toughness. We see that people with authoritarian personalities are slavishly devoted to the status quo, and will react with venomous hostility to anything that might upset the apple cart. They thus feel extremely threatened by these Wall Street protests, though not in sense that Jon Stewart is, and will go to any lengths to dispose of these threats. There's much more to it, but I would say that the reactions to the protests of those in the Fox News group are very, very close to what we might expect from those best characterized as authoritarian personalities. That's enough to chew on today. I'll be referring to authoritarian personalities in the future. I think the implications of these observations are all too obvious. Here's the video. If the video doesn't play right away, click on it and it might even start (fucking Comedy Channel). Here's the original. 7 Dec

American Frog, Boiled - I haven't mentioned the proverbial frog since the second flatland essay, which I wrote in 2014 (and see here and here). Now is an excellent time to do it again in the context of America's irreversible fall from grace. I'll quote from those essays. It doesn't matter that real frogs don't sit in the gradually heated water until they are boiled alive. What matters is that human beings do. That's what makes it useful as a metaphor. The American Empire has been in decline for almost 30 years now. Yet it is only in the last few years—specifically, since the financial meltdown in October, 2008—that a few Americans have figured out that the United States is not what it used to be. Therein lies the truth of the boiling frog story as it applies to us. Think about it. Does it make any sense to say the country was doing just fine right up to the moment (more or less) when it wasn't? For example, did the Wall Street banks become overly powerful and greedy in just the few years before the Housing Bubble collapsed? Did their undue influence on our venal politicians begin during those years? Of course not! Events like the financial crisis don't just come out of nowhere. To understand them, you must examine the historical antecedents. You must understand that the ground for what happened today was prepared many years before. It was the gradual deterioration of conditions in the United States over decades that set up the unfortunate situation we have today... I wrote that in 2011. Here's another quote. Lately, I wrote about A Disturbing Trend In America, where I made this observation— A strong defense of the status quo has existed in all human societies in all times and all places. However, in the United States, this tendency, which I've noticed because I write this blog, has become far more pronounced over the last three years—the consolidation of power by the powerful is accelerating, so-called "thought" in the media is more and more constricted, and dissenting, critical voices have become so marginalized that many (if not most) have given up. It is not hard to see that the American frog has been boiled again. Americans have gotten used to an even more degraded society, and will continue to adapt to new, worse conditions. It was inevitable. I wrote that in 2013. "It was inevitable," I wrote. And now, three years later, we see the inevitability. Well, humans being what they are—never say die!—we can now observe them attempting to adapt to worse and deteriorating conditions in the new Age of Reptiles. For example, NPR duly reports on every presidential tweet, no matter how absurd, and discusses its policy implications. So does Vox and everybody else. That is adaptation to new and worse conditions. The American frog is well and truly boiled, but NPR carries on the in the hope that ... what is the hope nowadays? And there are the usual recriminations, which are also a form of adaptation. I will quote from Conor Lynch's Identity politics vs. populist economics? It’s a false choice – liberals need to look in the mirror (Salon, December 3, 2016). It is extremely troubling that appealing to young people, people of color, women and working-class whites is perceived as an either/or question, or that “economic struggles” and the “grievances of minorities and women” are seen as mutually exclusive. In reality, economic struggles and civil rights are deeply interconnected. Women and people of color, for example, are much more likely to suffer disproportionately from poverty and economic inequality, while young voters who care deeply about social issues are currently facing crushing student loan debt, a subpar job market and low social mobility. This illustrates the real problem with modern liberalism. Not that it is too preoccupied with promoting diversity or ending all forms of discrimination — there is really no disagreement on the left that these are vitally important goals — but that these efforts and achievements are often used to mask or divert attention from the deeper structural problems of our economic and political systems. The fact that Goldman Sachs has been a leader in promoting diversity and inclusivity in its workforce, for example, should not comfort anyone when the same firm committed massive fraud leading up to the financial crisis and is still led by the same CEO, who recently entered the billionaire’s club. When Hillary Clinton gave her notorious $225,000 speeches for Goldman Sachs, it is reported that she lavished praise on the firm’s diversity and the prominent roles played by women in its internal hierarchy. She did not, however, talk about Goldman’s role in exacerbating the financial crisis or the way the firm committed massive securities;fraud and reaped billions of dollars in profit, let alone the fact that none of the firm’s top executives faced any criminal prosecution for their misdeeds. This is the liberalism that failed to stop Trump. This is the liberalism that self-servingly exploited identity politics to protect an establishment candidate whose severe flaws were evident long before the 2016 campaign began. This is the liberalism that must be overcome, and the sooner the better. Conor's observations about the moral failures of liberalism are correct, of course, but come way too late to affect the outcome now and in our grim degraded future. Liberals should have looked in the mirror a long time ago. Unfortunately, human nature does not permit much mirror-gazing in the sense intended (honest, critical self-appraisal). On the other hand, it is not permissible to admit that the American frog is boiled. It is taboo to admit that those sautéed frog legs Donald and Mitt were eating at Jean Georges is American frog. The behavioral baseline has shifted in an appalling way, but human nature demands that humans adapt to current and worse conditions and plot a better future, as Conor Lynch would have it. But the American frog is dead. It will not be revived. Using a different metaphor... (suggested by Brian) 5 Dec

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What I’ve been reading and not reading and thinking about in 2017 - One of my worst reading habits is to start a book and then get distracted by a new book and start that, and then get distracted by something new again, until I have a big pile of half-read books by my bed. This pile can stay there for years. So this year I’ve tried to finish the books I started. I have been mostly successful. It means I’ve started reading far fewer books this year but have finished a lot more. The best novel I read in 2016 was Under the Skin by Michael Farber, published back in 2000. (It inspired a pretty good, quite odd film of the same name, notable for being a movie in which Scarlett Johansson takes off all her clothes and the effect is unsettling and unpleasant and weird). All of Farber’s books seem to be very unalike, so if you’ve read The Book of Strange New Things (which I enjoyed) or The Crimson Petal and the White (which I didn’t) you’ll probably have a different reaction to Under the Skin. I’ve mentioned them before but I also enjoyed two early Ballard novels: Vermilion Sands and The Drowned World.  The least interesting books I read this year were celebrated/award-winning contemporary literary novels. A few literary people I talked to at end-of-year parties admitted they found contemporary literature incredibly boring at the moment, and that they’re reading more genre and non-fiction. I’m the same. Other than Mantel I struggle to think of a single contemporary literary novelist who’s work I’m buy-on-sight interested in. Two of the best non-fiction books I read this year were Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Emperor of all Maladies and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. (both authors have new books out this year which I haven’t read yet). The most important, for me, was Mukherjee’s book, which is ‘a biography of cancer’. It’s about a lot of different things, but the strongest message I got out of it was the deep fallibility of medical science through much of the twentieth century. I intend to re-read Sapiens. Lot’s of good insights: I especially liked the bit on the value of gossip in human societies and its role in the evolution of language. I think the worst book I read was Justin Cronin’s City of Mirrors. Best popular novels: Peyton Place and Stephen King’s Firestarter. Most upsetting book: Silberman’s Neurotribes, a history of autism, often a history of psychologists and other scientists torturing autistic children.  Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction was also very depressing. (All of the animals are dying.) The largest book was the Figes book about the Russian Revolution A People’s Tragedy. I’m a slow reader so this took me much of the winter. Recommended. This lead to a whole lot of secondary reading about Marxism and Critical Theory and Trotsky. I’m not sure I’d recommend any of those books, except perhaps the Peter Singer book about Marx. It’s all nonsense, I think, although when it came to Critical Theory I must admit I simply couldn’t understand an awful lot of it. There’s a widespread perception outside (and sometimes inside) the humanities that Critical Theory is an intellectual hoax, designed to sound complex to conceal a lack of substance, and this is my impression too. Favourite book overall: Path to Power, the first Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson. I have a large stack of books I planned to read over the break, but for the past couple of days I’ve just been baking and cooking, and watching movies and going for walks, and have barely read anything, so that might not work out. I also spent the year reading less commentary on the internet, or at least trying to. One quote I picked up this year which really stuck with me is from William James: ‘Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to.’ I think that’s true. The internet gives you the ability to pay attention to a wide range of superficially amusing, distracting nonsense, but if you let yourself pay attention to it all day, every day, your life will amount to distracting nonsense. Giving up Twitter was the best nonsense-minimising step I took this year, although I undid some of that by getting way too invested in the US election, only to find out with the outcome that almost all of the commentary I read about it was worthless. Ballard once observed that sex and paranoia were the leitmotifs of the twentieth century. It feels as if anxiety and outrage are the motifs of the 21st, possibly because they’re the most effective ways to monetise our attention for clicks and ad impressions. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t be anxious and outraged (All of the animals are dying!). But my goal next year is to be more selective about the things I pay attention to, and to try and be anxious and outraged about things I can do something about. Hope you all had a good year, and thanks for reading. Danyl 23 Dec

Feminism! - Via the Herald: Prime Minister Bill English says he wouldn’t describe himself as a feminist and isn’t bothered if his new Minister for Women does, either. “I wouldn’t describe myself as a feminist. I don’t quite know what that means,” English told reporters today after his new ministers were officially sworn-in at Wellington’s Government House. English was asked if he would call himself a feminist after new Women’s Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett said on Radio New Zealand that she would claim that title “most days”. I guess I know what twitter and all of the Green and Labour Party MPs have been talking about today. This poll conducted by a Feminist charity in the UK is a pretty typical example of the various surveys about public attitudes to feminism (I’m not aware of any similar work in NZ). Most people will say they believe in gender equality but very few people will self-describe themselves as feminist: When split out by gender, women were more likely to identify as feminist, with nine per cent using the label compared to four per cent of men. But men were more supportive generally of equality between the sexes – 86 per cent wanted it for the women in their lives – compared to 74 per cent of women. Sam Smethers, the charity’s chief executive, said: “The overwhelming majority of the public share our feminist values but don’t identify with the label. However the simple truth is if you want a more equal society for women and men then you are in fact a feminist. I suspect the results are similar for New Zealand, and that National knows this which is why we’re having this little sideshow. There’s a more general lesson in here for the left, I think, which is that you really want to be talking about values and problems that people understand (equality) rather than abstract intellectual concepts (feminism) that they don’t. 19 Dec

Reshuffle thought - Via RNZ: Ms Collins has lost Corrections and Police and has been given Revenue, Energy and Ethnic Affairs: portfolios that require some work but will not give the outspoken minister the headline-grabbing opportunities she had before. These are key fundraising portfolios, though. Seems odd to concentrate them all in one Minister who you then demote. 18 Dec

While you were sleeping - I wrote a long thing about John Key. It’s up at the Spinoff. Also, that Caro book about Lyndon Johnson I reference is The Path to Power. It’s the best book about politics I’ve ever read, and I plan to spend my summer reading the rest of Caro’s books. 15 Dec

Help me out here - I half-remember the following anecdote about industrial design. The gist was: an old and once mighty but now struggling car company was having its manufacturing processes audited. The consultants, or executives, or auditors, or whoever queried a specific piece of design across all of the makes of the car (something to do with the engine, I think, I know nothing about cars). ‘Why do you do this?’ ‘We have to do this?’ ‘But why?’ No one knew, and after investigation it transpired that the very first hand-cranked cars the company made many decades earlier needed this component of the design, and they’d just kept doing it. Does anyone know if this story maps to anything that has happened in the real world and, if so, where? 13 Dec

Plus ca change - Via RadioNZ: Labour leader Andrew Little is questioning whether the National Party’s new leadership will bring any real change to the government’s direction. “They are saying they represent change, when they’ve been part of every decision of this government for the last eight years. “They say they represent change – let’s see what that looks like.” I’m not a fancy media strategist etc but when you’re twenty points behind in the polls and there’s a huge, unpredicted political change, probably not that smart to go around saying ‘nothing has changed.’ NewShub: Bill English will not be making the same promise to leave the eligibility age for superannuation alone as his predecessor John Key did. I’ll make a prediction here – which I’ll forget about in a few days so I won’t get to celebrate it if I’m right, but everyone will throw in my face if I’m wrong – which is that in a post-election budget English will make some change to National Super to compromise its universality; probably a form of means testing, which will have basically no immediate impact – like his bright line on Capital Gains Tax – but which can be incrementally increased. 11 Dec

Robstradamus - I had coffee with Rob Hosking last Friday, and noted down one of his comments in my diary then forgot about it until I went to check something else today: Coffee w/ Rob Hosking. Asked him about mood at Parliament. He said, ‘Feels like earthquake weather. Something big is coming.’ 6 Dec

Reflections on Key - The last media appearance Key made before his resignation was on Radio New Zealand, where he defended Anne Tolley’s decision not to hold an inquiry into historical abuse of children in state care, because it ‘wouldn’t achieve a lot’. He didn’t rule it out though, and if the story persisted over a few days or weeks, we would have seen Key proceed through the now very familiar stations of the National government’s communication strategy cross. (1) Say there’s nothing to be done. (2) Blame Labour. (3) Admit there’s a problem and you’re ‘looking at a range of options’. (4) Hold an inquiry, the findings of which you will probably ignore, but will (5) implement if there’s still heat on the issue when the inquiry reports back a year-or-so down the track. One of Key’s strengths was an apparent indifference towards his government’s policy agenda. There were no bottom lines, no hills to die on. With the exception of major natural and financial disasters, everything else in the country was pretty much fine as it was but could be changed, preferably slightly, if the public mood seemed to call for it. ‘We think we’ve got the mix about right,’ was Key’s first response to any problem. It gave him enormous flexibility, and he’s leaving his office with popularity and political capital unmatched by any other Prime Minister. It’s an unusual way for a politician to go out, because one of the main reasons they’re in politics is because they have a vision for the country; values they want to translate into deeds; things they want to spend all their political capital on. Key did have some modest policy ambitions – tax cuts and partial asset sales, which he got across the line; in this term it was changing the flag and the TPPA, neither of which he delivered. Key embodied something Rob Hosking calls ‘Kiwi Conservatism’ the central tenet of which seems to be a conviction that National should be in government rather than Labour. It’s not as if there weren’t problems for a brilliant and popular Prime Minister to solve: housing, child poverty, the broken tax system, carbon emissions, low productivity and long-term fiscal sustainability; these are all issues on which there is a broad consensus among experts that the government needs to address, some of them very urgently, even if no one agrees on how to solve them. Key was always pretty upfront that they were all someone else’s problem. In the immediate short-term the mix was about right, so long as you didn’t listen to any experts that said otherwise, and one of his government’s great achievements is transforming the public service into a giant communications department devoted to saying as little as possible. Did it all start to seem pointless? Another election campaign. Long days travelling the country, months of retail politics visiting factories and malls, posing for selfies, long nights at fundraising dinners listening to donors and lobbyists, with the spectre of forming a government with Winston Peters at the end of it. And for what? Three more years in Wellington, away from his family, sitting through meetings, hearing people out, listening to advice he probably wasn’t going to take, endlessly assuring journalists that the experts were wrong, or that he hadn’t been briefed, or that he had the mix about right? I played a lot of computer games as a kid, and most of them had a cheat mode in which you couldn’t die; the sense of invulnerability made the game enormously fun for a few minutes and then intensely boring when it became apparent that without challenges the whole exercise was pointless. It feels as if Key found the cheat-mode to New Zealand politics – data-driven, populist flexi-conservatism – but that this is a mode of politics that bored him into ending his career. What happens next? Key will get his knighthood, and get to enjoy his vast wealth, and sit on the board of various international banks and financial companies. National will either enjoy a smooth transition to English, or it won’t – and English has had a few months knowing this was coming to build relationships he’ll need for the very brief struggle that has come upon the rest of his party unawares. For the past eight years the left has assured itself that National is ‘nothing without John Key’. It always felt like an excuse to me, because Key was obviously aiming at a record-long term as Prime Minister. He obviously wasn’t going anywhere. Now he’s gone and we’ll all get to find out if that’s true. 5 Dec

Breaking up the band - Here’s something I think it’ll be interesting to watch when Key steps down. Successful politicians are often actually a group of people who happen to cohere together and work well as a team. Key had English and Joyce but also his Chief of Staff and a couple of other influential staffers and advisers who were with him for a very long time. Maybe those people stay on and work with the new Prime Minister and everything runs as smoothly as ever. But maybe they decide now is a good time to take up a job doing something like ‘government relations’ for an Aussie bank for three times their public sector salary, and we see a real change in tone and direction. There will be a lot of focus on new PM, new Deputy, new Cabinet etc, but Key’s senior staffers ran the country and it’ll be interesting to see what happens to them. Also, I’d love to know who is the first left-wing commentator to insist Key’s announcement is a distraction from something, sheeple. 4 Dec

Exit Key - Via the Herald: John Key is resigning as Prime Minister of New Zealand. Assuming we can take Key at his word and this is a voluntary decision that we take at face value, is Key the first Prime Minister to step down at a time of his own choosing like this? 4 Dec

Din Merican: the Malaysian DJ Blogger

Bill Maher–He’s Fun - December 25, 2016 Bill Maher–He’s Fun Filed under: American Politics, Civil Rights, Demoracy, Donald J Trump, Freedom, Governance, Politics06:09

Inching toward Orwell in Thailand (and ASEAN too?) - December 25, 2016 Inching toward Orwell in Thailand (and ASEAN too?) by Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang A one liner Question to ponder over is: Is the rest of ASEAN taking the same Orwellian road as Thailand?–Din Merican Online censorship in Thailand has become more draconian following the approval of additional legislation last week to curtail freedom of … Continue reading →03:56

Mahathir –A Malay Leader of Paradoxes and Contradictions - December 25, 2016 Mahathir –A  Malay Leader of Paradoxes and Contradictions S. Thayaparan@www.malaysiakini.com “I’m a realist, I do what I can do, if I can’t do, I don’t.” – De facto opposition leader Dr Mahathir Mohamad What if I said that Malays have a lazy, rent-seeking culture, relying on political and social influence to gain … Continue reading →02:28

Trump and National Neoliberalism - December 25, 2016 Published on Saturday, December 24, 2016 by Dollars & Sense Trump and National Neoliberalism And why the world is about to get much more dangerous by Sasha Breger Bush http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/24/trump-and-national-neoliberalism Many writers and pundits are currently framing Trump’s election in terms of a dispossessed and disenfranchised white, male working class, unsatisfied with … Continue reading →24 Dec

Ethics in the Real World–Peter Singer’s Provocative Essays - December 24, 2016 In his influential memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” (2016), J. D. Vance explains why some middle-class Americans turned against Michelle Obama. The first lady, he writes, “tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it — not because we think she’s wrong, but because we know … Continue reading →24 Dec

Dean Keo Chhea addresses University Of Cambodia Alumini on Techo Sen School of Government and International Relations - University Of Cambodia  SECOND ALUMNI  REUNION– December 24, 2016 Dean Keo Chhea (pic right) who assumed Deanship of Techo Sen School of Government and International Relations on December 1, 2016 was a diplomat and served for  more than decade with The ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia. A graduate of Monash University in Economics and International … Continue reading →24 Dec

Najib Razak plays with Hudud and PAS for Political Survival - December 24, 2016 Najib Razak plays with Hudud and PAS for Political Survival by Jayum Anak Jawan Conflict has raged within and among Malaysia’s political parties this year over controversial legislation regarding Islamic law, but Jayum Anak Jawan argues it is all part of the Prime Minister’s political strategy to win the next election. What … Continue reading →23 Dec

Putin to Democratic Party: You lost, get over it - December 23, 2016 Note: We have enough from CNN and US mainstream media about Russian attempts to interfere in the recent US Presidential elections which saw Donald J. Trump beating Hillary Clinton to be the 45th POTUS. American administrations of the past too are not free from trying to shore up governments in nations which … Continue reading →23 Dec

Message to Prime Minister Najib Razak and UMNO–We are all Malaysians - December 23, 2016 Message to Prime Minister Najib Razak and UMNO—We are all Malaysians by  Sin Chew Daily http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com During the dawn of our nationhood, it could be seen that the leaders of Umno then embraced moderation. Tunku Abdul Rahman, Abdul Razak Hussein, Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman and Hussein Onn all stressed the importance of … Continue reading →23 Dec

Latest World Bank Report on MALAYSIA - December 23, 2016 Malaysia’s Finance Minister: He needs a lot of help; in stead as Prime Minister he is a victim of sycophancy Note: All reports by the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development and other multilateral institutions should be read between the lines to discern what is not said. I am confident my readers will … Continue reading →22 Dec

Happy New Year-2017 - December 23, 2016 Happy New Year Christmas is only two days away. Dr. Kamsiah and I wish Merry Christmas to all our Christian friends around the world. At the same time let us spare our prayers for the victims of war who are trying to survive. 2017 is likely to be a difficult and very … Continue reading →22 Dec

How Republics End–Paul Krugman - December 23, 2016 Supposedly free-market politicians are already discovering that crony capitalism is fine as long as it involves the right cronies. It does have to do with class warfare — redistribution from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy is a consistent theme of all modern Republican policies. But what directly drives … Continue reading →22 Dec

EduShyster

Michigan, Here I Come! - Wow—a huge thanks to everyone who chipped in and made my *send EduShyster to the Mitten State* fundraising campaign such a huge success. In seven days, I raised $5,000 from 100 donors. Make that $5,025 from 101 donors. And while I did get a few three figure gifts (thanks Dad!), most of my contributions were small—$10 here, $18 there—from readers who want to know more about a would-be Secretary of Education and what the hell is going on in Michigan. So in just over three weeks, I’ll be hitting the road. Here’s where I’m headed, who I’ll be talking to and what I’m up to… First stop: Detroit Here’s a question for you: do you know how many charter schools in Detroit’s rapidly expanding and radically unregulated charter sector provide bus service? No idea? Don’t feel bad. Turns out nobody knows the answer to this question. Which is one way of conveying the scale of Detroit’s wild West-ish-ness. I’ll be talking to parents about how they navigate this system, and recording their stories to share in a podcast. I’ll have some help from the amazing organizers at 482Forward, a group that’s been pushing back against Detroit’s voicelessness over its own schools, or as they like to say *nothing about us without us.* Sick out city  Remember those teacher *sick out* protests last year that, at least for a brief moment, got everybody talking about the deplorable conditions of Detroit’s schools? I decided that I’d like to meet some of the teachers who led the protests because, well, I have serious admiration for them. And I’m hoping that they can fill me in on the new punishments (thanks Betsy and Dick DeVos!) aimed at teachers like them who speak out against the, um, less attractive side effects of Michigan’s experiment with free market education. Meeting up with a personal shero  One of the very best part of an *edventure* is that I get the opportunity to hang with some of my fave virtual pals. Like Nancy Flanagan, authoress of the outstanding EdWeek column Teacher in a Strange Land, for which she produces gems like her latest: *Terminal Charterism: the View from Michigan.* Which brings me to an important point. My purpose in traveling to Michigan is not to uncover an unknown story but to share what experts in Michigan’s long and DeVos-led unwinding of public education know all too well. Heading west, and back to the 30’sIf you read my piece about Betsy DeVos’ long game, then you know that geography is an important part of the Michigan story. The western part of the state from which the DeVos and Prince families have long ruled, looks just a little different from Detroit. To help me understand the history of these powerful families and their vision, honed over generations, I’m enlisting the help of an expert: historian Russ Bellant. He has spent years steeped in DeVosiana, tracing the role of both families in the creepy, secretive Council for National Policy. In other words, I can’t wait to meet him… Talking to anyone who will talk to me When I go on a big edventure like this, I make a point of reaching out to absolutely anyone I can think of who might be willing to talk to me. I’ve found that with a few notable exceptions, even the reformiest reformers are interested in meeting me. So my trip to Michigan will include conversations with charter advocates, lobbyists, even some DeVos allies. Sorry—no names. I don’t want to jinx anything! Trying to bend the space/time continuum Say you were planning to be in Holland, Michigan, home to the powerful Prince family, from whence Betsy DeVos sprung, on a self-guided tour of the intersection of right-wing politics, religious extremism and Dutch Reform boot-strap-ism. But then you get invited to participate in a large-scale policy simulation in which 150 grad University of Michigan graduate students consider options for charter school authorizer reform in Michigan. You realize that you have become the sort of person whom this invitation excites greatly, and that you can most definitely do both things if you can just figure out a way to move Holland and Ann Arbor closer together… Thanks to everyone who donated to my cause! And if you have suggestions for people I should talk to in Michigan, drop me a line at jennifer@edushyster.com. 17 Dec

Culture Warrior Princess - Betsy DeVos’ support for anti-gay groups goes much deeper than the media has reported… Is there anything left to say about the awfulness of Betsy DeVos, President-Elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education? Alas, there is… Not nearly enough has been made of DeVos’ extreme closeness to the extreme fringes of the Christian right. She and her family have spent decades and millions upon millions to help further the reach of organizations like the Family Research Council, known for its *research* into homosexuality, which, by the way, is not a civil right. While media reports have referred in passing to DeVos’s support for Christian causes, they’ve largely glossed over what these causes are and how deeply enmeshed she is in a world that views homosexuality as immoral and abhorrent. Since her position comes with some responsibilities of the civil rights variety, should we maybe be concerned about this? Remember the big *It Gets Better* campaign from a few years back? The viral video series in which gay grown ups recorded messages of hope and encouragement for students who are being bullied or just enduring life as an American teen won major plaudits and showed how the Interwebs could really be a force for progress. But it didn’t go down well at all with groups like the Family Research Council, which condemned President Obama for recording his own video and asked: *can you imagine George Washington, Ronald Reagan or any other president telling school children that it’s OK to be immoral and that eventually they’ll feel better about it?* Can you imagine George Washington, Ronald Reagan or any other president telling school children that it’s OK to be immoral and that eventually they’ll feel better about it? The FRC’s office in Holland, MI, Betsy DeVos’ hometown. So what does this have to do with Betsy DeVos? To say that she has long been a supporter of the Family Research Council doesn’t come anywhere close to conveying the depths of that support. Her family, the Princes, gave the seed money that was used to start the organization. The FRC credits the Prince family and the DeVos family for the financial support that enabled them to establish their permanent headquarters from which to *advance faith, family and freedom.* One is the group’s DC headquarters at Gallery Place, the other a satellite office in, wait for it, Holland, Michigan, Betsy’s hometown and the seat of the powerful Prince family from whence she sprang. Politico reported recently that both wings of Betsy DeVos’ family had been big donors to the FRC, but made it sound like funding anti-gay groups was sooooo last generation. The real action continues via Betsy’s family’s charity: the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation. Last year alone the foundation gave the FRC more than $700,000 in operating support. Another $500,000 went to support Focus on the Family, which recently rolled out a new campaign on *transgenderism: the new threat to your child’s school.* The previous year, the Prince’s sent $815,000 to the FRC and $500,000 to Focus on the Family. Betsy DeVos is a Director of the foundation, so signs off on all of these gifts. So too is her brother Erik, the founder of the private mercenary group Blackwater, who, in addition to being a vocal Trump supporter (Breitbart Radio!), turns out to have been a major backer of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, with whom the family turns out to have, um, a few things in common. In fact, of the $4 million dollars the Prince Foundation gave away last year, more than ¼ went to support two anti-gay groups. That’s not just a cause, it’s a priority. And it’s deeply reflective of who Betsy DeVos is and the world that she comes from.  Note: with your help, I’ll be heading to Michigan next month to talk to the real experts on DeVos’ legacy: parents and public education advocates. But I can’t do it without your help. I’ve just launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for my reporting adventure. Thanks for your support, and I can’t wait to tell you all about what I learn in my travels! Click here to make a donation. 10 Dec

The Long Game of Betsy DeVos - To understand Betsy DeVos’ vision for education, you have to know where she comes from… I first laid eyes upon Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, at Campbell Brown’s forum for GOP presidential contenders. It was the summer of 2015, back when Trump was little more than a punchline, and Jeb Bush, despite drooping in the August heat that day, still seemed like the real contender. Because the event wasn’t an official debate, Bush, Walker, Vindal, Fiorina et al couldn’t appear on stage together—which meant that Brown asked the same questions of each, and got similar pablum-esque non-answers, in an endless *conversational* format. And then suddenly there was Betsy DeVos, a Brown chum, holding forth about an education *moonshot.* It wasn’t what she said that interested me so much as what she represented. Could the education reform coalition’s major selling point, its bipartisan-ness, really stretch to incorporate the extreme right-wing views of DeVos? Mightn’t it be better for her to remain in the favored domain of the DeVos family, the shadows, or at least in Michigan? What went down in Detroit The private consternation felt by so many reform advocates over the DeVos pick is not due to her penchant for dropping *government* in front of *public school,* but rather the outsized role she has played in shaping Detroit as an, um, education laboratory in which an out-of-control lab fire now burns. First, though, a bit of historical context. We are so used to thinking of Detroit as America’s urban hell hole that it can be hard to comprehend the optimism that took hold there two years ago as the city was coming out of bankruptcy. Finally it seemed as though the Motor City might be on the cusp of a real revival. And not the kind of comeback driven by hipsters opening cupcake shops or the rebranded subsistence farming known as *urban gardening,* but a real deal renaissance where middle-class residents return to Detroit. It was out of this spirit of hopefulness that the Coalition for the Future of Detroit’s Schoolchildren emerged back in 2014. And it was a for realz coalition. AFT was there, but so was the reform-minded Excellent Schools Detroit and the city’s pro-charter mayor, along with members of the corporate and civic elite. People who’d been, if not at war, at deep odds, had finally gotten together around a single, shared point of agreement: if Detroit doesn’t have some way to oversee its schools—both what remains of the district schools and the fast-growing, completely unregulated charter sector—the city can forget about the future. Bankrolled by a local philanthropy, the Skillman Foundation, the coalition had the wind at its back and the political wherewithal necessary to get a bill through the state senate, even gaining the support of Governor Rick Snyder, aka @OneToughNerd.  But the feel-good story screeched to a halt last summer thanks to a wall of GOP opposition. Except that *wall* and *opposition* make it sound as though there were a whole bunch of people involved in the kneecapping that went down. There was a single family: Betsy and Dick DeVos. The bill that ultimately passed, with the DeVos’ blessing and with the aid of the lawmakers they bankroll, did virtually nothing to regulate Detroit’s *wild west* charter school sector, and will likely hasten the demise of the Detroit Public Schools. While Michigan’s burgeoning charter lobby was well represented in the final negotiations, elected representatives from Detroit were missing; in a clear violation of House rules, they weren’t even allowed to speak on the bill. And in a final twist of the shiv, the legislation that emerged lets uncertified teachers teach in Detroit, something not allowed anywhere else in Michigan. Oh, and don’t forget the new punishments for teachers who engage in *sick outs* to call attention to the appalling conditions in the city’s schools. By any means necessary There is a queasy, racialized undertone to much of the education reform debate, with its constant implication that students of color fare best in schools over which their communities have little say. In Michigan, though, that argument has been taken by reform advocates, Betsy DeVos chief among them, to its extreme conclusion. The official message of DeVos’ organization, the Great Lakes Education Project, during last summer’s legislative battle was that dissolving the Detroit Public Schools would *protect kids and empower parents,* a cause that came with its own hashtag: #EndDPS. But what GLEP really meant was hard to miss. Detroit is a tax-hoovering abyss whose residents are too corrupt and incompetent to oversee their own schools. When the GOP in Michigan swept all three branches of government in 2010, plans and schemes that the DeVos family and their conservative allies had been quietly hashing out for years were suddenly on the desk of the new, out-of-nowhere governor, being signed into law. Right to work passed, words that still smart to type if you know even a smidge about the Mitten State’s role as the birthplace of the industrial labor movement. The charter cap got another hike on its way to being eliminated completely. And the Local Government and School District Accountability Act was rammed through, allowing the governor to appoint an emergency manager to assume control of school districts and municipalities in financial distress. Which doesn’t quite convey the dictatorial powers with which the EM was now endowed. He could rip up labor contracts, open and close schools, and sell off public assets, with no public input whatsoever. You’ve heard about Detroit, and Flint, with its poisoned water, but there are other less well known cases—like Benton Harbor, Muskegon, and Highland Park, which at last count was down to a single public school. Within a few years of Public Act IV’s enactment, half of Michigan’s Black population was living under some form of emergency management. *The municipalities and school districts that have been taken over are predominantly African American and poor,* David Arsen, an economist at Michigan State University, told me when I interviewed him last summer. *The optics are not good, especially in the context of the long civil rights struggle for voting rights.* As Arsen and a team of researchers documented, the school districts that have fallen into financial distress have something else in common besides demographics: they have lots and lots of charter schools—or as he puts it: *heavy charter penetration.* And the higher the charter penetration, the higher the adverse impact on district finances, as districts are confronted with plummeting student enrollment and with a rising population of students in need of special education services. Or put in non-academic terms, the state’s push to expand charter schools in Michigan’s urban districts is creating problems that the state is then stepping into solve by, wait for it, expanding charter schools. Says Arsen: *In most of the districts the state has taken over, very substantial portions of students are now attending charter schools.* Great RapidsSpend some time plumbing the tax records of the DeVos Family Foundation and you’ll notice something striking. Michigan’s fourth wealthiest family gives virtually nothing to the state’s largest city. In 2013, of the $7 million the family gave away to a cornucopia of organizations religious, school-choice minded, and conservative, less than $30,000 went to groups in Detroit. The DeVos’ focus has long been on the other side of the state, in Grand Rapids. White, conservative and Christian, Grand Rapids is the anti-Detroit. Thanks to significant public investment and a huge infusion of cash from the DeVos family, whose name is plastered on surfaces across the city, Grand Rapids is now a destination. It’s also the second largest city in the state, an honor that once went to Flint, and unlike Flint or Detroit, which continue to hemorrhage residents, it keeps growing. Whether the DeVos’ have succeeded in making Grand Rapids the *cool city,* as a multi-media ad campaign promises, is a question I’ll be investigating when I visit next month for a feature story on DeVos I’m writing. (Note: if my forthcoming end-of-year fund appeal goes well, I’ll be staying at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel!) What IS indisputable though is that the city is the capital of charter school influence in Michigan. Grand Rapids is home to the largest charter school operator in the state, the for-profit National Heritage Academies, whose founder, businessmen J.C. Huizenga is a GOP powerhouse and DeVos family ally. And Grand Valley State University, a prominent authorizer of charter schools, including those run by NHA, operates a campus here. The concentration of charter influence in Grand Rapids —an ever-more powerful charter lobby, a bazillionaire patroness of the cause, a phalanx of loyal legislators—means that the future of Detroit’s schools, and the city itself, if it has one, won’t be decided by people who live in Detroit but by powerbrokers 150 miles to the west. *Betsy DeVos has more say over the Detroit schools than its civic leaders,* one observer told me. Meanwhile, the tilt in influence towards the state and away from local municipalities, with their corruption, incompetence and elected school-board *messiness* so disdained by education reformers, has further concentrated power in the hands of a handful of elites. Put another way, even as DeVos has used her outsized sway to push for market-based education reforms, one of the consequences of those reforms has been to further increase her influence. The long, long game The terrifying thing about the dawning of the Trumpian era isn’t just the specific awfulness of the President-elect’s policies. It’s that Trump is what the long gamers think of as *moldable clay,* receptive to whatever plots and plans they’ve spent years dreaming and scheming up. In Michigan, the long game has long been about making over the state’s schools: breaking up the government monopoly over education and getting rid of that pesky prohibition that keeps public monies from following kids to private schools, especially private schools of the religious variety. When Detroit-based writer Allie Gross set out this summer to document the long history of the efforts of the DeVos family and its allies to remake Detroit’s schools, she dug up an archival piece that a reporter at her paper, the Metro Times, wrote in 1995. Gross’ predecessor described a *relentless attack* on Michigan’s public education system, and a *Trojan horse* meant to blur the distinction between public and private schools en route to realizing the real goal: public funding for parochial schools. And so charter schools in Michigan were born, pushed by a small group of billionaire families with familiar names—DeVos, Prince, which was Betsy’s name before she became a DeVos—along with school choice advocates like Paul DeWeese and Richard McLellan, the founder of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. A close DeVos confederate, McLellan is widely considered to be the real brains behind everything having to do with education reform in Michigan. I came in contact with McLellan in the unlikeliest of ways: he sent me fan mail in response to a blog post I wrote, in which I lampooned an ill-fated proposal of his called the *Mega School Choice* bill. I referred to McLellan’s proposal as *Reform Turducken*: one privatization scheme stuffed inside another, inside another… *One of the better attacks on the school proposals,* McLellan wrote to me in an email on Christmas night, 2012. I imagined him sitting alone in the deep hush of a cavernous house somewhere in Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills, a cut glass tumbler of scotch nearby—an image that was not unpleasing to me. When an enterprising blogger turned up some 35-year-old notes bearing McLellan’s name, laying out a plan to discredit the public schools (aka: *stop tax hemorrhage to Detroit…*) and *mainstream the ‘choice’ issue,* I asked him if he’d be willing to do an interview with me. We talked on the phone for an hour and a half—by far the strangest interview I’ve ever done. I told him that as a participant observer in the great unwinding of public education, it was both heartening and horrifying to come across a document that seemed to confirm my worst imaginings. For his part, he mostly regaled me with descriptions of some of the many ideas he’s come up with over the years to disrupt the sclerotic workings of Michigan’s schools. Then he told me the story of how Michigan got a new Republican governor, who had no particular knowledge of education, or specific proposals to propose, and so turned to someone who just happened to have a whole constellation of these handy, all working towards a single long-term goal. *I’ve thought about a lot of these things for a long time,* McLellan said. *I thought, ‘I can throw in a lot of the schemes that we’ve talked about for the last 20 years.’* Send tips, comments and Michigan-based invitations to jennifer@edushyster.com.  Like my work? Help me do more of it.  . 29 Nov

Awful Silence - School choice advocates have been largely silent on Trump’s awfulness—and that speaks volumes, says early childhood educator Jamila Carter PHILADELPHIA EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATOR JAMILA CARTER. By Jamila CarterI recently read an opinion piece that was written by a school choice advocate who attempted to justify why so many white people voted for an openly racist, misogynist, xenophobe. The author pointed to class and the disenfranchisement of poor whites as the main drivers of the outcome, minimizing the role that racism played in the election results. But what was missing from this analysis was the fact that, of Trump’s voters, 45% were white, college educated women and 54% were white college educated. Downplaying the fact that the foundation of Trump’s campaign was rooted firmly in fear and hatred of the *other* displays willful ignorance. And explaining the voting pattern of White America by class rather than race ignores history. Trump’s divide and conquer methods are nothing new. While those of us who are people of color, immigrants, Muslims or LGBTQ are still stunned, grieving and fearful of what a Trump Administration will mean for us, this writer and far too many others are insisting that we consider why so many white people opted to throw us under the bus. Since America’s inception, we’ve seen elites and politicians pit working class whites against people of color in order to protect their own interests and acquire political gain. This is the very strategy that laid the foundation for a race based system of oppression. This is precisely the strategy that was used to win the election. People who voted for Trump transcend gender and class, and in some cases, race. But however deeply disillusioned Trump voters are with our economy and political system, it does not erase the fact that people voted for him despite his awful rhetoric, knowing that his proposed policies will not affect their lives. It is hard for me to comprehend how those who paint themselves as champions for poor Black and Brown families, claiming to work tirelessly to ensure that these children have access to quality educational options, can somehow ignore the fact that Trump’s campaign othered and dehumanized, and in some cases, jeopardized the safety of these very families. It is hard for me to comprehend how those who paint themselves as champions for poor Black and Brown families, claiming to work tirelessly to ensure that these children have access to quality educational options, can somehow ignore the fact that Trump’s campaign othered and dehumanized, and in some cases, jeopardized the safety of these very families. It’s incredibly hypocritical that education reformers see fit to appropriate the language of the civil rights movement and its most notable leaders to further their agenda, but somehow excuse Donald Trump supporters for their violent and racist attacks against anyone who doesn’t look like, pray like or love like them. There is no excuse. I’m not sure if these school choice advocates slept through the campaign, but the rest of America heard all too loudly Trump’s dog whistle uniting his supporters by invoking two emotions: hate and fear. It was at the very heart of his campaign. Perhaps some folks in the corporate education reform movement empathize with Trump supporters because the movement and the Trump campaign aren’t so different.  Both use disingenuous language that we have heard time and time again, never veering from the *message,* no matter how redundant or condescending. The difference is that the rhetoric spewed by the former, appeals to people who have been affected by systemic racism and disinvestment in the schools in their communities, while Trump’s rhetoric played on the fears of white people who felt that the America that they were entitled to had somehow slipped away. Hence the rallying cry: *Make America Great Again.* Unfortunately, this great America* doesn’t seem to include the children that these self-proclaimed advocates claim to want to *save.* Trump insults us by pledging to clean up the *inner cities* through stop-and-frisk and a return to *law and order,* recycling the racist rhetoric of politicians of the past. The favored phrases of education reformers, meanwhile—grit, no excuses and accountability—may appear harmless at first, but pull back the veil and we realize that they lead to higher expulsion and suspension rates for  black and brown children, education that centers on standardized testing, and the implication that  poor children of color lack character and the ability to persevere when faced with hardship. Trump and education reformers also share an intolerance for criticism. Raise your voice against any aspect of the corporate education reform movement and you are *aiding in keeping poor black and brown children trapped in failing schools.* I wonder how the *movement* that cloaks itself in the language of racial justice and civil rights will reconcile the fact that the President elect has thrown his full support behind school choice? Will they abandon their talking points to further the agenda? Will they in turn throw their full support behind a man who has stoked the fires of hate and fear? Or will they stand up for the families that have been systematically denied the same opportunities as their white counterparts? No matter what the intent, the impact of this election will be devastating for our children. It’s time that privileged reform advocates acknowledge our children’s humanity and replace talking points, catchphrases and empty rhetoric with the real work of educational equity and social justice in our schools. Jamila Carter is a mother of three and an early childhood educator in Philadelphia, PA. Follow her on Twitter at @jubimom. 19 Nov

Inequality is for Winners - I talk to Tom Frank, author of Listen, Liberal, about the Democrats’ break up with the working class and why education can’t save us… EduShyster: Your recent book, Listen, Liberal argues that Democrats are no longer the party of the working class, which now seems to have some, well, data behind it. Tom Frank: The Democrats are now a party of the professional class: affluent, white-collar professionals. They themselves say this all the time; they talk about the professional class as being their constituency. But we don’t often try to put the pieces together and try to figure out, well what does it mean to be a party of the professional class vs. the working class? One thing it means is that inequality is seen as the natural order of things. In fact, professionals believe in inequality. They think of inequality as totally fair and the way things should be, and they think that because they themselves are the winners in the great inequality sweepstakes. EduShyster: There are many great lines in Listen, Liberal, but one of my faves is that whenever the kind of liberal you’re describing stumbles upon an economic problem—say, the collapse of the middle class—s/he sees an education problem. I can’t help but think of this when you hear voters in, say, the Heartland, talking about feeling looked down upon. Frank: That’s one of the lines in the book that I’m quite proud of. The liberals I’m describing are an affluent group, by and large, who’ve done very well, and they attribute their success to their education. The professional class is defined by educational achievement. That’s who they are. They’re defined by how and what they did in school. So they look out at the rest of the country that’s going in reverse, at the middle class dream that’s falling apart, and they say *you know, it’s really your own fault. You should have tried harder in school. You should have gone to the right school.* But defining every economic problem as an education problem is basically a way of blaming the victim. This is where the idea that education solves economic problems totally breaks down. What my generation learned, and what everybody is starting to understand now, is that it’s not about education—it’s about power. It’s about power in the workplace. And we didn’t have any. EduShyster: Here, allow me to repeat that for emphasis, but with italics to emphasize the condescension: you know, it’s really your own fault. You should have tried harder in school. You should have gone to the right school. Frank: There is nothing that gives the lie to the meritocratic view of the world than what’s happened to humanities PhDs. These are people with the highest degree there is. They spent the most time in school of anyone. This is where the idea that education solves economic problems totally breaks down. I spent 25 years in school and got a PhD in history at the University of Chicago, a degree that used to be valued in the marketplace. But the marketplace figured out a way to casualize university labor. The whole idea of the professional, meritocratic way of looking at the world is that if you study, you’ll win—good things will come to you. I studied hard, and I got good grades and I got a PhD and my dissertation was even published. None of it made any difference. What my generation learned, and what everybody is starting to understand now, is that it’s not about education—it’s about power. It’s about power in the workplace. And we didn’t have any. EduShyster: Readers of this blog will recognize some not insignificant overlap between the liberals of which you write and the education reform wing of the Democratic party. This particular varietal not only sees every economic problem as an education problem, but sees teachers unions as a singular impediment to at last fixing our economic problems through education.   Frank: I think about all of these people who blame everything on the teachers unions and it drives me crazy. As though they think that getting rid of any kind of power for teachers is what we need to do. I went to public schools in suburban Kansas City and they were excellent, and my teachers were in the union and they were first rate. You know what else is fascinating is the utter lack of solidarity among professionals. When they do this to K-12 teachers, does anybody think they’re going to stop there? Why would not university professors be next? They’ve already casualized university labor, bidding down the price of teaching down to almost nothing. You see the same thing happening in journalism now too. And yet there’s no solidarity for other teachers from on high, from the leaders of these disciplines. There’s no solidarity between the powerful figures in teaching literature, for example, and the adjuncts who do the actual work. By and large they don’t seem to care about what’s happening to their own colleagues. EduShyster: Listen, Liberal, with its explanation of why blue collar workers feel abandoned by the Democratic party, has been described as *prescient.* Which is another way of saying that you’ve been ranting about the same things for a long time. For example, your criticism of NAFTA goes back long before anyone had even heard of Bernie bros. Frank: I’ve been talking about NAFTA since the day it was passed, and one of the things you run up against in political commentary is people who just laugh at you if you say there might be something wrong with NAFTA. It’s like talking about the Kennedy assassination—it’s that stigmatized to even imply that these trade deals may not have been the most wonderful thing in the world.These things are so obviously good. What kind of sorehead could be against them? The phrase the New York Times always used was *no brainer.*  And now look at what’s happening. Donald Trump’s movement was in part powered by his denunciation of trade deals. It was so strong that even Hillary Clinton, who voted for many trade deals when she was Senator and even helped negotiate the Trans Pacific Partnership when she was Secretary of State, had to back away from it. She didn’t mean any of it, of course. It’s out of control now. It’s a prairie fire. EduShyster: Your tour through the break-up between the Democratic party and the working class makes at an extended stop in a city I know very well: Decatur, IL. I grew up near there and the labor struggle you write about, at a local corn processing company that had been bought by a huge multinational sugar conglomerate, had a profound effect on me. In fact, it was the experience of interviewing the workers there and helping them tell their story that made me realize what I wanted to be when I grew up, thus launching me on my extraordinarily non-lucrative path. Frank: I heard about what was going on in Decatur because a worker from Staley, came to the University of Chicago when I was in grad school and made a presentation about it. They’d made a video about their struggle and the video had that scene where the police pepper sprayed protesters. I was shocked by that. I went down there several times with a friend of mine and we wrote an essay about what was going on Decatur for the Chicago Reader. At one point while I was there, there was enormous march through the city that I’ll never forget. I climbed up on a highway overpass, and the marchers, who were marching from the Staley to the Caterpillar plant, filled this major road running through Decatur, from one side to the other, all the way to the horizon. I’d never seen anything like this before in my life. All of a sudden I had this spontaneous understanding of what liberalism was and where it came from, this kind of 1930’s vision of working people in their numbers and in their majesty. Here they are, the population of your town rising up. It was an extraordinary feeling. EduShyster: I was at that march! Alas, this is a story that doesn’t end happily. The workers were crushed, and Decatur today, well, I’ll let you do the honors… Frank:  In the last part of Listen, Liberal, I go to Martha’s Vineyard, then go back to Decatur—these are two scenes that really represent the different parts of democratic party. Martha’s Vineyard is where the President and the Clintons go. All of these democratic powerbrokers go there and they hang out with their billionaire friends in these enormous mansions with their private beaches. Then I went back to Decatur, and it’s a disaster. It has completely fallen apart. Those workers turned out to be totally right in their warnings to the nation. They used to always talk about how what they were going through was really a battle over the future of the middle class, one that the rest of us were going to to have to fight someday. And nobody listened to them.   Tom Frank is the author of Listen, Liberal -or- Whatever Happened to the Party of the People 18 Nov

What Went Down in Massachusetts - Boston Mayor Marty Walsh with parent organizer Malikka Williams. Why the campaign to lift the Massachusetts charter cap went down in flames… We were motoring around when the ad came on. It was one of those golden fall afternoons we’ve had a string of lately, the foliage suspended in a globally-warmed cocoon of brilliance, and suddenly there he was: Boston’s mayor Marty Walsh. Or as he pronounces it, *maeh.* Even with the mostly missing ‘r’s,’ his message was unmistakable: Question 2, the proposal to lift the state’s cap on charter schools, was deeply misguided. And he didn’t just mean bad for Boston, he meant bad for the whole state, making an already broken school funding system worse. *What were they thinking by going to the ballot?* my husband asked. Actually he said *What were they !@#$% thinking?* And for once I didn’t chide him for swearing. I could give you a long list of reasons why Question 2 went down in flames. It was a complicated policy question that should never have made it onto the ballot. Yes on 2, despite outspending the ‘no’ camp 2-1 couldn’t find a message that worked, and was never able to counter the single argument that most resonated with voters against charter schools: they take money away from public schools and the kids who attend them. #NoOn2 also tapped into genuinely viral energy. The coalition extended well beyond the teachers unions that funded it, growing to include members of all kinds of unions, as well as social justice and civil rights groups, who fanned out across the state every weekend. By election day, the sprawling network of mostly volunteer canvassers had made contact with more than 1.5 million voters. One, two, three part strategy Question Two was just one part of an elaborate three-pronged strategy dreamed up by charter advocates in Massachusetts, most notably our own Secretary of Education, James Peyser, to get rid of the charter cap. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s education reform eminence Chester Finn helpfully explaining in his new book how Massachusetts charter advocates had decided that things would go down: There we see a coherent three-part strategy, beginning with a legislative move to amend the Bay State’s charter law. In case lawmakers balk, a ballot initiative is in the works, as is a legal move involving a prominent Boston firm that has filed a class-action suit to lift the charter cap, arguing that it unconstitutionally denies children access to an adequate education. As part of all three efforts, Families for Excellent Schools is organizing parents and other charter supporters to participate in an advocacy campaign. Tellingly, Finn’s explication of Team Charter’s strategerizing is in a section entitled *From Grass Tops to Grass Roots.* A model of the *new parent power,* Families for Excellent Schools has successfully organized parents in NYC, most of whom already send their kids to charter schools, to demand more and more charter schools. Here they are marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, 30K strong. Now here they are, arriving in Albany by the busload. Theirs is a powerful spectacle, until one looks too closely and notices that the guys on the walkie talkies are all white and that the parents were told that they had to attend, or that the mayor wants to close their schools, and that their own charter schools had to be closed for the day in order to create the powerful spectacle. In the spring of 2014, Peyser, who sat on the national board of Families for Excellent Schools, was imploring Boston’s charter schools to *take control of their own destiny by becoming a more potent political force.* By that summer, FES had a Boston offshoot, *seeded* thanks to the largesse of the New Schools Venture Fund, where Peyser worked, and the same Republican philanthropists who would get the #YesOn2MA ball rolling. And yet FES was an expensive flop from the start. What went so wrong? Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the group’s astonishing odiosity. Like refusing to say what they were about. Their first big event, a lavishly choreographed rally at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, made no mention of charter schools. Then there was *Unify Boston,* a months-long petition drive in which organizers gathered signatures from parents who wanted great neighborhood schools. When group leaders informed staff members that the actual goal of the campaign was to lift the charter cap, a revolt broke out. *It’s like they think people of color are stupid,* said one former FES organizer. In the end, charter advocates couldn’t marshall a parent army for the same reason that has undone one ambitious #edreform vision after another: their logic model was flawed. *People aren’t against charter schools,* Yawu Miller, the managing editor of the Bay State Banner, Boston’s African American newspaper, told me when I interviewed him earlier this fall. *But they don’t want to see the kind of expansion that’s being proposed now. They think there’s a threat to the district school system if that happens.* As Miller pointed out, his son is on the waitlist for several charter schools. So is Save Our Schools parent organizer Malikka Williams. In fact, it turns out that almost everyone in Boston is on some kind of waitlist. Calculate the number of students who are waiting for in-demand Boston district schools the same way that charters do and you end up with a number in excess of 20,000. Something’s rotten in Denmark I knew that Question 2 was in deep trouble when I started hearing about it from my friends whose usual disinterest in issues educational extends to insisting that I please talk about something else. *Did you know these assholes are paying for this bullshit?* my friend Urszula asked me, directing my attention to a picture of Walmart heirs Alice and Jim Walton in her decidedly non-education themed Facebook feed. My friend Paul, a former auto parts dealer turned VA nurse who holds public sector unions in the same high regard as he holds the New York Yankees, told me that Yes on 2, with its non-stop TV ads, smelled fishy to him. *You know what they say,* he said. *If there’s something rotten in Denmark…* Do you know why hating on the Yankees is such a popular pastime in Massachusetts? Because they’re regarded as rich, entitled assholes from New York. Which is why the decision to rely so heavily on well, rich, entitled assholes from New York to fund the Yes on 2 campaign puzzles one so. By the final tally before the election, Families for Excellent Schools, reduced to serving as a conduit for the offerings of rich Wall Street-ers, had gifted more than $17 million to the cause. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, kicked in an additional $250,000 on top of the $240,000 he contributed back in August. To average voters, unfamiliar with the reform trope of the billionaire changemaker, the outsized role being played by rich New Yorkers was utterly incomprehensible. It’s not enough to field the richest baseball team money can buy, now they want our schools too? By October it was clear that the Question 2 ship was beginning to list. The original claim, debuted in a massive ad buy during the Olympics, that expanding charter schools would actually increase funding for public education, had failed to resonate with voters, and so it was off to the next argument. It turned out that charter schools didn’t actually *drain* or *siphon* money away from district schools as team #NoOn2 kept insisting—and here was a press release about a study to prove it. But once again, Question 2’s proponents, including editorial page editors at the Boston Globe, which ran a prominent *no draining, no siphoning* editorial, ran into the buzzsaw of a whole bunch of people all over the state who actually knew stuff. Those school committees, which just would not stop passing resolutions against the ballot question, could tell you exactly how much money their city or town was spending on charter schools. The Mayor of Northampton, which is about as far from Boston as you can get, pointed out that his town spends more to send kids to the specialized charter schools favored by affluent parents—a subspecies never mentioned during the campaign—than on an entire elementary school. Meanwhile, cities that are already home to the largest number of charters and would be most affected by the passage of Question 2, began tallying how much charters were already costing them. Lowell, for example, has seen a drastic spike in its charter school bill and now spends more than $16 million on a parallel school system, money that’s being diverted away from *extras,* like paving the roads in Mill City. The charter waitlist in Lowell, by the way, is dwarfed by the number of kids waiting to get into district schools. It was starting to seem like there was not a single person in the entire state who couldn’t make the case for why Question 2 was bad, bad, bad. There was the CFO for the city of Boston, laying out in PowerPointed detail what adding just three charter schools per year was going to do to the municipal budget. There was the NAACP’s Michael Curry, calling out public officials for walking away from public systems and wondering where all of these rich white guys who were suddenly so interested in investing in minority students in Boston, had been all of his life. There was a school committee member from a town you had to look up on a map, who turned out to know everything about the state’s complicated charter reimbursement formula. Of course #LiftTheCap was not spox-less. Representing the *yes* side was the likes of Governor Baker’s own communications consultant, who, when she wasn’t explaining that Question Two would mean more money for public education, or that charter schools absolutely do not drain or siphon money from district schools, was repping another social justice cause: Baker’s crusade to privatize the T. Then there was Marty Walz (not to be confused with Marty Walsh), a former state rep known for her, um, lawyerly style, which is a very polite way of saying that she was quite possibly the least appropriate spokesperson for a movement ostensibly about parents of color whom one could find. The final ad that Baker recorded for Yes on 2 featured him at his Swampscott, MA home, delivering the reassuring message that voting yes would only affect nine cities. As for the rest of ya’ll, there was great news: if you liked your school, you could keep it. Baker took some heat for choosing to deliver said message in front of a leather lounger, but could you really blame him? What if he needed to sit down mid way through the spot? It had to be exhausting keeping up with the ever-changing arguments. In fact, even the people who’d propelled the question onto the ballot now seemed to be confused about what it actually said. Besides, why was everyone so quick to assume that by *twelve schools a year* till perpetuity, proponents actually meant *twelve schools a year* till perpetuity? And whose idea had it been to let the whole state vote on this anyway? All inIt’s hard to imagine now but there was a time when Charlie Baker saw the cause of charter expansion as a vehicle for winning political support in Democratic cities. In addition to winning over minority voters among whom charters are popular, he was also hoping to pick off middle class democrats who see charter schools as the new Catholic schools but at public school prices. That strategy failed utterly. The cities rejected Question 2 by wide margins, while the voters who said *yes* were those who reside in leafy suburbs and a few yacht clubbed hamlets—the highest income areas in the state. In other words, the exact opposite of the narrative that was pushed relentlessly by charter advocates and *journalists* like Richard Whitmire, who served up such tripe as this story: *’It’s Heartbreaking’: Boston Parents Ask Why Their Wealthy Neighbors Are Fighting Charter Schools.* #YesOn2MA hammered the urban/suburban narrative to explain their looming failure, and in the end managed to get even that wrong. The Boston Globe, in its post-vote wrap up, pronounced Question 2’s defeat as a *victory for teachers unions.* But that’s just a lazy script. The vote, and the campaign leading up to it, represents a political realignment. In a state that has been trending steadily more progressive, there is no progressive case to be made in favor of expanding opportunities for a small number of kids, while leaving the rest behind. People outside of Massachusetts were stunned when Elizabeth Warren announced that she was #NoOn2, but they shouldn’t have been. Question 2 had little support among democrats and virtually none at all among progressives. In fact, it was only ever officially endorsed by four organizations: Democrats for Education Reform, and three business groups, one of which seeks to eliminate the inheritance tax. DFER and other pro-charter groups were quick to issue statements to the effect of *we’ll be back*—talking pointed bravado about zip codes and moral stains on the Commonwealth that conveyed nothing so much as their failure to recognize the magnitude of their loss. It wasn’t just the lopsided vote, by the way. That class-action lawsuit filed by various white shoe Boston law firms against the charter cap was decisively dismissed as well, the judge rejecting the very idea of an individual right to choose a particular kind of school. All of the momentum is on the other side now, an enormous statewide coalition that will rally behind fixing a *broken school funding system*—work that was begun in the Senate last year. But the problem isn’t just funding, it’s the profoundly irrational relationship between charter schools, set up in communities that have no say over them, and the district schools with which they compete for students and resources. Let’s rethink that too. Much is already being made of the vast amount of political capital expended by Governor Baker on this issue. He went all in and lost big on this. But what of the real brains behind the operation, Secretary Peyser, who dreamed, schemed and plotted all this up? He should resign. It’s outrageous that an official tasked with overseeing a public system is not only disinterested in it, but spends all of his time conspiring to blow it up. As for the wealthy residents of Weston, Wellesley, Cohasset, Dover-Sherborne and Manchester-by-the-Sea who are so eager to do right by poor minority students, they might consider supporting the millionaire’s tax. But something tells me that’s unlikely… Send tips and comments to jennifer@edushyster.com.  9 Nov

Boston Parent: Why I’m voting No on 2—and you should too - Boston parent Lisa Martin was determined to keep her son from attending the Boston Public Schools, but now she’s urging parents to vote against Question 2. What changed her mind? By Lisa MartinMany people have asked me why I am voting no on Question 2.  The answer is both simple and complex. I believe that all children are entitled to a quality education, and no child is entitled to a better education at the expense of another. I feel compelled to share my perspective because my son has been a student in both charter and district schools, and I’ve worked in both. I can recall thinking that there was absolutely no way my son would ever attend Boston Public Schools.  No matter what it took, I was determined that he would attend a charter, a private school, or attend a suburban school through METCO.  I remember racing around with friends to drop off applications at  every charter school that admitted kids starting at K1.  I attended the lotteries of several schools and prayed that my son was one of the lucky few plucked from a lottery of hundreds of wishful families.  It felt hopeless but finally we hit the lottery.  I was ecstatic for about 10 seconds.  Then I realized that my friend’s son hadn’t been selected.  It didn’t seem fair.   I received a call from the charter school on my son’s very first day.  On the second day, I was asked by an administrator if anyone had ever evaluated him for ADHD.  I was called every day for a week, and by the fourth day I was told to pick my son up because he was disruptive. He had difficulty during transitions.  He cried when he wasn’t called on.  He spoke out of turn.  He was 4 years old. When I asked why it was necessary to keep him home the following day, the response was essentially: *we’re not obligated to teach them until they’re 6, so we’d rather send them home than deal with them.* Keeping your kid home is a nice way of not saying *suspension.*  Suspending children at this age should raise red flags for any parent. Over the course of the year, his self-esteem began to suffer.  There was a lot of *I can’t,* *I’m not smart enough,* and *the kids say I’m bad* coming from my formerly confident child.  I went to his school for a class gathering and realized that my son was isolated from the other children.  His desk had been moved away from them during the first week of school and never returned.  He was permanently branded *bad.* This was reinforced by the teacher when she would publicly clip him down in front of the class. He would cry and declare that he would *never be a scholar leader,* a sentiment echoed by other children in his class who didn’t meet the expectations of their teacher. I come from a large family and have always loved teaching—there is nothing more rewarding than witnessing a child’s mind grow.  So I was overjoyed when I was hired at one of Boston’s best charter schools as an associate teacher. I lasted two months.  I was pulled aside and told that I didn’t write kids up enough. What did they do? Some children didn’t look up immediately when I called for their attention, they didn’t *track* the teacher, or were guilty of  other minor infractions. Writing students up starts with calling a parent but eventually leads to suspension. (If you don’t know why this is problematic, please Google *school to prison pipeline.*) The hours were long.  The pay was awful.  But it was the way the children were treated that troubled my spirit.  When I asked my mentor teacher when I should try taking my state licensing exams to fulfill the goal of licensure during my associate year, she replied: *I don’t know.  I never took those tests.*  I was shocked.  As a parent of a child who was beginning to read, I was also concerned.  Teaching literacy is, in my opinion, the most important facet of an educator’s job.  If children can’t read at grade level by grade three the consequences are dire.  Then I realized charter school teachers do NOT need to be licensed.  And they aren’t doing a great deal of teaching. Don’t be fooled by test scores. They give assessments, look at where students struggle, then re-teach and assess again. What’s wrong with re-teaching? It seems innocent enough.  The problem is that they aren’t doing it to help students.  They are doing it to make sure that they are able to perform well.  And if the students can’t perform, the schools will find a way to get them out and back into the district schools.   When I left my charter school, I moved immediately into Boston Public Schools.  I worked for the rest of the year at a wonderful school that had just received notice that they would be closed due to budget cuts.  The impact on the children and staff was devastating.  For many of these children, school is the only stability they have.  And it was snatched away.  As I worked in different classes, covering for teachers who were searching for new positions, I realized that the curriculum was the same but my new colleagues were better educators.  The children were also allowed to learn and play in a way that they weren’t at the charter school I’d left.  Without opportunities to socialize children don’t develop the social skills that they need.  That’s what too many charter schools miss.  If you stifle the voice of a child for too long, they may never find it. The children were also allowed to learn and play in a way that they weren’t at the charter school I’d left.  Without opportunities to socialize children don’t develop the social skills that they need.  That’s what too many charter schools miss.  If you stifle the voice of a child for too long, they may never find it. My son left his charter school after one year.  He attended the Nathan Hale Elementary School in Roxbury for the later part of K2.  He had a tough time transitioning at first.  He told his principal that she was supposed to call me to bring him home when he was bad.  She told him that he would not be going home.  He was in school to learn and that was the end of that. He went from not reading much of anything to being on grade level in three months.  His class had 21 students, much to my horror, but his teacher managed it very well.  The teachers worked with him and for him.  I had no clue that this gem of a school was nestled in the heart of Roxbury.  Some of our children may need tough love but they certainly don’t need to be broken like animals and retrained to fit a mold.  Care, custody, and control is a prison mission, not the mission of a school. Despite my personal experience with charter schools, my main opposition to Question 2 is what the addition of more charter schools takes from the district.  They keep airing the commercial that says there are 32,000 students on waitlists trapped in failing schools.  Those numbers don’t disappear by suddenly raising the cap. Many children will remain on waitlists and in district schools that are far worse off. These *unfortunate* students will still be in BPS facilities with crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, and deep cuts to programs like art, theater, science, and early education. Meanwhile charter schools are popping up across the street with beautiful new, or newly renovated buildings.  Raising the cap will devastate our schools and push us towards more charter schools.   Parents are flocking to charter schools because they believe they will be better for their children.  They have the same visceral reaction to the Boston Public Schools that I did. They believe the myth that Boston Public Schools are awful when in fact, we have some fantastic schools.  We just don’t have enough of them…yet. Many people think Question 2 is about giving parents a choice.  There is no choice.  Your child enters a charter school with the luck of the draw.  That’s not choice.  It’s not a guarantee.  It’s a wish. The waitlists will remain incredibly long.  Parents are flocking to charter schools because they believe they will be better for their children.  They have the same visceral reaction to the Boston Public Schools that I did.  They believe the myth that Boston Public Schools are awful when in fact we have some fantastic schools.  We just don’t have enough of them…yet.  I realize now that we only hear the good about charter schools and the bad about district schools.   We need to believe in our schools.  The one certainty in raising the cap is that our district schools will suffer.  Our kids will lose.  I am not willing to gamble on our future leaders.  We can all agree that district schools have a long way to go but that fight is not here.  THAT fight is with the Legislature.  On November 9, no matter the outcome of this vote, we should all be preparing to fight for more funding for our schools.  True choice will come when the students of Boston have tier one and two schools in their neighborhoods to choose from.  We need to support our schools and fix what isn’t working.   Lisa Martin is the mother of three children: Kyle, Lila and Bromley.  She is a community advocate, groomed by her grandmothers to fight for others.  Among her areas of interest are education reform, criminal justice reform, reentry services and family reunification for incarcerated persons, and voter disenfranchisement.  She is looking forward to pursuing a graduate degree in rehabilitative counseling. Follow her on Twitter at @LisaDiane275 or email her at lisadmartin003@gmail.com. 5 Nov

Families for Excellent Trains - The campaign to lift the charter school cap in Massachusetts goes off the tracks… Around the 20 minute mark of Arne Duncan’s talk, I began to choke. I’d made it through Duncan’s endorsement of Question Two, the ballot initiative to lift the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts, and the occasion for last week’s *Education Party* thrown by Democrats for Education Reform. It was when Duncan started to talk about the need for school reformers to genuinely engage parents and families—*I’m not talking about astro-turf*—that the dryly bitter chuckling sound I’d been making escalated into something more profound. You see, that very morning, the Boston Globe had run an expose on the *family* at the very center of Question 2: a husband/wife team of GOP operatives who have orchestrated seemingly every aspect of the campaign. There are other families involved, of course. Like Republican philanthropists Seth Klarman and Joanna Jacobson, whose largesse got the multi-pronged effort to lift the charter cap rolling, and who are referred to in the trove of internal emails the Globe made public as Klarman and JJ. And there is Families for Excellent Schools, whose CEO, Jeremiah Kittredge, is CC’d on all of the emails, along with a small army of lobbyists, PR hacks and the heads of a handful of Boston charter schools. An exemplar of the new *parent power,* FES was transplanted here from NYC, thanks to the aforementioned largesse of the aforementioned families, to marshall an army of parents behind the effort to lift the charter cap. The group quickly became known for such innovative marshalling techniques as automatically enrolling parents whose kids attended Boston charter schools in the parent army. Small ball Was that what Duncan meant when he talked about authentic parent engagement? I wondered. It was hard to tell. He has a delivery style that might best be described as *fast-folksy.* Speed subs in for urgency, the anecdotes fly, and liberally sprinkled throughout are the *Arne-isms* that serve as glue, holding the whole contradictory mess together. The word of the night was *small-ball,* a catch-all dismissal of the kinds of local concerns that can gum up the works of the big idea guys. The debate over Question 2 was small-ball, Duncan told the crowd. He didn’t mention the 200 plus school committees and city councils in Massachusetts that are on record as opposing the ballot initiative—the largest collection of *small balls* in Massachusetts history. Instead he talked about data and Boston and how we shouldn’t be ideological. Then we we were off to Washington DC where scores are up, and Denver where there are scores more schools, and finally, we heard about a seven year old, who, if you asked him what kind of school he attends, couldn’t tell you. Duncan’s endorsement of Question 2, the occasion for his celebrity appearance at the Education Party, felt perfunctory. He was far more convincing when he talked about what the Obama Administration left unfinished. Like the DREAM act which would let undocumented kids who came to the US as children pay in-state tuition to attend state schools. It’s a *no brainer,* as Duncan might say, but squirmy stuff for DFER. Governor Baker, the crusader-in-chief for lifting the state charter cap, is also the leading opponent of the Massachusetts’ equivalent of the DREAM Act.  As for Duncan’s full-throated embrace of universal pre-k, it’s almost universally shared here. More than 14,000 parents are trapped on the pre-k waiting list, and voters have even signalled how they want to pay for its expansion: by taxing millionaires. This too is a topic on which DFER’s position ranges from silent to slithery. Meanwhile there are already signs that the next time the *bi-partisan coalition* behind Question 2 takes shape it will be to oppose the millionaire’s tax. T party In a fitting bit of bitter irony, just as DFER staffers were putting the finishing touches on the Education Party trimmings, the subway station down the street, Back Bay, was being evacuated. A train engine overheated, filling subway cars with smoke, and panicked riders, who assumed that there was a fire, had to smash the windows of the car to escape. The whole subway line was shut down for hours, and five of the passengers were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. This is the sort of thing that seems to happen regularly in Boston now, the consequence of decades of disinvestment by political leaders who no longer believe in public systems. The same GOP political operatives who were tasked by the Governor with orchestrating the *grassroots* campaign to lift the charter cap also oversee his transportation portfolio. The emails that the Globe reporters managed get to their hands on detail a plan to prey on the misery of commuters—whose trains cost a fortune, or never come, or are constantly breaking down—by getting them to sign petitions demanding that the legislature *Fix Our T.*  Except that *fix* in this case really meant *privatize.* This was two years ago, and while the trains are still a stalled wreck, the governor’s plan to dismantle the T is on track to eliminating some of the only decent paying jobs available to African Americans without college degrees. Excellent families I decided to give subterranean panic a miss and walk the two miles through downtown to North Station instead. It’s a route I travel regularly and it perfectly capture the state of the city these days. Look up and you see the luxury towers that are springing up everywhere. Look down and you can’t miss the human wreckage of the heroin epidemic: people crashing out and nodding off, staggering around, broken. And if you don’t see it, you’re reading about it: the endless stories of addicts overdosing, being brought back to life, only to OD again. On the same day that Arne Duncan came to the Boston, the Globe broke a major news story: that the maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, thwarted plans to limit prescriptions to the drug at the dawn of the opioid epidemic, planting the seeds for the heroin crisis that is now eating Massachusetts. The investigative reporters at STAT, the health publication launched by the Globe last year, are drawing ever nearer to the family behind the privately held Purdue Pharma: the Sacklers. Members of this excellent family, who recently edged out the Mellons and the Rockefellers on Forbes list of the richest families in the US, are known for giving back; their name graces the wings of cultural institutes aplenty. Jonathan Sackler’s pet philanthropy is education reform; he is both a director of Purdue Pharma and a director of the reform movement. He sits on the board of the New Schools Venture Fund, which claims to have doubled the size of Boston’s charter sector, where he’s joined by Massachusetts’ edu-innovator in chief, Chris Gabrieli. Sackler funds charter schools and the efforts to expand them, he funds education reform organizations, and he gives to DFER-backed candidates, like Leland Cheung who ran against progressive Democrat Pat Jehlen this fall, and Chyna Tyler, who will soon be representing Roxbury at the Statehouse. Should the names of the donors who’ve flooded the various dark money PAC’s that are funding #YesOn2MA, including DFER’s, ever be made public, *Sackler* will be among them. Party peopleDFER’s  Education Reformer of the Year honor went to Congressman Stephen Lynch for his brave public position in favor of lifting the charter cap, a position he has held since 1997. Lynch talked of the *inner peace* that comes from supporting charter schools, and shared an anecdote about Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo calling him before endorsing Question 2, asking Lynch what he should say. The district that Lynch represents includes South Boston, the part of the city among hardest hit by the heroin epidemic. Let me rephrase that. *Hardest hit* doesn’t quite capture the extent of what’s happened to Southie. Let’s go with *laid waste to* instead. To his credit, Lynch was candid with the crowd about Question 2’s prospects. *It’s going to be close,* he said. And *we’ve got work to do.* Followed by *we’re not giving up.* All of which translates into what has been clear for months: Question 2, which started out polling up near 60%, has declined steadily in the polls since then. Everything about this campaign has been a dud, from the misleading, confusing and constantly changing messaging, to the decision to rely on donations from wealthy out-of-staters who won’t even identify themselves, to the ballot question itself, which takes an already complex issue and renders it, on the actual ballot, utterly incomprehensible. DFER is making a final push this week to convince voters that *Real Democrats Vote YES on Question 2.* But cross off the Democrats who don’t actually live in Massachusetts, who aren’t in office anymore, or who haven’t been elected yet, and you’re not left with many. Which may be why that, despite the free drinks and the hand-passed hors d’oeuvres, the guest of honor and the Question 2 swag, the Education Party didn’t feel like much of a party. In fact, the event was an apt metaphor for DFER Massachusetts itself: small, lavishly funded, soon to be forgotten. Send tips and comments to jennifer@edushyster.com.  Like my work? Help me do more of it.  . 3 Nov

Miss Information - I talk to Tracy Novick about what Question 2 actually says, and what’s behind the Massachusetts school committee rebellion… EduShyster: I thought we could start out with a little TV viewing. Here’s one of the latest spots for the campaign to lift the charter school cap in Massachusetts, and it features none other than our own governor, Charlie Baker. The spot is just 30 seconds long, but my sense of confusion persisted long after that. The Governor doesn’t seem to be talking about the same ballot question that I’m helpfully linking to here. Tracy Novick: It is not accurate to say that Question Two is only about nine cities. Right now, when the state considers new charter schools, priority goes to school districts in the lowest 10% of performance. But under the ballot question, the district performance doesn’t even have to be considered unless the state gets more than 12 applications in a year. The largest number of schools the state has actually chartered in a year date back to the mid 90’s, when they chose six or seven in a year. Having more than 12 applications isn’t likely. That means the charters really could go anywhere. Question 2 actually replaces a system where some of those nine cities are first in line with one where most of the time they won’t be.  EduShyster: I’ve actually been feeling a little bad for the suburban charter schools these days. They’ve been completely ignored during our frenzied debate. For example, the school with the longest wait list is the state isn’t in one of Baker’s nine cities. It’s Mystic Valley, which draws from suburbs around Boston and is in hot demand among parents who want a private school education at public school prices. Novick: The same is true of Sturgis on the Cape, of the Advanced Math and Science Academy in Marlborough, and the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Western Mass. And those are schools that have some serious resources, in term of facilities and fundraising. I can really see boutique kinds of schools being very happy to open up in places like Cambridge and Somerville and Amherst and in the suburbs of Central Mass. These are the schools where somebody has an idea and thinks: *wouldn’t it be cool if…* And because the schools get the per-pupil rate, the funding in those communities is actually quite a bit higher than in the urban districts. For example, the Old Sturbridge Village Charter School that has applied to open manages to meet the state’s criterion in terms of underperforming districts because they scooped in Southbridge, but a lot of the people who are expressing interest in the school are middle class parents who are more interested in the ethos of Old Sturbridge Village in the 1830s.  EduShyster: At last count, 202 school committees across Massachusetts have voted to oppose Question 2. I will confess that as knowledgeable as I am, this was not something I predicted. As a former school committee woman yourself, are you surprised by the united response of your former fellows?  Novick: It’s definitely taken me by surprise. We don’t know that there has ever been this amount of united action by school committees across the state. And they’re doing it virally. They’re talking to each other. A school committee will read that another school committee has voted, or they’ll learn about it from parents or teachers. There’s a pretty clear rejection here of the story line that Question 2 won’t hurt anyone’s budget. School committees concern themselves with two things: one is policy, the other is budget. So you’re talking about people who spend months of the year steeped in school budgets. You can run all of the ads you want to and say that charters don’t affect the budget, but these are the people who know that they do. And part of what you’re hearing from Boston and other cities is that the state doesn’t fully fund the charter school reimbursement, either the budget gets cut or the city has to kick in the money locally, and cities have other stuff that they have to do. In Lowell, for example, the city has seen a drastic spike in what it pays for charter schools from the municipal budget. And as the city manager pointed out, Lowell also needs to pave its roads and put up street lights.  In Lowell, for example, the city has seen a drastic spike in what it pays for charter schools from the municipal budget. And as the city manager pointed out, Lowell also needs to pave its roads and put up street lights.  EduShyster: But just to be clear, this is entirely a suburban white movement fueled primarily by self-interest, correct?  Novick: I keep hearing that and think we need to work on our geography! DESE lists 24 urban districts in the state; together, those districts enroll about 29% of kids in the state. Of those districts, all but two have passed No on Two measures. That means that of urban districts, 96% of kids enrolled are in a district where the committee opposes the ballot question.  EduShyster: One of those districts is the one where you live, Worcester, Massachusetts. It’s also where I recently came across my favoritely confounding data-point. The CFO of the schools there said if the students attending Worcester’s two charter schools were to return to Worcester Public Schools, the district would have enough money to hire 150 additional teachers. My jaw is often dropped these days, but it dropped anew when I read that. Novick: This is what happens when you end up with what are essentially two separate school systems. There are issues of economies of scale here but also scarce resources. We’re already running 44 schools in Worcester and PK-12 schools have seats in classrooms now. Were Worcester to get a sudden influx of 2000 kids, across the system, many of those kids could go to existing seats. With that many kids, there certainly will be places where you’d need to add another section of English at a high school or split an elementary class due to size at an elementary school. Once all that is done, there still would be enough for more teachers and because there isn’t a need for WPS to add a principal, a business manager, an HR person, or whatever other overhead the charters carry, that ends up being money that can be spent in classrooms. We’ve had this experience, by they way, because Worcester is one of the communities that had a charter school close suddenly. The school closed its doors in October and those kids returned to the public schools. EduShyster: This week, the Globe published emails revealing that the campaign to lift the charter cap has been a tightly coordinated effort coordinated by GOP operatives. I know that, like me, you spent several hours of your life poring over these. Did anything stand out?  Novick: I was struck by the amount of effort that went into the initial launch around the ballot campaign relative to the media that came from it. I’ve done those sorts of press releases before, and you’re hoping for particular things to get picked up and reported. I’m pretty sure that *how much money did you spend on large screens?* was not what they wanted reporters to ask. Then you have the Boston kids who go marching out of school, using nothing but Twitter which cost them nothing and they end up making national headlines. I was also surprised by what they didn’t know. They had the list of where they thought the senators were on lifting the charter cap. And some of them were right but some were way off base. The level of coordination surprised me. I wasn’t expecting that this was literally being rolled out from the governor’s office. Maybe I’m naive or idealistic, but I’d imagined that the governor was somehow brought in at some point.  EduShyster: It is almost impossible to believe from our current vantage point, but there will come a day when we will cease to talk about nothing but Question Two. But until that day arrives, let’s talk about Question Two. What has surprised you about the campaign to lift the charter cap? I’m continually surprised at how poorly they seem to understand the communities they’re talking to and about. And they keep putting messengers out in front who are not great at making their case and come across as really unsympathetic. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a room where someone is making the argument in favor of charter schools where it’s clear that they’re being condescending, judgmental and dismissive. Novick: I keep coming back to the argument that UMass Boston professor Maurice Cunningham has been making about where the impetus for the campaign came from. I’m continually surprised at how poorly they seem to understand the communities they’re talking to and about. And they keep putting messengers out in front who are not great at making their case and come across as really unsympathetic. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a room where someone is making the argument in favor of charter schools where it’s clear that they’re being condescending, judgmental and dismissive. And it’s not just one or two individuals. At the national level, the number of people who feel like they have chits in this and have decided that the best use of their time is to spend it going after urban parents on Twitter is also bizarre to me. Or experts who decide that they need to explain to you how things really work. For example, the other day I had someone explain to me that charters don’t have kids migrating out and that they’re really doing a great job serving ELL kids. It was hard for me to convey in 140 characters just how much I don’t need to be condescended to by people from out of state when it comes to deciphering DESE’s spread sheets. This is actually part of my job. I really don’t need you to send me charts. Tracy Novick is a former school committee member in Worcester and currently serves as the field director for the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC). She blogs here, tweets from here and is an expert on all things #MAedu. She speaks here for herself and is not representing MASC. Send tips and comments to jennifer@edushyster.com.  Like my work? Help me do more of it.  . 28 Oct

If You Invoke Rawls, You Best Come Correct - Boston’s opinionator in chief Scot Lehigh invokes British philosopher John Rawls to make the case for Question 2. But Lehigh is out of his league, says the Edulosopher, and his argument fails the Rawls ‘test,’ conceptually and substantively… By Jacob Fay, aka the EdulosopherIn a recent Boston Globe opinion column, Scot Lehigh invoked philosopher John Rawls to make an ethical argument in favor of Question 2. Using Rawls’s concept of the *veil of ignorance,* a thought experiment intended to help determine the moral principles of a just society, Lehigh tries to make the case that opponents of Question 2 are motivated by self-interest. Lehigh’s argument fails for two reasons. First, his argument actually doesn’t determine whether we should support or oppose Question 2. Second, a genuinely Rawlsian perspective would require asking very different questions than the one that Lehigh proposes: What if your kids were stuck in a poorly performing schools? Put more bluntly, Lehigh’s argument fails both conceptually and substantively.As I read it, there are four steps to Lehigh’s argument. I have recreated them below, changing some of his language, but not the meaning: Nobody wants their own children to be stuck in *poorly urban performing schools.* Charter schools provide better educational opportunities for systemically-disadvantaged youth of color. Question 2 will not affect communities that already have good schools. Thus, everyone should support Question 2. The first step reflects a fairly obvious point. It is hard to imagine anyone responding to Lehigh’s question *What if your kids were stuck in a poorly performing urban school?* that they want that for their kids. The second step is problematic insofar as Lehigh presents the issue as empirically settled. The reality is that this is contested, as much as proponents of charter schools would like you to believe otherwise. The third step is true, but not for the reasons Lehigh suggests: it’s not an issue of will to open charters in suburban districts, but a matter of demand. It is also a red herring. Putting all this aside, I am not sure how this argument gets us to the conclusion that we should support Question 2. For the argument to really work, Question 2 would need to be the only option for improving educational opportunities for systemically-disadvantaged youth of color. But this isn’t the case. There are other options available—even other possible options that involve charter schools. I’m thinking of reports put together by community activists, like this one, that look for ways to build partnerships between communities and education reformers from the ground up. And I stick by the claims I made in an earlier column that Question 2 is not a referendum on charter schools, but a referendum on a particular policy about charter schools. So whether charter schools are great at providing better opportunities is only partially the question Massachusetts citizens need to consider; it is really whether or not opening up to twelve new Commonwealth Charters, per year, forever, is  the best way to ensure the growth of quality schools and systems across the state of Massachusetts. As an aside, I would also quibble with Lehigh’s presentation of the conflict as suburban opposition and urban support, a fast and loose characterization of the ballot question I have encountered a number of times. There are Bostonians who support Question 2 and Bostonians who do not. There are systemically-disadvantaged families who might sign up their children for every charter lottery in the city but oppose Question 2 because they would prefer a better neighborhood school as part of traditional public school system. There are Boston families who support Question 2 but would never sign their children up for a lottery. There are suburban supporters and opponents of Question 2 with different views on charter schools in general. Homogeneity of opinion based on social geography is just plain false in this case. Question 2 is not a case of Boston versus the rest of the state. Returning to Lehigh’s argument, my point is this: starting from what Lehigh characterizes as Rawlsian reasoning does not secure an answer to whether one should support Question 2 or not. And the argument he offers does not really work, either. It elides a particularly important consideration to have its intended effect. By invoking John Rawls, Lehigh may also have bitten off more than he can chew. This is because Rawls’s theory of justice is not intended to answer the sort of questions that Lehigh poses. By invoking John Rawls, Lehigh may also have bitten off more than he can chew. This is because Rawls’s theory of justice is not intended to answer the sort of questions that Lehigh poses. Rawls designed the veil of ignorance as part of a thought experiment to derive moral principles, not evaluate specific policies. His theory deals with justice at a very general level. Rawls argues that those behind the veil of ignorance consider justice only as it applies to the *basic structure* of society, as he puts it: *the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation* (A Theory of Justice, 3). He is concerned with what principles would define the basic structure of a society as a whole—not just schools, but political institutions, economic institutions, etc.—to be just. That just sounds vastly different from a question like Lehigh’s *What if your kids were stuck in a poorly performing urban school?* In short, it seems odd to invoke Rawls’s veil of ignorance as a way to reason through this question, when Rawls never meant the veil to do that sort of work. In fact, in the Rawlsian thought experiment, the deliberators actually *know* more and more about their society as they move from choice of principles to a political constitution, to choosing particular political structures. In other words, as the deliberators get closer to making real policies, the veil retracts. I mention this to show that Lehigh’s argument is on shaky conceptual foundations to begin with, as he basically cherry picks from Rawls what will best support his argument for Question 2. If we really want to talk about putting self-interest aside, let’s pony up and recognize that the challenges facing our state’s urban schools are challenges for all of us in Massachusetts. Question 2—as a particular policy—may claim to take this sort of view, but it leaves bigger issues of justice like those that interest John Rawls off the table. What if we just take Lehigh’s more basic point, namely, that if we put self-interest aside, supporting Question 2 is the logical outcome? If we put self-interest aside in the way Rawls wants, then I think a lot more than expanding charter schools is put on the table. Educational justice is no longer simply about expanding the number of charter schools in underserved urban communities. We have to look at Massachusetts’ educational structure in general, at the very least. Here are two things that come to mind immediately if we start to take a more general view: impermeable district boundaries that scholars argue contribute to segregation by race and class or differential funding between districts based off of local tax revenues—in other words, some of the foundational policies that determine the structure of our public educational systems. Thus, if we really put self-interest aside, we might be demanding a very different educational system than what we have now—a system that may have little to do with both charter schools and traditional public schools as we know them. That’s why Lehigh’s characterization of Rawls is so misleading. It is not just that Rawls did not mean his thought experiment to work for such particular cases, it is also that invoking Rawls challenges real fundamental elements of our social, political, and hence educational systems. I think it is time to retire the argument that those who oppose Question 2 do so because they are self-interested or do not care about educational justice. It is just not true. Many people who put the funding issue on the table do so because they think that without addressing funding, Question 2 basically puts the burden for reforming Boston’s schools onto Boston (and similarly for other Massachusetts cities). It is Boston’s (and Springfield’s, and Lawrence’s) municipal budget that will take the hit. It is the Boston Public School district that will face closures and budget cuts. But, as Lehigh notes, suburbs and rural areas across the state will likely not experience much change at all. If we really want to talk about putting self-interest aside, let’s pony up and recognize that the challenges facing our state’s urban schools are challenges for all of us in Massachusetts. Question 2—as a particular policy—may claim to take this sort of view, but it leaves bigger issues of justice like those that interest John Rawls off the table. In fact, Question 2 seems a lot more like more of the same: let Boston handle Boston’s educational challenges—and there is a long, unflattering history of doing just that in this state. Such an attitude will not move us toward the sort of just society Rawls envisioned. Jacob Fay is a doctoral student and member of the Early Career Scholar Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as a graduate fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. He is the co-editor, with Meira Levinson, of Dilemmas of Educational Ethics: Cases and Commentaries. Prior to his doctoral studies, he taught eighth-grade history at the Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter at @Edulosopher. 27 Oct

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Change Of Time - I see the world through new eyes tonight.  I lift the veil and look to the stars.  Beyond fear and loneliness, into the heavens.  I am but a speck in the vastness of it all.  Just one tiny light among the infinite.  Sometimes we shine bright, but all lights must dim.  It began with a … Continue reading Change Of Time15 Dec

State Board of Education Renews Charter For Academy of Dover - The Delaware State Board of Education renewed the charter for Academy of Dover.  This will give the school a period of five years, as every established Delaware charter gets, until their next renewal.  But there were some concerns from the State Board of Education. The topic of Academy of Dover’s enrollment was the talking point … Continue reading State Board of Education Renews Charter For Academy of Dover15 Dec

17 Who Will Make An Impact On 2017: Rodel’s Competition - Yes, Rodel has some competition coming to town!  My fervent hope is that they compete with each other so much they just cancel each other out.  Has Rodel’s time come and gone?  Or is there more to this new corporate education reform company setting up shop in Delaware? Yes, none other than 50CAN is setting up … Continue reading 17 Who Will Make An Impact On 2017: Rodel’s Competition15 Dec

Will Sussex County See A Montessori Charter School In The Future? - Sussex County in Delaware could have their second charter school in the coming years in the form of another Delaware Montessori charter.  This hint was given at, of all places, a Christina School District Board of Education meeting. Timing is everything as they say and part of that is being at the right place at the right time.  … Continue reading Will Sussex County See A Montessori Charter School In The Future?14 Dec

FOIA Complaint From Newark Legislators Puts University Of Delaware In The Hot Seat - Several Newark, Delaware legislators submitted a Freedom of Information Act to the Delaware Attorney General’s office last Spring.  The response to the complaint came out today. State Representatives Paul Baumbach, John Kowalko, and Ed Osienski, and State Senators Karen Peterson, David Sokola and Bryan Townsend felt the University of Delaware violated FOIA with the posting … Continue reading FOIA Complaint From Newark Legislators Puts University Of Delaware In The Hot Seat14 Dec

The Chicken-Fried Awesome Christina Fails To Rescind Settlement Vote - Yes, the words “chicken-fried awesome” were used by a Christina board member last night.  But first they had to get through 45 excruciating minutes of approving their agenda.  Board member Harrie-Ellen Minnehan introduced motions to remove three action items from the agenda and to table another item.  That was just the beginning of a meeting that … Continue reading The Chicken-Fried Awesome Christina Fails To Rescind Settlement Vote14 Dec

17 Who Will Make An Impact In 2017: Kevin Carson - The former Superintendent of Woodbridge and Cape Henlopen, as well as the very recent former Executive Director of the Delaware Association of School Administrators could have a very big 2017.  As well, he served as the interim Superintendent in the Woodbridge School District.  Kevin Carson could be handed a role that will define his legacy in … Continue reading 17 Who Will Make An Impact In 2017: Kevin Carson13 Dec

The Battle For The 10th Begins As Republicans Pick John Marino - The 10th Senate District will have a vacancy when Senator Bethany Hall-Long officially steps down when she becomes the next Delaware Lieutenant Governor.  As many predicted, the Delaware GOP chose John Marino as the Republican candidate.  Who will the Dems pick?  Whoever it is, this will be a hot race.  The winner determines which party … Continue reading The Battle For The 10th Begins As Republicans Pick John Marino12 Dec

17 Who Will Make An Impact In 2017: Delaware State Auditor Tom Wagner - Tom Wagner is going to have a VERY busy 2017.  Why?  Because I’m going to make sure he does.  Everyone and their mother is talking about education funding and how to change it.  But all of these funding advocates aren’t bringing up in the elephant in the room.  Do our districts and charters in Delaware … Continue reading 17 Who Will Make An Impact In 2017: Delaware State Auditor Tom Wagner11 Dec

Greg Meece Stumbles In The Dark Trying To Explain Settlement (Again) To NCS Parents But Shines A Light On The Truth - New details emerged in the never-ending Christina-Delaware Department of Education-15 Charter Schools lawsuit/settlement thanks to Newark Charter School leader Greg Meece.  I guess now that the ink is dry on the settlement, people can say whatever they want, right Greg?  We shall see! From the Weekly Bulletin sent to Newark Charter School parents yesterday afternoon: Follow-up … Continue reading Greg Meece Stumbles In The Dark Trying To Explain Settlement (Again) To NCS Parents But Shines A Light On The Truth10 Dec

DVIDS News

A Different take on Familiar training - 3rd ABCT Soldiers train in innovative program building on foundational principles44 min

386th AEW delivers holiday meals to forward-deployed service members - Being away from home for the holidays can be an especially challenging time for deployed service members. Parents miss the opportunity to wake up early Christmas morning to watch their children charge into the living room to see what gifts Santa brought. Spouses wait for a phone call to hear the highlights about the holiday party attended by family and friends. For those deployed to austere locations without many amenities, the holiday season can be especially challenging as they typically forego traditional holiday meals for field rations. This year, the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing brought a bit of holiday cheer to some of these individuals.23 Dec

USS Buffalo returns from deployment in time for Christmas - JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) — Friends and families of the crew from USS Buffalo (SSN 715) gathered at the submarine piers to welcome back the Los Angeles-class submarine as she returned to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam after completing a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific region, Friday. "Every Sailor on Buffalo worked hard to make this deployment a success," said Cmdr. Micah Maxwell, a native of Hanford, California, and Buffalo’s commanding officer. “I am especially proud of my Sailors who qualified new watch stations and of the new submariners who earned their dolphins while we were away from home; they will continue on in a long tradition of excellence.”
23 Dec

USS Pennsylvania (B) Returns to NBK-Bangor - The Blue crew of the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine USS Pennsylvania (SSBN 735) returned to its homeport of Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Wash., following a 92-day strategic deterrent patrol, Dec. 23.23 Dec

Laughlin’s maintenance team adapts and overcomes - Ten months after a hail storm tore through the base, the best of Laughlin’s damaged T-38C Talons are finally repaired and up in the air.23 Dec

Team XL teams up to ensure Christmas - During tough economic times, 100 Laughlin members helped ensure nearly 1,000 Del Rio children received toys through Niños Navideños, a charity, Saturday, Dec. 17 at the Del Rio Civic Center.23 Dec

Unmanned aerial systems aren’t just toys - With the increased popularity of unmanned aerial systems and the influx of such gifts at Christmas, it is important for those operating drones to understand the applicable rules.23 Dec

Once a pilot, always a pilot - Laughlin’s student squadron received a visit from Jerry Yellin, author and retired U.S. Army Air Corps Captain, Dec. 13, 2016.23 Dec

Planning for Contingencies Key for U.S. Africa Command, Joint, Multinational Partners at Judicious Response ‘17 - About 2,000 U.S. military, international troops and intergovernmental personnel participated in Exercise Judicious Response—U.S. Africa Command’s largest exercise—Dec. 5-11 in locations including Germany, Italy, California, and North Carolina with an aim at crisis response.23 Dec

Operation Assist Santa: HAFB provides security, accomplishes mission - All Holloman Air Force Base Airmen have been called upon once more to aid Santa during his deliveries throughout the Southwestern United States.23 Dec

The Daily Reckoning

The Shocking Retirement Crisis Coming Your Way - This post The Shocking Retirement Crisis Coming Your Way appeared first on Daily Reckoning. The nation’s largest retirement system is in serious trouble… The $303 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CALPERS) just announced that it’s lowered its annual assumed rate of return to 7% from 7.5%. That means retirees will have to contribute more money to the plan to make up the difference in expected return. This shortfall is just a small piece of the massive U.S. state and local pension funds deficits that are going to explode in the next decade. And the total amount of the shortfall will astound you… The Wisdom of Ayn Rand Bloomberg reports that there is an estimated $1.9 trillion shortfall in U.S. state and local pension funds. These government retirement systems aren’t going to be able to fix this colossal mess without workers and taxpayers footing the bill. That’s going to cause a lot of pain for people like you. And I hope you don’t think you can rely on Social Security to help fund the gap. It has a funding shortfall estimated at $13.4 trillion. That means your Social Security benefits will be cut big time… and you’ll likely see massive tax increases. Government control over large swaths of our retirement system is about to become an unmitigated disaster that few retirees have been told is coming. This hasn’t come as a surprise to those of us who believe in personal liberty and free markets. In fact, this type of scenario is something Ayn Rand warned us about decades ago… Rand was the Russian-American writer and philosopher who forcefully espoused the principles of Objectivism, or the belief in rational individualism, personal freedom and no interference by the state in our lives. In this week’s podcast, I discuss Rand’s philosophy in detail, including her illuminating thoughts on the dangers of overbearing government, excessive regulation and the benefits of a society that is centered in self-reliance. I think you’ll really enjoy this episode. Click here to listen to the podcast. Regards, Michael Covel for The Daily Reckoning The post The Shocking Retirement Crisis Coming Your Way appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 23 Dec

Sell All Your Bonds - This post Sell All Your Bonds appeared first on Daily Reckoning. So, Trump has won the election. Of course anything can happen between now and his presumed inauguration on January 20. Maybe the Swamp Creatures will succeed in causing a recount in so-called Purple States that could change the number of electors in Hillary’s favor. Maybe they’ll somehow influence Trump electors to vote for Hillary. None of this would have been an issue if Baby Bush II, Jeb, had been the Republican nominee, as was supposed to have happened. It all just shows what a transparent (a word these people love to use) fraud “democracy” has become. Let the hoi polloi cast a meaningless vote, so they have the illusion of being in control. Instead of seeing themselves as subjects, they’ll think they’re “we the people,” who actually have some say in what happens. That way they’ll pay their taxes willingly, enthusiastically sign on to aggressive wars on the other side of the world against people they know nothing about, and generally do as they’re told. Because it’s supposed to be patriotic. “Democracy” is a much more effective scam for controlling the plebs than kingship or dictatorship. That said, the Establishment, the Deep State, was genuinely shocked and appalled by Trump’s victory. As Baby Bush the First would have said, they misunderestimated how angry the average voter was. That’s because the Coastal Democratic Elite are totally out of touch with the common man. But they needn’t fret too much. They’ll be re-installed, with a vengeance, in four years. That will likely be true for two reasons: The first is simple demographics. The groups that vote Democrat (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, urban dwellers, immigrants, Millennials) are growing in numbers faster than those who vote Republican. Republicans are older people, and the Boomers (born 1946–1966) and the Silent Generation (1926–1946) are dying off. More people are moving to the cities, and that influences them to vote Democratic. More people (still, idiotically) are pursuing higher education, and that also influences them to vote Democrat. The second reason is the Greater Depression. One definition of a depression is a period of time when distortions and misallocations of capital are liquidated. A time when bubbles caused by monetary expansion are popped. A time when unsound businesses fail. I re-emphasize this because the party on whose watch it happens is automatically kicked out. So, the Democrats actually got quite lucky not to be in office when the time bomb goes off. Trump could easily go down as Herbert Hoover II. What could change things? A serious war, much bigger than the sport wars the U.S. is currently engaged in, is the biggest danger. That’s much less likely with Trump than Hillary, but these things have a life of their own. My guess for the next president is either a left-wing general (because Americans love and trust their military), or a left-wing populist, like Elizabeth Warren. But that’s crystal balling at this point. Let’s proceed on the assumption Trump is actually going to be the president for at least the next four years. Although problematical, he’s a vast improvement over Hillary. What will it mean for the U.S. and the world? More importantly, what will it mean for your personal finances and freedom? Let’s look at the possibilities. Bonds — With bonds, we’re at the peak of the biggest financial bubble in world history. This is a very big deal. Interest rates move in very long cycles. They went up from the mid-1940s to the early ’80s, when long-term government bonds peaked at close to 16%, and T-Bills at over 16%. I thought they hit bottom years ago, but the cycle overshot. My guess is that they’re headed up in earnest now. And Trump, as someone who understands business (even though he doesn’t understand economics), will likely (I think…) do what he can to send them higher. Why? He understands the country needs to save, to rebuild capital. And higher rates will encourage saving and discourage debt. The risk is that, with all the debt that’s been put on in the last decade, debtors will be hard-pressed to service it. That includes the U.S. government with $20 trillion of on-balance-sheet debt, and a lot more in the way of off-balance-sheet debt, guarantees, and contingent liabilities. Much of it will be activated if higher rates cause a lot of defaults. What should you do? Sell all your bonds. Real Estate — Property, at least in the English-speaking world, floats on a sea of debt. Interest rates go up, real estate prices go down. The economy goes down, so do property prices. Add to that the aging U.S. population, which isn’t good for property; as people age, they downsize. Add to that the fact we’re in another real estate bubble, similar to what we saw in the mid-oughts. After bonds, property is likely the worst place to be. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say the great post–World War II property boom is at an end — but that’s a subject for another time. There’s not much that Trump can do to fix this. What should you do? Lighten up on property. Make sure any mortgages you keep are at fixed rates. Stocks — If Trump only follows through with his promise to cut taxes, and eliminate two old regulations for every new one, it would be wonderful for the economy. But the economy and the stock market are two different things; they only correlate over the long run. I suppose he’ll follow through with his promise to build lots of new infrastructure. Government deficits will soar, and only the Fed will be on hand to buy all that new debt. Infrastructure companies will get a fat slug of the newly printed money. But I find it hard to get enthusiastic for the stock market. In terms of dividends, P/E ratios, or book value, it’s already at one of the highest levels ever. Bear in mind that well-selected stocks can still go up, even if the market as a whole goes down. That said, I feel more comfortable with shorts than longs at this point. Gold and Commodities — Frankly, where do you put your money when almost everything is overpriced? Commodities are coming out of a five-year-long bear market. They’re about the only thing that’s cheap. That’s true relative to their cost of production (farmers, ranchers, and miners are breaking even, at best, all over the world). And it’s true relative to their history (they’re down 50% from the peak of 2011). In other words, commodities are a much safer place for your capital than stocks, bonds, or real estate (excepting agricultural property) for the foreseeable future. The problem is that it’s hard to hold a carload of wheat or ten tonnes of sugar. Remember that gold and other commodities aren’t “investments.” An investment is something that acts to create new wealth. They’re simply assets. Sometimes they can be excellent speculations. Gold, however, is money, and will remain so long after the U.S. destroys its currency. I recommend, therefore, that you accumulate gold and silver instead of plunging into conventional investments. Check with the dealers we list in The Gold Book to see who you prefer to work with. [Editor’s note: The Gold Book is exclusive to readers of The Casey Report, which you can sign up for at the end of today’s essay.] But if you don’t have a significant position in the metals already, please get going. A final thought. It’s usually a mistake to count on any head of state to make things in a country better. It can certainly happen — as with Erhard in Germany after WW2, Pinochet in Chile, Thatcher in Britain, or even Reagan in the U.S. Maybe it will be true of Trump. He’s got a much stronger personality than Reagan, for openers. But the bigger and older a State gets, the harder it is to change. It’s comparable to trying to stop a fully loaded supertanker. Regards, Doug Casey for The Daily Reckoning The post Sell All Your Bonds appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 23 Dec

Time to Sell Everything? - This post Time to Sell Everything? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. Best-selling author, wine whiz, polo player, bon vivant and citizen du monde… Doug Casey defines the term Renaissance man. Or what the Limeys might call a man of parts. Shake the American dust off your shoes and explore the world, counsels Doug. Take the cold bath and take it bravely. Live. Doug’s set foot in over 175 countries and planted himself in 10. He’s made fortunes, he’s lost fortunes… and made them back again. He’s broken bread with heads of state. Rumor whispers he even once tried to take over a country (the coup failed apparently). Doug’s central message is simply — but deeply — this: You only have one financial future. Take that future in hand and master it and don’t make a wreck of it. But to prepare, you first need an accurate financial weather forecast… 2008 was the leading edge of the hurricane, Doug argues. We’ve been living in the false peace and calm of the eye these past years. But Doug warns we’ll soon be entering the other side of the hurricane wall: There’s absolutely no reason from a fundamental point of view for bonds and stocks to be as high as they are right now… Look at it as a hurricane… We went into the leading edge of the hurricane in ’07, ’08 and ’09. They papered it over with all this funny money. Now we’re going out to the trailing edge… and it’s going to last much longer, be much worse and be much different. How do you make it through the hurricane? Gold and precious metals for starters: The one thing I feel very confident of is we’re going to have financial chaos in the years to come and that’s going to drive people into gold and, to a lesser degree, into silver. What about interest rates? And bonds?: Interest rates are going to go up… Low interest rates and negative interest rates are actually destructive of capital and civilization because they discourage people from saving… It doesn’t matter what these stupid governments do… interest rates are headed up… and I think they’re headed way up for a long time at this point… so if you own bonds, sell them. Doug has more to say below. Lots more. About Trump’s chances… the coming revenge of the elites… shifting demographics… stocks and real estate. Should you sell everything? Read on. Regards, Brian Maher Managing editor, The Daily Reckoning The post Time to Sell Everything? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 23 Dec

The New “Big Short” — This Is THE Crisis of 2017 - This post The New “Big Short” — This Is THE Crisis of 2017 appeared first on Daily Reckoning. Subprime auto loans are the new “Big Short.” Of course you remember the first “Big Short” — subprime housing loans. Michael Lewis wrote a book about it. In the wake of the subprime housing crisis, millions of Americans lost their homes and jobs. The global financial system nearly collapsed. Thankfully, in the years that followed, the banks found religion. Lenders found their morals. Consumers found responsibility. And Congress beefed up industry oversight. OK, back to reality! Years of ultralow interest rates led to “free money” deals where anyone who could fog a mirror could get a car. Even “better,” if those buyers couldn’t pay their car off in the standard 48 months, they could extend their loan terms to 72 or even 84 months. Well, those chickens are coming home to roost. From The Wall Street Journal in September this year: “The share of subprime auto loans backing bonds that were at least 60 days behind on payments climbed to 4.86% in August, up from 3.98% a year earlier, according to Fitch Ratings. Annualized net losses reached 8.89%, up from 7.02% a year prior.” That’s the first layer of bad news. It gets worse. Here’s AFP on Nov. 30: “Especially worrisome is the rise in auto loans to borrowers with low credit score, and the accompanying signs of distress among that segment, New York Fed researchers said. Subprime auto loans now account for 33% of total loan balances outstanding…” There are more bad auto loans than ever. And more of them are starting to fail. But according to Experian Automotive’s Q3 report, it’s even uglier than that. Experian’s risk tracking for the third quarter says 4.28% of all open auto loan balances are “deep subprime.” That means FICO scores that are off-the-map low. Thus, 18.45% of all balances are “subprime,” or 550 FICO territory. And 21.48% are “nonprime.” First, let’s agree “nonprime” means exactly that. It’s a loan that is not prime and could have an elevated level of default risk. By Experian’s own reporting, this means 44.21% of all open auto loan balances in America right now are at least at risk of distress, if not eventual default. That’s the really bad news. It’s possible 44 cents on every dollar of auto debt is at risk of distress. This risk increases as interest rates continue to rise. And repossessions increase, more leases end and used car prices continue to fall due to inventory gluts. This is all happening right now. Consider that at peak insanity in 2006, there were about $650 billion of subprime mortgages written in the U.S. There’s about $1 trillion in total auto debt in America right now. The match to this powder key starts with buy-here-pay-here auto dealers. It spreads to finance companies, including divisions of some major automakers. And it, of course, includes some of the same Wall Street names you remember from the housing crisis. It’s true subprime auto is not a subprime housing-sized problem. It is, however, a looming disaster that could cut Detroit’s “recovery” off at the knees. It could stop the Trump market rally in its tracks. It could ignite a swift and steep market correction. It could be the opening kickoff of a recession. Here’s your takeaway — they did it again. The banks, the unscrupulous lenders, the rating agencies… they used all the same tricks from the mid-2000s and securitized bad debt all over again. And if you own mutual funds, chances are good you’re holding part of the bag right now, too. Happy Holidays. Regards, Amanda Stiltner for The Daily Reckoning The post The New “Big Short” — This Is THE Crisis of 2017 appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 23 Dec

Four Economic Triggers For 2017 - This post Four Economic Triggers For 2017 appeared first on Daily Reckoning. If economic patterns are to be any indicator, 2017 is set to be a record year for the global economy with several critical events to watch.  All statistical analysis aside, years ending in a 7 have been ground zero for financial disasters. Businessweek summarized, “The biggest one-day stock drop in Wall Street history happened in 1987. The Asian crisis was in 1997. And the worst global meltdown since the Great Depression got rolling in 2007 with the failure of mortgage lenders Northern Rock in the U.K. and New Century Financial in the U.S.” While a flawed financial system is the core problem within the global economy, recognizing these economic events will give you an advantage. Understanding the events that can trigger a crisis can leave you better positioned to secure your finances, navigate the storm and read between the lines of financial media. Drawing out an exact time and place for when the market might crash is only a fool’s errand.  The economic and political events that have been set in motion over the past 12 months have only raised the stakes for financial turmoil. What is increasingly clear is that more perilous events appear to be headed directly for 2017. These events are worth understanding as they escalate severely ahead of an unavoidable economic storm. Here are the four economic triggers for 2017 that are worth monitoring as they add fuel to this dangerous financial climate. 1. China According to the Bank for International Settlements China’s overall credit-to-GDP gap has hit a phenomenal high of 30.1%.  The Basel-based institution reports that the Chinese economy is at the highest risk out of any nation in more than two decades of data collection. Normally, any total from credit-to-GDP that is above 10% is considered to be at an elevated risk for financial banking strain.  China has tripled that figure.  This could be a very strong indicator that credit growth has hit an excessive amount and that a financial bust could be growing. While credit-to-GDP is one factor ailing China, its currency is another paramount concern.  The latest shock to the Chinese system comes as massive currency outflows continue to flee the country at record pace.  Goldman Sachs recently reported that $1.1 trillion in capital has left China since August 2015.  That amount is more than double what the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank, has publicly reported. This flight of money gives particular concern as the yuan is feared by investors to make its largest drop in value in 2017 in over two decades. 2. Debt According to NerdWallet, by the end of 2016 the total debt held by Americans is expected to exceed the amount that was owed at the beginning of the financial collapse in 2008.  This comes at a time when people are believed to be gaining confidence in the financial system once again. As one nobel prize winning economist told CNBC, “We used to be more into modest living,” said Robert Shiller. “Now people are thinking, that doesn’t work.’ You know? You have to live big-league and you’re on your way.” Although the Dow Jones industrial average continues to circle near 20,000, the unnerving signs around debt cannot go unnoticed.  The market might be signaling strength, but the real economy is showing a different story. The continued debt problem in America is even more visible when looking at younger generations.  The Wall Street Journal reported that nearly 40% of Americans between the age of 18-34 were living with their parents in 2015.  That is the largest percentage on record since 1940.  The younger American population is under more debt, student loan obligations and credit card pressures than any other generation prior. As former Reagan budget director David Stockman noted, “there is no chance whatsoever of a clean, immediate fiscal shock to the moribund U.S. economy fantasized by the Wall Street bulls.” While the economy might be doing better on the surface, the escalation of debt to levels exceeding the 2008 financial crash can at best be a truncation, and at worst be the gradual trigger for the next crisis. 3. Europe The surprise BREXIT vote in June, 2016 has finally sunk into the minds and markets of the world.  Now the UK must decide on a way forward.  As economist and bestselling author Nomi Prins indicated, “Things for the UK will be rocky as they slowly head toward the Article 50 of exiting the European Union.  Theresa May has indicated that all of the strategy and government leadership planning will be made public around March of 2017.” The Telegraph did the math and found that the UK would automatically be charged with a massive $62.1 billion bill.  The British pound sterling in October hit a modern low in value not seen in over 186 years.  If the drops in the pound are any indicator, the repercussions of the Britain-EU split will be significantly felt in 2017. Mainland Europe is the next critical turning point both politically and economically.  France, Germany and the Netherlands are all due to hold pivotal elections.  In the course of these elections, we could see the continued rise of right leaning leadership.  For 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel could be ousted as the last remaining G7 leader of the original 2015 vanguard. 4. Escalation of War on Cash During the course of 2016, cash has become a relic and something that governments from across the world have sought to reduce and eradicate.  Starting in May when the European Union axed the 500 euro note, governments were watching around the world with laser focus on how a society could eliminate, overnight, a significant monetary cornerstone. Image of the now “Specimen” euro currency. This image was taken just last week in the British Museum in London. Cash is already being noted as something criminal and an item of the past. Since then, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in a shocking policy move the overall cancellation of two of the nation’s highest-denominated notes.  This move effectively invalidated 86 percent of all currency in circulation for the country.  The move was sought to push the population of more than one billion people further into the financial system, but has since left concerns in society about trust and transparency. Venezuela, not to be outdone, stepped in with a surprise declaration that the 100 bolivar note, the highest denomination banknote in the country, would be axed.  By some estimates from the Venezuelan central bank, there are believed to be over 6 billion 100-bolivar notes in active circulation, making up nearly half of all currency notes in the country.  Economists from the IMF have indicated that this move will only further escalate inflation in the country to levels that could top 1,600% in 2017. The war on cash could escalate even further in western democratic governments for 2017 and lead to tightening central bank policy, a freeze on credit and a shock to economic confidence that would rock a system that proves to be continuously unstable over the past decade. As Jim Rickards noted nearly six months back when analyzing the next crisis, “In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons, it’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibility of a chain reaction or avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens at a minute scale relative to the system.” A single snowflake might not be as crucial to the collapse due to the entire system being flawed, but it still is worth monitoring for greater understanding.  Being mindful of these economic triggers can allow you to stay out in front of economic turmoil. The International Monetary Fund released its Global Financial Stability Report in October 2016 that focused on Fostering Stability in a Low-Growth, Low-Rate Era.  The research report found that “Financial institutions in advanced economies face a number of cyclical and structural challenges and need to adapt to low growth and low interest rates, as well as to an evolving market and regulatory environment.” If these structural and cyclical problems are any indicator for what is to come, 2017 could be a year of financial reckoning. Regards, Craig Wilson, @craig_wilson7 for the Daily Reckoning The post Four Economic Triggers For 2017 appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 23 Dec

U.S. and China on Collision Course - This post U.S. and China on Collision Course appeared first on Daily Reckoning. [Ed. Note: Jim Rickards latest New York Times best seller, The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis (claim your free copy here) goes beyond the election and prepares you for the next crisis] China’s capital and currency markets are on a collision course with the U.S., and by extension, the entire world. Economists are fond of saying if something can’t go on forever, it won’t. That truism applies to China. Huge profits will be made by those who see this China train wreck coming and act in time. The idea of economic stress in China sounds strange to most ears. China has come from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution to the world’s largest economy measured on a purchasing power parity basis in just 35 years. Even using nominal GDP, my preferred metric, it is the world’s second largest economy. China’s economy grew over 12% per year in 2006-2008, and again in 2010. Even at the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009, annual Chinese growth was still over 6%. Chinese growth ran between 8% and 6.7% from 2011 to 2016. These growth rates are extraordinary compared to the 0% to 2% annual growth achieved by the major developed economies since 2007. But, beneath that glossy surface all is not well. Much of China’s growth was completely artificial. It would not be counted if China were subject to more rigorous accounting standards. China’s growth consisted of about 45% investment. That compares with about 30% investment in developed economies. Investment is fine if the investments have positive expected returns and are not financed with excessive debt. But, China fails both of those tests. Much Chinese investment is completely wasted on “ghost cities” (major metropolitan complexes that are completely empty). As well as white elephant prestige projects such as the multi-billion dollar Nanjing South train station with 128 mostly unused escalators. Assuming half of Chinese investment is wasted, then GDP should be reduced 22.5%. This turns 6.7% growth into 5.2% growth at best. The situation gets even worse when you consider the amount of debt being used to finance this wasted investment. China’s bank assets have grown from about $2.5 trillion to $40 trillion in the past 10 years, a 1,500% increase. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Most Chinese debt is “off the books” in so-called wealth management products (something like the CDOs that sank Lehman Brothers in 2008), and derivatives. China has a huge “shadow banking” system of provincial guarantees, inter-company loans and offshore transfer pricing schemes. When all of this debt is taken into account, China looks like the greatest Ponzi scheme in history. If the situation is so unstable and overleveraged, why hasn’t it collapsed already? The answer is that China is the greatest currency manipulator of all time. China used a 35% “maxi-devaluation” of the yuan in 1994 to make its currency globally competitive and boost its exports. Then it used central bank intervention from 1994 to 2006 to keep its currency at that depressed level. This 12-year currency manipulation enabled China to build its factories, create jobs, pile-up dollar surpluses and prop up its banking system. Of course, much of this growth came at the expense of U.S. manufacturing jobs that were being lost by the millions over this same period. Only after 2007 under intense U.S. political pressure did China allow the yuan to appreciate to a more reasonable level given its factor inputs and terms of trade. Now China is again resorting to its currency wars playbook. Since 2014, China has allowed the yuan to devalue from 6.0 to 1 dollar down to 6.9 to 1 dollar. Right now the yuan is poised to break through the significant benchmark of 7.0 to 1 dollar. The difference between now and 1994 is that the U.S. is paying attention. In particular, President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to label China a “currency manipulator” on his first day in office on January 20, 2017. This escalation of currency wars tension comes at a time when there is heightened risk of a real war with China. Soon after his election, Trump received a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan. That might seem like a routine courtesy, but not from the Communist Chinese perspective. Beijing views Taiwan as a “breakaway province” and not a separate country. U.S. politicians usually tiptoe around this issue, but not Trump. He not only chatted with Taiwan’s president, but he questioned the U.S. “One China” policy in a tweet. Trump’s actions set off alarms in Beijing. The Communist leadership decided to send Trump a message by stealing one of our Navy underwater drones operating in Philippine waters, nowhere near the disputed South China Sea waters claimed by China. The underwater drone was later returned, (after Trump tweeted that the Chinese should “keep it”), but the point was made. Geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S. are definitely on the rise. With China heading for a credit crisis, and U.S.-China political relations strained, what does this portend for the Chinese yuan and a budding currency war? The first indication is that a new Chinese maxi-devaluation may already have begun. Of course, the Chinese will not move 35% at one time as they did in 1994. They are moving in small steps. But, even a 3% devaluation on August 10, 2015 was enough to send U.S. stock markets down 11% in the next three weeks. A 10% maxi-devaluation today, less than one-third of what China did in 1994, would send U.S. stocks plunging 30% in days at the prospect of an all-out trade war with China. How likely is a new maxi-devaluation? It could be coming in a matter of weeks. The reason the yuan has been going down lately is not government manipulation but capital flight. Wealthy Chinese are trying to get their money out of China as fast as they can because they fear a new maxi-devaluation is coming. China has burned through $1 trillion of foreign exchange reserves in the past two years to accommodate the demand for dollars from this capital flight. China’s holdings of U.S. Treasury debt have crashed from $1.265 trillion in November 2015 to $1.115 trillion as of October 2016 according to U.S. Treasury data. China’s overall reserves have fallen from about $4 trillion in 2014 to $3 trillion today. Of that amount, about $1 trillion is illiquid and another $1 trillion will be needed to bailout China’s banks in the coming credit crisis. That only leaves $1 trillion as a precautionary reserve to defend the yuan. China’s capital flight continues at about $100 billion per month. This means China will be broke in one year. If China wants to avoid going broke, it only has three choices according to Mundell’s “Impossible Trinity.” It can raise interest rates to defend the currency, slap on capital controls, or devalue the yuan. Interest rate hikes will kill the economy and accelerate the credit crisis. Capital controls will choke off new foreign direct investment and force capital flight into illegal channels without actually stopping it. A maxi-devaluation is the simplest and easiest way out of the box for China. Why hasn’t China devalued already? Part of the reason is to avoid being labeled a “currency manipulator” by the U.S. This could cause retaliation in the form of tariffs. That is why China has been pursuing a slow, steady devaluation instead of a maxi-devaluation. But, now Trump says he will label China a currency manipulator anyway. Perhaps with one of his “first day” executive orders as soon as he is inaugurated. If Trump does that, and he well may, then China has no reason to delay its maxi-devaluation because the U.S. will have taken away China’s only motivation to play nice. The resulting currency and trade war will make the 11% stock market correction of 2015 look like a picnic. All global markets will be affected. The U.S. will suffer, but China will suffer more. Regards, Jim Rickards for The Daily Reckoning The post U.S. and China on Collision Course appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 22 Dec

Are You Wasting Your Time with This Weird Indicator? - This post Are You Wasting Your Time with This Weird Indicator? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. It just won’t go away… Everyone’s going gaga over Dow 20,000. The bulls are becoming cockier by the day. Of course, the financial media is also having a field day with the prospect of Dow 20,000 hitting before the year is finished. Just check out this recent Barron’s cover: It sure looks like the market’s getting a little frothy heading into the holidays. Barron’s is getting bulled up on stocks again. Does that mean it’s time to bet against the market? I don’t think so. Look, there are tons of dumb market sentiment indicators out there. And right now, I’m talking about one in particular that folks take way too seriously: the magazine cover indicator. Today, I’m going to reveal the truth about the “magazine cover indicator” and why so many investors make such a big mistake when they try to use it as a timing tool. Here’s how it’s supposed to work: When some major magazine like Business Week is bearish on stocks or some other asset class, you should start getting bullish. If the cover is bullish, that’s your warning to get the heck out. In other words, when the mainstream press says one thing, do another. But is it a reliable strategy? Nope. The myth of the “magazine cover indicator” got its start with the infamous 1979 “Death of Equities” Business Week cover. America had just endured the stagflation seventies—and no one in command of his senses could fathom a return of a bull market for stocks. And we all know how that turned out… The “Death of Equities” cover didn’t perfectly sync up with the raging bull that would follow. But it was damn close. So there you have it. Dead simple, eh? All you need to do is look at the mainstream media, do the opposite just like George Costanza would, and presto—instant riches! If only… There are some critical nuances you need to understand before you begin relying on anecdotal sentiment readings like the magazine cover indicator. First up is hindsight. Anybody can pick out the media hype leading up to a market extreme when they’re looking in the rear view mirror. Yes, there’s the “Home $weet Home” Time magazine cover from 2005—the very peak of the housing bubble. And if you want to get a little creative, you also have Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos getting the “Man of the Year” nod from Time back in 1999, just before the dot-com boom went bust. But here’s the thing… There were plenty of previous bullish cover stories on housing leading up to the Time article that many thought marked the top. Same goes for the 90s dot-com bubble. These stories weren’t rare. But as it turns out, they were worthless as a contrarian indicator… Did any of your genius contrarian friends sell their positions at any of these previous points when those bullish stories suggested a market top? I doubt it. But if they did, they missed some incredible runs. Thing is, hysteria is relatively easy to measure—but difficult to time. Markets, like some people, can remain temporarily insane much longer than you might think. Don’t believe for a second you’re going to time a market top or bottom because of some stupid magazine cover. Look, I like to poke fun at the financial establishment as much as the next guy. But it’s just not that easy. Another reason to ignore the mainstream press when it comes to predictions: it’s 2016. The old-school media gatekeepers grow more irrelevant every single day. And sometimes they feel they have to make a splash just to stay relevant. It’s not hard to understand why… Time and its ilk have lost their clout. Why? The internet and the explosion of countless, specialized news sources.  Big news magazines have folded by the dozen as readers find everything they’re looking for online. There’s just a whole hell of a lot more information out there right now. And no one can control it all, like it was in the old days when it was ABC, CBS and NBC giving the official line. Or Time, Newsweek, and The Economist. If you need to shore up a bullish or a bearish argument for a particular stock or sector, you just head over to Google and you can find thousands of opinions. You can find bulls, bears, and massive headlines splashed across countless home pages every second of the day. Who the hell needs ABC News? In 2016, the old market oracles are just additional competitors in the marketplace looking to generate traffic and readership just like everyone else. These dinosaurs don’t set the pace anymore. And their cover stories don’t carry the weight they once did. Nor should they… Bottom line: The “magazine cover indicator” is an interesting anecdotal exercise. It’s fun. We all like to poke fun at the clueless mainstream media. It strokes your ego to think you’re right while the press is wrong. But please don’t try to time your trades around any magazine cover. Just don’t. Reality is far more complicated. Sincerely, Greg Guenthner for The Daily Reckoning The post Are You Wasting Your Time with This Weird Indicator? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 22 Dec

Attack of the Robo-Traders - This post Attack of the Robo-Traders appeared first on Daily Reckoning. It’s shortly past midnight, UK time, Oct. 7, 2016… Suddenly… in a bolt from the blue… the British pound sterling plunged 6% in about two minutes. Oceans of sweat begin filling the trading floors. A 1% or 2% daily move in an asset as liquid as the pound is banner news. And here… a 6% crash… in two minutes. Brexit was old news by that point. And even Brexit wasn’t that bad. The streets were ultimately restored to order, and the pound brought to more solid footing — this time. But what about the next? Welcome to the world of the “flash crash.” A “flash crash,” defined by Wikipedia, is a “very rapid, deep and volatile fall in security prices occurring within an extremely short time period.” What causes a flash crash? “High-frequency trading, whose speed and interconnectedness can result in the loss and recovery of billions of dollars in a matter of minutes and seconds.” Computer algorithms (algos) were the villain in the case at bar. Algorithms are preprogrammed software programs that let a computer “think” and trade for itself. The theory being that computers know best. They’re stone-cold traders, all head, no heart. And the algos got it in their heads to dump the pound that day based on some bit of news. And it started the dominos toppling. Kathleen Brooks, research director at the financial betting firm City Index: “Apparently, it was a rogue algorithm that triggered the sell-off… These days, some algos trade on the back of news sites… so a deluge of negative Brexit headlines could have led to an algo taking that as a major sell signal for the pound… Once the pound started moving lower, then more technical algos could have followed suit, compounding the short, sharp, selling pressure.” Next thing you know, you’re down 6% in two minutes. That’s the Dow shedding about 1,200 in two minutes. It’s happened before — in 2010, the Dow tanked more than 600 points in five minutes. Then in October 2014, the Treasury market had a flash crash of its own when yields on Treasury bonds sank 8% in six minutes (see below for more). The Treasury market is worth something on the order of $13 trillion. A real crash in the Treasury market would have… cascading effects. The markets stabilized in each of these cases. But the danger is that one time — maybe next time — they won’t. What if the computers go out of their minds and the selling snowballs and snowballs before anyone can stop it? Jim Rickards says the result “could be a market decline of 20% or more in a single day, comparable to the stock market crash of October 1987 or the crash of 1929.” Jim uses the science of complexity to crunch markets. And he says to expect more flash crashes… including the big one: This kind of sudden, unexpected crash that seems to emerge from nowhere is entirely consistent with the predictions of complexity theory. Increasing market scale correlates with exponentially larger market collapses… Eventually, there would be a flash crash that would not bounce back and would be the beginning of a global contagion and financial panic worse than what the world went through in 2008. The risk grows as computers take over trading… “At least a third of trading [is] now driven by computers programmed to react to moves in the market or signals from social media and news outlets,” says Reuters, adding in its best Jim Rickards: “The potential for a self-reinforcing plunge is greater.” But you can rest well knowing the Bank for International Settlements is already on the case. It hosted a gaggle of central bankers last month at their Basel HQ to tease the thing out. Said one attending grandee, on the condition of anonymity: “The fact is the market is going more electronic, and things happen faster, and the ability to intervene as banks have in the past is taken away. So you are going to see more of these.” “These,” of course, being flash crashes. “It’s not obvious what to do,” added another John or Jane Doe of central banking. “At the moment, it is more about asking the question. I don’t think there is an obvious answer.” At least they admit it. But if they don’t figure it out, and maybe soon, the danger is that the next crash could be much more than a flash… Regards, Brian Maher Managing editor, The Daily Reckoning The post Attack of the Robo-Traders appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 21 Dec

Good Evening, Mr. Bond - This post Good Evening, Mr. Bond appeared first on Daily Reckoning. [Ed. Note: Jim Rickards latest New York Times best seller, The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis (claim your free copy here) goes beyond the election and prepares you for the next crisis] Not long ago I had dinner in my hometown of Darien, Connecticut, with one of the best sources on the inner workings of the U.S. Treasury bond market. Our dinner took place at the Ten Twenty Post bistro, the same restaurant I wrote about in my first book, Currency Wars. It was there that a friend and I invented the scenario involving a Russian and Chinese gold-backed currency that we played out in the Pentagon-sponsored financial war game described in that book. Now I had returned for another private conversation with another friend. But this time we were not discussing fictional scenarios for a war game. The conversation involved real threats to real markets happening in real-time. I can’t reveal the identity of my dinner companion, but suffice it to say he is a senior official of one of the largest banks in the world and has over 30 years’ experience on the front lines of bond markets. He has been a regular participant in the work of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a private group that meets behind closed doors with Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury officials to discuss supply and demand in the market for Treasury securities and to plan upcoming auctions to make sure markets are not taken by surprise. He’s an insider’s insider who speaks regularly with major bond buyers in China, Japan and the big U.S. funds like PIMCO and BlackRock. For purposes of this article, let’s just call him “Mr. Bond.” Over white wine and oysters, I told Mr. Bond about my view of systemic risk in global capital markets. In effect, I was using Bond as a reality check on my own analysis. First, you must develop a thesis with the best information available. Then test the thesis against new information every chance you get. You’ll soon know if you’re on the right track or need to revise your thinking. My conversation with Mr. Bond was the perfect chance to update my thesis. I told Bond that markets appeared to be in a highly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, I had never seen so much liquidity. Literally trillions of dollars of cash had been sloshing around the world banking system in the form of excess reserves on deposit at central banks — the result of massive money printing since 2008. On the other hand, something was definitely wrong with liquidity. The Oct. 15, 2014, “flash crash” of rates in the Treasury bond market was a case in point. On that day, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell 0.34% in a matter of minutes. This is a market in which a change of 0.05% in a single day is considered a big move. The Oct. 15 flash crash was the second most volatile day in over 50 years. Something was strange when there was massive liquidity in cash and complete illiquidity in notes at the same time. Yields crashed from 2.2% to 1.86% between 7:00 a.m. and 9:45 a.m., with most of that crash taking place in just a few minutes between 9:30 and 9:45, just after the stock market opened. Almost no one alive today in the bond market had ever seen anything like this. I told Mr. Bond that this Treasury market flash crash looked a lot like the stock market flash crash of May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones industrial average index fell 1,000 points, about 9%, in a matter of minutes, only to bounce back by the end of the day. This kind of sudden, unexpected crash that seems to emerge from nowhere is entirely consistent with the predictions of complexity theory. Increasing market scale correlates with exponentially larger market collapses. It was important to me to move beyond the theoretical and see whether an active market participant like Mr. Bond agreed. His answer sent a chill down my spine. He said, “Jim, it’s worse than you know.” Mr. Bond continued, saying, “Liquidity in many issues is almost nonexistent. We used to be able to move $50 million for a customer in a matter of minutes. Now it can take us days or weeks, depending on the type of securities involved.” According to Mr. Bond, there were many reasons for this. New Basel III bank capital requirements made it too expensive for banks to hold certain inventories of securities on their books. The Volcker Rule under Dodd-Frank prohibited certain proprietary trading that was an important adjunct to customer market making and provided some profits to make the customer risks worthwhile. Fed and Treasury bank examiners were looking critically at highly leveraged positions in repurchase agreements that are customarily used to finance bond inventories. Taken together, these regulatory changes meant that banks were no longer willing to step up and make two-way customer markets as dealers. Instead, they acted as agents and tried to match buyers and sellers without taking any risk themselves. This is a much slower and more difficult process and one than can break down completely in times of market distress. In addition, new automated trading algorithms, similar to the high-frequency trading techniques used in stock markets, were now common in bond markets. This could add to liquidity in normal times, but the liquidity would disappear instantly in times of market stress. The liquidity was really an illusion, because it would not be there when you needed it. The illusion was quite dangerous to the extent that customers leveraged their own positions in reliance on the illusion. If the customers all wanted to get out of positions at once, there would be no way to do it and markets would go straight down. Another factor that Mr. Bond and I discussed over dinner was the shortage of high-quality collateral for swap and other derivatives transactions. This was the flip side of money printing by the Fed. When the Fed prints money, the do it by purchasing bonds in the market and crediting the seller with money that comes out of thin air. This puts money into the system, but it takes the bonds out of circulation. But banks need the bonds to support collateralized transactions in the swap markets. With so many bonds stuck inside the Fed, there was now a scarcity of good collateral to go around in other markets. This was another type of illiquidity that left markets on the knife-edge of collapse. As Mr. Bond and I finished our meal and polished off the last of wine, we agreed on a few key points. Markets are subject to instant bouts of illiquidity despite the outward appearance of being liquid. There would be more flash crashes, probably worse that the ones in 2010 and 2014. Eventually, there would be a flash crash that would not bounce back and would be the beginning of a global contagion and financial panic worse than what the world went through in 2008. This panic might not happen tomorrow, but it could. The solution for investors is to have some assets outside the traditional markets and outside the banking system. These assets could be physical gold, silver, land, fine art, private equity or other assets that don’t rely on traditional stock and bond markets for their valuation. Regards, Jim Rickards for The Daily Reckoning The post Good Evening, Mr. Bond appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 21 Dec

What If Trumpflation Doesn’t Come? - This post What If Trumpflation Doesn’t Come? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. We don’t want to say Dow 20,000 is out of reach today… but it sure is looking elusive. At last check, the index is down fractionally at 19,957. The other major stock indexes are down a bit more. Treasury yields are backing down, the 10-year at 2.55%. The only economic number capturing traders’ attention today is existing home sales — up 0.7% in November, driven by condo sales. A lesser-followed economic number is also out today — the Philadelphia Fed state coincident index, a composite of four job indicators in all 50 states. We follow this index because it has a good track record of foretelling recessions. And while the number was flirting with recessionary territory over the summer, it’s recovered smartly the last two months; today’s reading for November is the strongest in over a year. Gold sits near a 10-month low at $1,131… and Jim Rickards says you can’t rule out the possibility of $950 during 2017. Well, he never said the march to $10,000 would be a straight line. “A new low of $950 per ounce is not out of the question based on Fed tightening and resulting dollar strength,” he tells readers of Rickards’ Gold Speculator. “The dollar price of gold is simply the inverse of the dollar. A strong dollar typically results in a lower dollar price for gold.” What would the setup for $950 look like? “The Fed expects ‘reflation’ under Trump,” Jim explains, “and begins leaning in with rate hikes designed to cut off inflation. This would be the result of Yellen’s belief that tight labor markets plus stimulus equals inflation (the Phillips curve) and her belief that monetary policy acts with a lag (thus the need to act now).” To no small degree, this is exactly what the Fed declared last week when it laid out plans for three interest rate increases next year… after only two in the last 13 months, the only ones since the Panic of 2008. But what if “Trumpflation” doesn’t come into being? Back to Jim’s scenario amid Fed tightening: “The Trump reflation never happens. Instead, Congress pushes back against tax cuts that are not revenue neutral, and opposes big spending plans. “Meanwhile, the economy in not as strong as many believe. We’re in the eighth year of an expansion, so there’s not much bang for the buck in terms of new spending. We will experience diminishing or negative marginal returns to so-called stimulus.” Under this scenario, the stock market is getting way ahead of itself — and a violent correction follows. “By the time the Fed sees its blunder and tries to reverse course, it will be too late.” “They won’t be able to cut rates enough to steer out of the recession. Negative rates and QE4 won’t be effective. The cheaper Chinese yuan and weak euro will make it impossible to cheapen the dollar as a way out. The stock market could crash 30% or more.” That’s deflation: Asset managers dump whatever they can to raise cash. Gold isn’t spared. That’s what could send gold to $950. However… $950 wouldn’t hold for long, Jim says. “From there, either things will get much worse, in which case gold will get the safe-haven bid, or the Fed will massively monetize debt to fight deflation, in which case gold will get the inflation bid. Either way, gold could see a drawdown in the months ahead, but nothing will stop its long-term rise. “Gold wins in the end, but it could be a volatile ride, with new lows possible. That’s not a bad thing for those still building their positions, especially in gold miners, which are even more volatile than gold. You should use occasional drawdowns to add to your position.” Regards, Dave Gonigamfor The 5 Min. Forecast The post What If Trumpflation Doesn’t Come? appeared first on Daily Reckoning. 21 Dec

The Daily Sheeple

George Washington’s Advice to Us Now… - by Eric Zuesse George Washington’s final words to his fellow Americans when leaving the White House will soon again become a part of this country’s hot political debates, but the person who will be interpreting these words to today’s Americans will be an American aristocrat whose viewpoints are actually far more similar to those of the British redcoats that Washington killed during the Revolutionary War, than to the viewpoints of General Washington himself. John Avlon (former speechwriter for Rudolf Giuliani, and before that, schooled at Milton Academy and then Yale) is now the Editor-in-Chief of the rabidly anti-Russian — or «neoconservative» — ‘news’ (or propaganda) site «The Daily Beast». He will issue on January 10th, his book, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, which is an extended essay on President George Washington’s famous Farewell Address. Here, then, is a passage from that Address, in which our first (and — along with Lincoln and FDR, one of our three greatest) President(s) actually had warned us against the neoconservative path, which our nation has been on ever since 24 February 1990 and the end of the USSR and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance. That’s the path of wars (such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine) (which some wags call «perpetual war for perpetual peace») to conquer first all of Russia’s allies, and then finally (once Russia is thus thoroughly isolated), to conquer Russia itself — in other words, George Washington, when retiring from public life, warned us against Mr. Avlon’s website’s own neoconservative foreign-affairs obsession: eternal enmity against Russia (President Washington warned us, instead, to avoid eternal enmity against any nation, including Russia, as is indicated in this passage): Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim. So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them. Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. Such «temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies» includes The Allies (England, Soviet Union and U.S.) during World War II, but certainly nothing after the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. The entire ‘Western Alliance’ — basically NATO plus Japan — is anti-American policies by the American aristocracy (controlling the U.S. Government) after 1991, and should therefore promptly terminate, and U.S. armed forces be withdrawn from all foreign countries, in accord with the will and intention of America’s democratic Founders including President Washington. Using the U.S. Defense Department, and the U.S. Treasury Department, as (which neoconservatives do) a vast welfare program for the super-wealthy owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturers and for U.S. and other mercenaries, is unauthorized by America’s Founders, and was explicitly condemned by George Washington. If any U.S.-based international corporations need those foreign U.S. military bases, then they should pick up all of the government’s tab to pay for them, because that kind of ‘capitalism’ is mere imperialism, which is nothing that any of our Founding Fathers advocated — it’s un-American, in terms of the U.S. Constitution and the men who wrote it. As Alexander Hamilton wrote on 9 January 1796, in defending the new Constitution, and especially its Treaty Clause: «I aver, that it was understood by all to be the intent of the provision [the Treaty Clause] to give to that power the most ample latitude to render it competent to all the stipulations, which the exigencies of National Affairs might require—competent to the making of Treaties of Alliance, Treaties of Commerce, Treaties of Peace and every other species of Convention usual among nations and competent in the course of its exercise to control & bind the legislative power of Congress. And it was emphatically for this reason that it was so carefully guarded; the cooperation of two thirds of the Senate with the President being required to make a Treaty. I appeal for this with confidence». He went further: «It will not be disputed that the words ‘Treaties and alliances’ are of equivalent import and of no greater force than the single word Treaties. An alliance is only a species of Treaty, a particular of a general. And the power of ‘entering into Treaties,’ which terms confer the authority under which the former Government acted, will not be pretended to be stronger than the power ‘to make Treaties,’ which are the terms constituting the authority under which the present Government acts». So: there can be no doubt that the term «treaty» refers to any and all types of international agreements. This was the Founders’ clear and unequivocal intent. No court under this Constitution possesses any power to change that, because they can’t change history. Furthermore, the third President Thomas Jefferson said in his likewise-famous Inaugural Address, that there should be «Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none». Jefferson’s comment there was also a succinct tip-of-the-hat to yet another major concern that the Founders had regarding treaties — that by discriminating in favor of the treaty-partners, they also discriminate against non-partner nations, and so endanger «peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,» which was the Founders’ chief goal in their foreign policies. But, the Founders’ chief concern was the mere recognition that treaties tend to be far more «permanent» and «entangling» than any purely national laws. This was the main reason why treaties need to be made much more difficult to become laws, and so the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement for passing-into-law any treaty was instituted as the Treaty-Clause, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2. Though this thinking — avoidance of favoritism in America’s foreign policies — was pervasive amongst the creators of America’s democracy (or people’s republic), America’s newly developed aristocracy subsequently in the 20th Century targeted elimination of the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement, because it’s an impediment toward their re-establishing the aristocracy that the American Revolution itself had overthrown and replaced by this people’s republic. And, the big chance for the aristocracy to restore its position via an imperial President, and so to extend their empire beyond our own shores, came almost two hundred years after America’s founding; it came in 1974, which was when a law finally became passed by Congress allowing some treaties to emerge as U.S. law with only the normal 50%+1 majority in the Senate (unconstitutional though that is). Without that Nixonian law, George Herbert Walker Bush’s NAFTA wouldn’t have been able to become law under Bill Clinton in 1993, and Barack Obama’s TPP with Asia and TTIP with Europe wouldn’t have stood even a chance of becoming law in 2016. Both of Obama’s proposed mega-treaties were designed to isolate and weaken both Russia and China in international trade, but all that Obama ended up with, before his leaving office, was economic sanctions against Russia for its having accepted the desire of the vast majority of Crimeans to rejoin with Russia after Obama’s Ukrainian coup overthrew the democratically elected President of next-door Ukraine, who had received 75% of the vote within Crimea. Avlon’s website, as a mainstream neoconservative ‘news’ site, opposes both Donald Trump and Russia. They actually urge punishing Russia for Trump’s election! What would George Washington think about having a person (Avlon) so partisan against George Washington’s vision for our country as that, becoming the modern ‘interpreter’ of his famous Farewell Address? Would he like that? Related Reads Here Are the Real Reasons Why Another American Civil War Is Possible The War Against the People: Fear and Loathing in NY and DC What the MSM Isn’t Telling Us: A Real Journalist Warns us WWIII with Russia, China is Already Underway New Claim: Obama Threatened Putin on the “Red Phone” in October — “Mess with the vote, we will consider it an act of war” Video: Is This The Real Reason The West is Pushing War With Russia?   Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Strategic Culture Foundation of www.strategic-culture.org. Strategic Culture Foundation provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Since 2005 our journal has published thousands of analytical briefs and commentaries with the unique perspective of independent contributors. SCF works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking. Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet, we work to spread reliable information, critical thought and progressive ideas.23 Dec

Ron Paul: What’s Missing from the Russian Hack Argument? - Without any proof or evidence being presented that Russia interfered with our election, we’re just seeing political grandstanding at this point by both President Obama and Secretary Clinton. Have you noticed that there’s never any mention or concern about Secretary Clinton having a private server in her home? If anything, that server would have made it much easier for Russia (or anyone else) to know what was going on with our government. I  discuss this, our CIA’s shenanigans, and much more below: Related Reads Senate Homeland Security Chairman: “The CIA refused to provide us with a briefing on the issue of Russian hacking” Ron Paul: ‘Fake News Comes From our Own Government’ Ron Paul Reveals The Real “Fake Media News List” Video: 5 Signs Russian Hacking Story Is Really Just Fake News Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by The Ron Paul Institute of ronpaulinstitute.org. The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is a project of Dr. Paul’s Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (F.R.E.E.), founded in the 1970s as an educational organization. The Institute continues and expands Dr. Paul’s lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home. The Institute mobilizes colleagues and collaborators of Dr. Paul’s to participate in a broad coalition to educate and advocate for fundamental changes in our foreign and domestic policy.23 Dec

Three Years Ago, Obama Signed a Law Allowing the Federal Government to Take over the Entire Media - by Don Wrightman There’s an insidious law for us to ponder, courtesy of Barack Obama. An online radio host pointed out back in 2013 that the law would grant the federal government huge power to saturate Americans with domestic propaganda at the taxpayer’s expense. “This law allows the federal government to have sweeping power to push television, radio, newspaper and social-media propaganda onto the U.S. public,” warned Michael Evans, host of America’s Voice Now. He said that the law would remove protection for Americans from the ideologies of Obama’s administration. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 was specifically what Evans was referring to; it was inserted into the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. A so-called anti-propaganda law formerly prevented the U.S. government’s broadcasting arm from reaching American viewers. On July 2, 2013, the implementation of the new reform marked an end to shielding Americans from government delivered programming. The government now had the green light to unleash thousands of hours of weekly government funded radio and television programming for domestic consumption. The U.S. government previously broadcast news and opinions to foreign countries through outlets like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. The new law allowed them to expand their broadcasting business to influence citizens within the U.S. America had been protected from this over the years, but all good things pre-Obama had to come to an end, right? “The types of information that we promulgate overseas to foreigners is disinformation. It is meant to confuse, distract, redirect. It is not meant to be an informative source of news,” Evans explained. “Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. There is already, for all intents and purposes, an organization in the United States that does this. It’s called MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News. They are an arm of propaganda. But if you think things were bad before with those groups, wait till you see what’s gonna come out of them now. They’ll be reporting government misinformation as factual news stories, and a gullible American public will swallow it hook, line and sinker.” Obama will also sign a bill to make alternative media illegal A new anti-Russian propaganda bill is now also to be signed into law. This bill will make it illegal to run an alternative media website in the United states. The purpose of the bill is to counteract measures by Russia to exert covert influence. It is also known as the “Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.” The definition of Russian influence includes references to so-called fake news websites, or any site deemed to be anti-establishment. If the bill makes it through the Senate, the internet will never be the same again. Related Reads Yes, US Government Propaganda Use Against American Citizens Is Officially Legal Now Here Comes the Ministry of Truth: The Senate Just Quietly Passed the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” What Is The Real Purpose Behind “Fake News” Propaganda? Propaganda: Staged Photos from Aleppo Show People Exactly What They Want to See This Christmas Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by NaturalNews Network of NaturalNews.com. The NaturalNews Network is a non-profit collection of public education websites covering topics that empower individuals to make positive changes in their health, environmental sensitivity, consumer choices and informed skepticism. The NaturalNews Network operates without a profit incentive, and its key writer, Mike Adams, receives absolutely no payment for his time, articles or books. The NaturalNews Network is not for sale, and does not accept money to cover any story (or to spike it). NaturalNews Network is what the news industry used to be, before it sold out to big business.23 Dec

Video: Is This The Real Reason The West is Pushing War With Russia? - by Vin Armani In this video, Vin Armani explains the real reason the West is risking war with Russia for regime change in Syria. HINT – It’s the same reason they sponsored a coup in Ukraine. And it’s why Russia has dug its heals in and is standing in the way. Check out the maps in the video. Watch the full broadcast here. Related Reads   Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Activist Post of www.activistpost.com.23 Dec

Facebook Plans to Bury Alternative News - Editor’s Note: Because we always knew that “fake news” was really just another way of saying “alternative, independent news” that isn’t controllable and refuses to tow the establishment line. Facebook has decided to make it easier for Snopes, Factcheck.org, ABC News, the Associated Press, and PolitiFact to flag “fake news.” What this means is alternative news stories the establishment decides are fake will be pushed down in the Facebook newsfeed. “Facebook is giving fact-checking organizations a kind of power they’ve never had before: the power to publicly brand other websites’ stories as ‘disputed’ and push them down in Facebook users’ newsfeeds,” reports Vox. PolitiFact has been accused of bias and serious errors in judgment by critics on the right and left. The Knight Foundation, one of PolitiFact’s largest donors, gave $200,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Knight also funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism school owned by The Tampa Bay Times newspaper. It was also reported the International Fact-Checking Network financed by George Soros will be involved with the Facebook effort. It is hosted by the Poynter Institute and also funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy. NED’s founder said the organization does what the CIA did in the old days, namely take down disfavored governments and produce propaganda. Poynter also gets money from the Omidyar Network run by the billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The Omidyar Network has teamed up with Soros’ Open Society on projects and given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides underwrites numerous progressive causes. Facebook will soon begin relegating alternative news stories to the bottom of the newsfeed where they are less likely to be viewed on the recommendations of these biased and establishment-linked organizations. This will be a significant development for many alternative media websites. For instance, my website receives a large share of referred traffic from Facebook. If Facebook users do not see my stories in their newsfeed, a lot less traffic will be driven to my website and this is exactly what Soros and the establishment want. Related Reads Snopes Wife Claims Husband Embezzled Thousands and Spent It on Prostitutes — But Hey, They’ll Tell Us What “Fake News” Is?! Facebook to Censor “Fake News” With Help from Fact Checkers Snopes, Politifact, ABC News, and WAPO’s Fact Checker What Is The Real Purpose Behind “Fake News” Propaganda? Video: 5 Signs Russian Hacking Story Is Really Just Fake News   Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Kurt Nimmo of Another Day in the Empire. Kurt Nimmo is the editor of Another Day in the Empire, where this article first appeared. He is the former lead editor and writer of Infowars.com.23 Dec

Tennessee Man Gets $75 Check To “Restart His Life” After Being Wrongfully Imprisoned For 31 Years - In October 1977, a Memphis, Tennessee woman was raped in her home by two intruders. The woman subsequently identified one of the perpetrators as her neighbor, 22 year old Lawrence McKinney. One year later, McKinney was convicted on rape and burglary charges and sentenced to 115 years in prison. The only problem is that he didn’t do it. After spending 31 years in prison, DNA evidence cleared Mckinney of any wrongdoing in 2008 and he was later released in 2009 with a very “generous” check of $75 from the Tennessee Department of Corrections to help “restart his life.” To add insult to injury, McKinney told CNN that “because I had no ID it took me three months before I was able to cash it.” Now, a 61-year-old McKinney is asking Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to exonerate him, a move that would clear a path to pursue up to $1 million in compensation from the state Board of Claims for 3 decades of wrongful imprisonment. The Tennessee Board of Parole, which makes recommendations to the governor on such issues, denied McKinney’s request for exoneration by a 7-0 vote at a hearing in September saying they could not “find clear and convincing evidence of innocence.” “The (parole) board reviewed all relevant information related to the crime, conviction and subsequent appeals, as well as all information provided by the petitioner,” said Melissa McDonald, spokesperson for the Tennessee Board of Parole. “After considering all of the evidence, the board did not find clear and convincing evidence of innocence and declined to recommend clemency in this matter.” One of McKinney’s attorneys, Jack Lowery, believes the decision should rest solely with Haslam. “The parole board is not qualified to make these decisions and should not,” he said. “For the parole board to step in when many (of them) are not trained in the law is ridiculous.” Apparently the parole board based their decision, in part, on McKinney’s admission to the 1977 burglary charge, an admission his lawyer at the time told him he needed to make if he wanted any shot at an early parole. According to John Hunn, McKinney’s pastor and most ardent supporter, the board cited a list of 97 infractions that McKinney incurred while he was in jail, including the alleged assault of a fellow inmate, who testified against McKinney at the hearing. McKinney told the board he’d been in prison for years, and that “only the strong survive,” Hunn said. Hunn testified at the hearing on McKinney’s behalf. “Lawrence has told that story at our church,” Hunn said. “He doesn’t deny that story. He was in prison, man.” The parole board also knew that 28 years into his sentence, McKinney admitted to the burglary charge he was convicted of. McKinney said his lawyers at the time told him that if he wanted any chance of being released early, he would need to admit to something. Despite being forced to waste more than half his life behind bars, McKinney says he’s not bitter and just wants to “be treated right and fair for what has happened to me.” “Although I’ve spent more than half of my life locked up for a crime I did not do, I am not bitter or angry at anyone, because I have found the Lord and married a good wife,” McKinney said. “All I ask is that I be treated right and fair for what has happened to me. I didn’t do nothing, and I just want to be treated right.” Perhaps the “commuter-in-chief” could take a little break from pardoning hardened drug dealers to help clear someone that seemingly actually deserves a break. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Zero Hedge of www.zerohedge.com.23 Dec

Christmas Canceled? Solar Storm Heading Toward Earth Could Shut Down Power Grids - Millions will be dreaming by the fire soon, but a special Christmas delivery could come early. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts a solar storm blasting Earth any day now, according to The Sun. A fast stream of solar wind has reportedly hit Earth’s magnetic field, generating a “moderately” strong geomagnetic storm which could last for several days, The Sun reported, citing the NOAA. Solar storms occur when plasma from the sun is blown toward Earth in a stream of supercharged particles. Most notably, these storms create the natural phenomenon known as the Northern Lights. However, the surge of electrons can also cause interference for electronic devices and navigation systems. The effects is similar to a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) caused by a nuclear weapon detonated in the sky. In October, President Barack Obama warned of the effects a solar storm can cause, saying, “space weather has the potential to simultaneously affect and disrupt health and safety across entire continents.” The last major solar storm happened in 1859. Called the Carrington Event, it was so strong that it shut down telegraph machines on two continents and allowed the northern lights to be visible in Africa, Australia, Latin America, and the US. Since then, US reliance on technology has made solar storms a far greater threat. The scientific journal Atmospheric Environmental estimated in 2013 that if a solar storm the size of the Carrington Event hit the Earth today, it could cause as much as $2.6 trillion dollars of damage to the US alone. Pete Riley, a senior researcher with Predictive Science, told APS Physics in March that the odds of a Carrington-like event in the next decade were around 10 percent. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by RT.com of RT.com.23 Dec

Trumpocalypse? Suddenly Liberals Are The Ones Stockpiling Food, Guns And Emergency Supplies - Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many liberals all over America have suddenly become extremely interested in prepping. Fearing that a Trump presidency could rapidly evolve into a “Trumpocalypse”, a significant number of leftists are now stockpiling food, guns and emergency supplies. In fact, even though many had expected a sharp drop in gun sales following Trump’s victory, what actually happened is that fear of what is coming under Trump pushed background checks for gun sales to an all-time record high on Black Friday. The election of Donald Trump has awakened the left to a degree that we haven’t seen in decades, and some on the left are embracing hardcore survivalism without any apologies. What is ironic about all of this is that on the other end of the political spectrum interest in prepping is probably the lowest that it has ever been in the history of the modern prepper movement. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about how it was like “a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community“, and nothing has changed since that time. In fact, since I originally wrote that article we have gotten some hard numbers that show how dramatically optimism about the future has surged among those on the right. Just before the election, CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey found that only 15 percent of all Republicans believed that the economy would improve over the next year, but after the election that number skyrocketed all the way up to 74 percent. But among Democrats it is a different story altogether. That same CNBC survey found that optimism about the economy on the left fell by more than half after the election. At this point, it is sitting at just 16 percent. It would be hard to overstate how negatively many on the left feel about Trump. We have seen many of them take to the streets to angrily protest his election, and according to the BBC others have decided to stockpile food and guns “in preparation for social and economic collapse”… In America, stockpiling weapons and food, in preparation for social and economic collapse, has tended to be the preserve of right-wing libertarians and foes of “big government”. But the Liberal Prepper Facebook group – up to now a small band – reports a big increase in enquiries. “A lot of people are worried that not only will [a Trump presidency] fail but that it will fail spectacularly to the point that we are going to end up on in one or more critical situations that we are just not prepared for,” says Jeff, 36, one of the group’s members. So could we see “social and economic collapse” under Trump? Despite the wild optimism that we are seeing on the right at the moment, without a doubt this is a possibility. It is funny how a single election can change our perspective on things so dramatically. During the Obama years, it seemed like the left was constantly talking about disarming everyone, but now Trump has sparked a renewed interest in gun ownership among many liberals. Prominent progressive author Ana Marie Cox is just one example… Witness Ana Marie Cox, a popular progressive writer with gigs at MTV and the New York Times. “So who else has been researching basic disaster prep stuff?” she polled her Twitter audience on Wednesday. “Bc—congrats, right wingers—I do not trust the government to help anymore!” Her next tweet extended the holiday merriment to our nation’s Second Amendment enthusiasts: “Getting my rifle out of storage this week.” And did you know that leftists even have their own gun organization? It is known as “the Liberal Gun Club”, and since Trump’s victory it has experienced a huge surge in membership… Lara Smith, national spokesperson for the Liberal Gun Club, says her organization has seen a “huge” rise in enquiries since November’s election and a 10% increase in paid members. US gun sales hit record levels in October amid fears a Hillary Clinton election victory would lead to draconian gun control measures. The election of Donald Trump, who was backed by the National Rifle Association early on, was thought to bring an end to panic buying. Shares in gun manufacturers even dropped by as much as 18% following his victory. Instead, FBI background checks for gun transactions soared to a new record for a single day – 185,713 – during the Black Friday sales on 25 November, according to gun control news site The Trace. Many on the right have responded to Donald Trump’s election victory by deciding that the battle is over and that it is time to go to sleep. But many on the left have been suddenly awakened and are now preparing for extremely challenging times ahead. I hate to say this, but in this case those on the left that are busily preparing are showing much more wisdom than many on the right that have chosen to abandon prepping altogether at this point. Of course most of those on the left don’t really understand the storm that is approaching. All they know is that Trump is “really bad” and therefore they need to try to get through the next four years the best that they can. Here is more from the BBC… “We are not looking for end of the world Mad Max-type scenarios, we are not looking at a zombie apocalypse,” says the author of a left wing survivalist blog, who also reports a surge in interest since Trump’s victory. He says it is “fairly easy to predict” an economic collapse under Trump but adds: “No matter what, the country is still going to be here in four years, there’s going to be another election.” I would have to agree that a major economic downturn is quite likely in the very near future. We have been on the greatest debt binge in history during the Obama years, and it is inevitable that this bubble will burst. Donald Trump basically has two choices. He could try to prolong this debt bubble for as long as possible, but that would make the ultimate outcome even worse. Or he could try to deal with the crisis right away, but that would mean an extraordinary amount of pain for all of us. No matter who won the election, we were going to have to deal with the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions sooner or later. Let us certainly hope for the best, but without a doubt those that are preparing for challenging times ahead are showing incredible wisdom, and this includes both liberals and conservatives. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream , The Truth and Economic Collapse Blog. 23 Dec

VIDEO: Cop Assaults & Arrests Mom and Children Who Called 911 on Man Who Assaulted Her 7-yo Son - by Matt Agorist Fort Worth, TX — A video posted to Facebook Wednesday evening has quickly gone viral showing a Fort Worth cop involved in a violent arrest of a mother and her two teen daughters. The incident began when Jacqueline Craig called police alleging that her neighbor assaulted her 7-year-old son. Craig told police that the neighbor claimed he saw the 7-year-old throw a piece of trash on the ground and when her son refused to pick it up, the adult male began choking him. Yes, it is wrong to litter. However, choking someone else’s child over littering is most certainly not a just response. However, the cop could not have cared less about the assault as the first question out of his mouth is, “Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” “It doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t. It doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him,” explained Craig. “Why not?” callously replies the cop. At this point, after the officer implies that an adult assaulting a child is perfectly fine if litter is involved, the argument begins to escalate. The officer then says, “if you keep yelling at me you’re going to piss me off and I’m going to take you to jail.” As her daughter attempts to calm down the situation, all hell breaks loose, and the officer makes good on his threat. The video then cuts to Craig laying on the ground with the officer kneeling on her back. He has his taser out and points it at a small child and then at Craig’s daughter. The officer then handcuffs Craig and her 19-year-old. The cop then turns his attention to the person filming. He knocks the camera out of her hand and tells her, “you’re going to jail too!” Craig was arrested on charges of resisting arrest and failure to identify, according to court records. Brea Hymond, Craig’s 19-year-old daughter, was charged with resisting arrest and interfering with public duties. There are no records of the man who assaulted Craig’s 7-year-old son being arrested. On Thursday afternoon, Craig and her daughter were finally released. In a statement, Fort Worth police acknowledged the incident and noted that the officer involved has been placed on restricted duty pending the outcome of the investigation. “The investigators worked throughout the night and into the morning interviewing witnesses and reviewing video evidence; including video from a body worn camera that was active during the incident,” FWPD wrote. “Since this is an internal investigation, state law limits the information that may be released, including the officer’s body cam footage,” FWPD says. The department adds that it “enjoys a close and cooperative relationship” with citizens built on “transparency, mutual trust and respect,” and that it expects officers to treat citizens the same. “We ask that our investigators are given the time and opportunity to thoroughly examine this incident and to submit their findings. This process may take time, but the integrity of the investigation rests upon the ability of the investigators to document facts and to accurately evaluate the size and scope of what transpired. We ask our community for patience and calm during this investigation process.” Instead of helping a woman who called police for assistance in stopping a man who had attacked her small child, Fort Worth Police assaulted her. This family needed help and got brutality instead. This is the reason there is a growing mistrust of police in America. Warning: Profanity Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by The Free Thought Project of thefreethoughtproject.com. The Free Thought Project is dedicated to holding those who claim authority over our lives accountable.23 Dec

The Greatness of Your Freedom - These are notes I made prior to putting together my second collection, Exit From The Matrix, which contains a large series of exercises designed to increase creative power: “You need to start from the recognition of your freedom. That’s the open door. Everything flows from there. If you believe you aren’t free, or can’t be, then things shut down. Then you’re working on a grossly limited scale.” “Freedom is something you perceive, something you take, something you assume. It’s Possibility here and there and everywhere. Societies and civilizations aren’t built, beyond a certain point, to encourage possibility. They’re built to be systems.” “What is freedom for? Colleges, if they were so inclined (and they aren’t), could build four-year curricula around that single question. Freedom is certainly a quality that pertains to the individual. You. Freedom implies invention, imagination. It’s the field in which imagination operates. It’s the field all sorts of people, for various reasons, want to shut down. Those people are misaligned, mistaken, and misguided. They propose ideas that are immediately limiting. The trick is to contemplate ideas that aren’t limiting at all.” “Freedom is a greatness. It isn’t small. It isn’t a grant given out by an authority. If a person sees the greatness of freedom, he can then imagine a future that is also great. Expansive. Multiplying.” “People bump up against great and open ideas in their minds on a regular basis. They can choose to stop and consider those ideas and appreciate them and utilize them, or they can move along to much smaller and narrower ideas and take hold of them and build their lives around them.” “For many people freedom has the whiff of danger. That’s an illusion. The real danger is abandoning freedom and leaving it on the side of the road.” “If the future closes up and what’s left over is mundane and unexciting, imagination takes a holiday. It leaves a note on the kitchen table that says, ‘I’m leaving town. Let me know when you’re ready to launch the adventure of your life. Then I’ll be back in a flash.” “You could say that freedom is a state of mind. But it isn’t a naturally occurring state of mind. You can’t depend on it showing up. You need to assume it, like the premise of an argument. Except you aren’t arguing. You’re launching.” “It doesn’t matter how the fact of your freedom affects anyone else. In the long run, you’re leaving a trace of what you have with others. They can react against it or for it in their own minds, but they’ll remember it. They’ll know, at some level, that they can assume freedom for themselves.” “Freedom and imagination are brothers. One brother strengthens the other. Inspires the other. This is a magnificent thing. This climbs mountains to the highest peaks. This transforms existence.” “Together, freedom and imagination are more real than reality. They make new reality. They provoke, on a physical level, the cells of the body to energize and percolate with the fervent desire to participate in a grand future…” Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Jon Rappoport of No More Fake News. The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.23 Dec

Dairy Site

4th BIOMIN Front Runners Forum Held in Ooty, India - INDIA - Four years ago, BIOMIN India came up with a new concept to approach and provide solutions to our customers: the BIOMIN Front Runners Forum. This event supports our aim to be the knowledge and strategy partner to our customers, and to help them to become – and remain – market leaders in the livestock industry—in other words; get ahead of the crowd.23 Dec

Rodenticides Leaflet Explains Rule Change and Options - UK - Since 1 October 2016, a rule that buyers of stewardship-label rodenticides must show proof of competence certification means farmers, gamekeepers and pest controllers unable to do so cannot be supplied.22 Dec

China Champion of Free Trade Since Joining WTO, Says Expert - CHINA - China has become a champion of free trade, boosting the global exchange of goods and services since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) 15 years ago, an Argentine expert in international law has said.22 Dec

Beef Lags Behind as Dairy Births Jump - IRELAND - The number of beef births occurring on Irish farms this year has lagged considerably on 2015, figures from the ICBF show.22 Dec

EIB Loans 50m Euros to Polish Dairy Producer - POLAND - The European Investment Bank (EIB) said it loaned 50 million euros(52.27 million US dollars) to a heavyweight dairy producer in Poland to boost the country's dairy section on Thursday.22 Dec

Indonesian Farmers Losing Appetite for Fresh Milk Business - INDONESIA - The Indonesian Association of Dairy Cattle Farmers (APSPI) has predicted that the sluggish trend in domestic fresh milk production will continue next year as more local producers are likely to resign from fierce competition with imported dairy products.22 Dec

Japanese Group to Sell Stakes in Chinese Farm, Dairy Outfits - JAPAN - Asahi Group Holdings will unload its shares in a dairy company and farm business in China, as it realigns its assets to focus on strategic growth fields.22 Dec

Digestibility Is the Top Reason Livestock Producers Use Phytogenic Feed Additives - GLOBAL - Digestibility enhancement ranks as the number one reason that the livestock industry uses phytogenic feed additives (PFAs), according to a recent survey of more than one thousand agribusiness professionals.22 Dec

Cattle Markets in Kashmore District Lacking Basic Facilities - PAKISTAN - here is a great dearth of basic facilities in the two big cattle markets of Kashmore district. Basic necessities such as water, grass, shelter, sanitation and also security are mostly missing in the markets situated in Kandhkot and Tangwani town.21 Dec

Optimise Herd Housing to Optimise Health and Production - UK - When it comes to optimising both milk production and animal welfare, dairy farmers should look to optimise their current facilities, before making substantial investments in new sheds or parlours. That was the message at two recent cow accommodation events held by AHDB Dairy and the Scottish Dairy Hub.21 Dec

Desdemona Despair

Adam Ruins Everything: Global warming is already happening -   22 December 2016 (truTV) – The question isn't, “Will warming happen?”; the question is, “How bad will it be?” 24 Dec

Weather buoy near North Pole hits melting point – Large area of Arctic 20°C higher than normal on Christmas Eve 2016 - By Jason Samenow 22 December 2016 (The Washington Post) – Santa may need water skis instead of a sleigh this year. A weather buoy about 90 miles south of the North Pole registered a temperature at the melting point of 32 degrees (0 Celsius) early Thursday, as a giant storm east of Greenland drew abnormally warm air northward. Weather models had predicted temperatures could get this warm and this buoy, part of the North Pole Environmental Observatory, provides validation. “It seems likely areas very close to or at the North Pole were at the freezing point” Thursday, said Zachary Labe, a doctoral student researching Arctic climate and weather at the University of California at Irvine. Data from the buoy (No. 300234064010010, which can be downloaded here) show that air temperatures have risen more than 40 degrees in the past two days, when they hovered near minus-11 degrees (minus-24 Celsius) which, even then, was above average. [more] Weather buoy near North Pole hits melting point24 Dec

How far is Europe swinging to the far right? Election results in December 2016 - By Gregor Aisch, Adam Pearce, and Bryant Rousseau5 December 2016 (The New York Times) – Amid a migrant crisis, sluggish economic growth and growing disillusionment with the European Union, right-wing parties in a growing number of European countries have made electoral gains. The right-wing parties included below range across a wide policy spectrum, from populist and nationalist to far-right neofascist. This chart show election results in 20 European countries, with right-wing populist and far-right parties highlighted in red. […] Poland Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party roared back into the government by winning 39 percent of the national vote in the 2015 parliamentary elections. The party was founded in 2001 by Lech Kaczynski and his identical twin, Jaroslaw. Law and Justice first won power in 2005. Lech became president and Jaroslaw, eventually, his prime minister. In 2010, Lech Kaczynski and much of Poland’s top leadership died in a plane crash while landing at an airport near Smolensk, Russia. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who was not on the plane, is now leading Poland’s shift rightward as the party leader. Hungary Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party, running on a joint list with the K.D.N.P., a Christian Democratic party, have won the last two parliamentary elections in Hungary, worrying many Western leaders about his increasingly authoritarian rule. The party also decisively won in voting for the European Parliament in May 2014. Jobbik, a far-right, anti-immigration, populist and economic protectionist party,won 20 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in 2014, making it Hungary’s third-largest party. Itspolicy platform includes holding a referendum on membership in the European Union and a call to “stop hushing up such taboo issues” as “the Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world.” [more] How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right?24 Dec

News reports uncritically portray ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as climate change advocate - By Kevin Kalhoefer and Andrew Seifter16 December 2016 (Media Matters) – Several media outlets reporting on President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state have uncritically described Tillerson as accepting of climate change and supportive of a carbon tax. But these reports ignored scientifically inaccurate claims Tillerson has made about climate change, Exxon’s continued financial support of groups that deny climate science, inconsistencies by both Tillerson and Exxon on whether they truly support a carbon tax, and fierce opposition to Tillerson’s nomination from leading environmental groups -- not to mention the fact that Exxon is under investigation in several states for possibly violating state laws by deceiving shareholders and the public about climate change. […] But Harvard and MIT researchers documented that Tillerson repeatedly pushed “Climate Science Misinformation.” As Slate’s Josh Voorhes recently noted, researchers at Harvard and MIT provided extensive documentation showing that Tillerson’s remarks about climate change frequently “raise doubt about the science when there isn’t any.” Indeed, in a document calling on the American Geophysical Union to no longer accept sponsorship from Exxon, the Harvard and MIT researchers demonstrated that Tillerson falsely claimed in 2013 that the temperature record “really hadn’t changed” over the previous decade, and that he made at least five inaccurate remarks in recent years wrongly “seeking to sow doubt about the reliability of climate models.” As The Guardian’s Dana Nuccitelli explained in 2015, global climate models have been “even more accurate than previously thought.” News Reports Uncritically Portray Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson As Climate Change Advocate23 Dec

Lake Baikal sponge has died out completely in several areas - By Olga Gertcyk20 December 2016 (The Siberian Times) – In just two years, since the sponge was last surveyed, it has entirely vanished in the area around popular tourist resort Listvyanka and Cape Tolsty, in Irkutsk region, and over a wide area in the north of the crescent-shaped lake which contains around 20% of the world's unfrozen freshwater. One theory is that the lesion of the sponge in coastal areas is caused by the impact of tourists, and the pollution that accompanies them, and the consequent growth of harmful foul-smelling algae. Igor Khanaev, of the  Limnological Institute, in Irkutsk, said referring to the Listvyanka area: 'It is clear that the waste discharged by boats have seriously changed the ecosystem of the lake in this area.' Another is that methane leaks from the lake - the deepest on the planet - could be a factor. There have been claims the sponge is suffering from an 'unknown disease' caused by bacteria. Baikal sponge of 5-7 centimetres cleanses per day up to 20 litres of water from bacteria and different minerals. [more] Gone: endemic Baikal sponge has died completely in several areas of the vast lake23 Dec

Trump rejects climate science, but his Mar-a-Lago club could be lost to the sea – Floridians in Palm Beach spend millions to deal with rising seas - By Michael Smith and Jonathan Levin16 December 2016 (Bloomberg Businessweek) – Donald Trump shelled out $409,759 for property taxes in 2016 on Mar-a-Lago, his oceanfront club above billionaire’s row in Palm Beach, Florida. Some of those tax dollars will go toward combating the ravages of climate change, a phenomenon the president-elect has dismissed as a hoax. Trump tweeted in 2012 that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese” to make U.S. industry less competitive. In early December he told Fox News that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real. He’s picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a staunch denier of climate change, to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s not stopping officials in Palm Beach from preparing to deal with its effects. This year, the town overhauled 12 pumping stations to push storm runoff up a huge pipe to the Intracoastal Waterway under a 20-year, $120 million infrastructure plan to deal with increased rainfall and street flooding, among other issues. Palm Beach’s system can now suck up almost 1 million gallons of runoff a minute. “I just deal with the reality that sea levels are rising,” says Palm Beach Town Manager Thomas Bradford. “I don’t want to rile people up about it.” [more] Trump Rejects Climate Change, but Mar-a-Lago Could Be Lost to the Sea23 Dec

North Pole temperatures may soar to 50°F above normal – Freakishly warm pole weather likely to peak on Christmas Eve - By Brian Kahn 21 December 2016 (Climate Central) – For the second year in a row, the Arctic is facing a late December heat wave (at least by Arctic winter standards). Temperatures are forecast to soar about 50°F above normal, which would bring them near the freezing point at the North Pole. As isolated data points, the back-to-back winter warm-ups would be weird. But taken in the larger context, it’s part of an unsettling trend for a region that is being rapidly reshaped by climate change. A quick recap: Arctic sea ice hit its lowest peak recorded in March (besting the record set in 2015), hit it second-lowest extent recorded in September, and started shrinking in November — at a time when ice should be growing — following a heat wave. Just how much of a heat wave did the Arctic deal with in November? At the North Pole, temperatures in November averaged an astonishing 27°F above normal. Oh, and the Northwest Passage also opened up in August for good measure. […] Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Oxford who worked on this and other WWA analyses, said this one stood out for the massive role climate change played. “In terms of the magnitude of change, this is a totally different picture than what we have seen before,” she said in an email. “Climate change really is the game changer here. (It) increased the risk of this event occurring by several orders of magnitude!" [more] North Pole Temperatures May Soar to 50 Degrees Above Normal23 Dec

UN rights chief calls for murder investigation after Philippines strongman Duterte admits to killing three people - 20 December 2016 (United Nations) – Stressing that the killing of “about three” people, which the President of the Philippines admitted to personally committing, while serving as the Mayor of the city of Davao clearly constituted murder, the United Nations human rights chief called on the judicial authorities in the country to uphold the rule of law and investigate the self-professed crimes. “It should be unthinkable for any functioning judicial system not to launch investigative and judicial proceedings when someone has openly admitted being a killer,” he added. According to the UN human rights arm, Mr. Duterte told business leaders last week that he had patrolled the streets personally on his motorcycle and killed people. On Friday, in an interview with the BBC, he confirmed that he had personally killed “about three” people during his term as the mayor of Davao. “The killings described by President Duterte also violate international law, including the right to life, freedom from violence and force, due process and fair trial, equal protection before the law, and innocence until proven guilty,” underscored High Commissioner Zeid, adding that if Mr. Duterte, as a government official, encouraged others to follow his example, he may also have committed incitement to violence. Mr. Zeid also said that Mr. Duterte's repeated calls for the police, military and the general public to engage in a 'war on drugs', bringing people in 'dead or alive', has emboldened an environment of alarming impunity and violence and that repeated statements indicating immunity for police officers who engaged in human rights violations in the line of duty were “a direct violation of all democratic safeguards that have been established to uphold justice and the rule of law.” The High Commissioner's Office (OHCHR) said that since Mr. Duterte's assumed presidency on 30 June, more than 6,100 people have reportedly been killed either by police, or by vigilantes and mercenaries, apparently acting in response to the President's 'war on drugs.' “In his public comments last week, Mr. Duterte promised 'For as long as there are drug lords, this campaign will go on until the last day of my term and until all of them are killed.',” OHCHR noted. “Credible and independent investigations must be urgently re-opened into the killings in Davao, as well as into the shocking number of killings that have occurred across the country since Mr. Duterte became president,” underlined the UN human rights chief, stressing: “The perpetrators must be brought to justice, sending a strong message that violence, killings, and human rights violations will not be tolerated by the State and that no one is above the law.” Mr. Zeid also called on the Government to lift a series of preconditions it imposed on a planned visit by the UN Special Rapporteur on summary executions to investigate alleged extra-judicial killings of suspected drug dealers. UN rights chief calls for murder investigation after Philippine President admits to killing three people21 Dec

Trump team asks U.S. State Department what it spends on international environmental efforts, after campaign promise to “cancel billions of dollars in global warming payments” - By Juliet Eilperin and Carol Morello 20 December 2016 (The Washington Post) – Donald Trump’s presidential transition team has asked State Department officials to disclose how much money it provides each year to international environmental groups. It’s the latest example of how the incoming administration is reassessing the U.S. government’s approach to tackling climate change and other environmental priorities. As part of a list of questions posed last week to the department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, the Trump landing team asked, “How much does the Department of State contribute annually to international environmental organizations in which the department participates?” […] On 1 November 2016, Trump said he would “cancel billions of dollars in global warming payments to the United Nations” and devote that money instead to green infrastructure projects and environmental protection. His campaign released a policy statement that day suggesting that he would “cancel all wasteful climate change spending,” which would include the elimination of all of the federal government’s international and domestic climate programs as well as a rollback in regulations aimed at cutting carbon emissions. The campaign estimated that these moves would save $100 billion over eight years, though it did not release a detailed accounting of how those savings would be generated. […] “While the transition team has a right to know how the State Department spends its money, what they are going to find out is that environmental spending is a tiny fraction of the foreign affairs budget, which itself is a small part of the federal budget,” said Nigel Purvis, who served in the State Department under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and now heads the D.C. consulting firm Climate Advisers. “Most international environmental programs run by the State Department enjoy broad bipartisan support and many of these programs were started by Republicans.” [more] Trump team asks State Dept. what it spends on international environmental efforts21 Dec

“Every migrant is a human being with human rights”, says UN chief on International Day - 18 December 2016 (UN) – Despite appearances and media spin, "migration does not have to be chaotic or seem like an invasion," and as yet another turbulent year for millions of people on the move comes to an end, the United Nations is marking International Migrants Day with a worldwide call for more cooperation and a resolute rejection of intolerance and policies driven by xenophobic rhetoric. "We have seen the continued devastating effect of armed conflict on civilian populations […], witnessed the unacceptable loss of thousands of lives of people in transit in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and the rise of populist movements that seek to […] blame [refugees and migrants] them for various ills of society," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his message on the International Day. Yet, within this turbulence there are rays of hope, with concerned citizens and communities opening their arms and hearts. There has also been a promising international response, culminating with the New York Declaration adopted in September at the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants. "It is now crucial that governments honour and build on their commitments to govern large movements of refugees and migrants in a way that is compassionate, people-centred, gender-responsive and rooted in fundamental human rights," said Mr. Ban, calling the Declaration a critical step towards the adoption of a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration in 2018. Underscoring that "every migrant is a human being with human rights," the UN chief said that to protect and uphold those rights stronger international cooperation is needed among countries of origin, transit and destination that is guided by international law and standards. "We must reject intolerance, discrimination and policies driven by xenophobic rhetoric and the scapegoating of migrants. Those who abuse and seek to harm migrants must be held to account." Picking up that thread, William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN focal point agency on the issue, said: "The upheaval we see all around in our politics should serve as a wake-up call to prepare rather than panic. We need to mould the future rather than ignore it [by] embracing the inevitability of migration, changing the perceptions of migrants among our publics and better integrating migrants in our societies." "There is a real demographic revolution going on today and it is up to us to manage it for the benefit of all," he continued, noting that while most migrants simply want an opportunity and would welcome even a temporary one, with the right support, those that stay will contribute to whatever society they settle in, whether it is economically or culturally. For its part, UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, noted that there are more than 244 million migrants in the world, almost half are women, and with ongoing movements of refugees and migrants, it is critical that the global community comes together with unified and gender-responsive solutions that address both the opportunities and challenges that migration presents. The New York Declaration underlines the need for promoting and protecting the rights of migrant women and girls at all stages of migration. Moreover, the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration in 2018 is expected to become a dynamic vehicle for migration governance, which sees migrants, including women and girls, as agents of change with valuable skills, powerful voices and the potential for leadership. 'Every migrant is a human being with human rights,' says UN chief on International Day19 Dec