Miscellaneous political debris

October 29, 2015

PARIS/NEW YORK—Despite denials by the Saudi-led coalition, it is beyond doubt that it struck and destroyed a hospital supported by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Haydan, Yemen, on October 26, MSF said today, adding that the hospital had previously been damaged by coalition attacks.

The Haydan area has been under intense airstrikes for months. During this time, MSF alerted the Saudi-led coalition on multiple occasions that the airstrikes in Haydan were destroying civilian facilities and damaging the hospital, as directly witnessed by MSF teams. On the night of October 26, MSF alerted Saudi officials in Riyadh that the hospital was under attack. "Saudi authorities are denying the evident truth of having destroyed a hospital," said Laurent Sury, head of MSF emergency operations. "This is an alarming sign for the Yemeni people and for those trying to assist them. How are we to draw lessons from what happened when all we face are denials? How can we continue to work without any form of commitment that civilian structures will be spared?"

On June 30, July 6, and July 7, airstrikes hit roughly 250 meters from the hospital, targeting houses, a school and a market.

On July 23, seven bombs fell in Haydan, hitting a market, a gas station, two houses and a school situated 75 meters from the hospital and shattering hospital windows and walls. In all cases, MSF alerted coalition forces. No responses were ever provided.

MSF again urges the Saudi-led coalition to provide clear explanations for the October 26 attack, and insists that the coalition and its supporters must commit to respect health structures and allow the delivery of humanitarian assistance to populations cut off from all aid.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.or...ing-saudi-led-coalition-contradicts-all-facts



Natalie Roberts, who until recently was MSF’s emergency coordinator in Yemen, said that the hospital had almost certainly treated the Houthi war-wounded and that other civilian buildings nearby had been hit by air strikes.

The denials by the Saudis and their partners follow allegations that the coalition has gone back on other assurances not to use cluster bombs.

In April, Human Rights Watch published what it said was evidence of the use of US-made cluster bombs by Saudi forces. A month earlier, days after the Saudi air assaults on Yemen began, Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri said: “We are not using cluster bombs at all.”

As a non-signatory to the 2008 treaty, which outlaws the use of cluster bombs, the Saudis are not prevented from using such weapons.

More than 5,400 people have been killed in the conflict. Aid agencies have warned that thousands of Yemenis face starvation.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...er-bombing-of-civilian-hospital-a6714066.html
 
October 30, 2015

gsgs comment-

Auggghhhhhh!

/end gsgs comment


"The fishing quotas that were set years ago might've worked, too, the researchers venture, if regulators had thought to take the toll of rising ocean temperatures into account."

Researchers say they've come to a startling discovery about why Maine's once-thriving population of cod has all but vanished.

The study, which appears in the latest issue of Science, found that climate change "decreased reproduction and increased mortality among the once-plentiful Atlantic cod." They speculate that warmer water is killing off cod's food while, conversely, exposing baby cod to more predators as they flee to cooler, deeper waters.


They predict it could take nearly double the previously estimated time to rebuild the collapsed population around Maine.

That's some bad news for Americans' fish-and-chips consumption, but the scariest part is the severity of the rise: Researchers compared Gulf of Maine temperatures to sea temperatures everywhere else, and they found that from 2004 to 2013 water in the gulf warmed faster than it did in 99.9 percent of the world's oceans.


http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/10/co...te-change.html



reference-


SCIENCE|Cod’s Continuing Decline Linked to Warming Gulf of Maine Waters


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/sc...ters.html?_r=0


reference-

Science magazine

"Several studies have documented fish populations changing in response to long-term warming. Over the last decade, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine increased faster than 99% of the global ocean. The warming, which was related to a northward shift in the Gulf Stream and to changes in the Atlantic Multidecadal and Pacific Decadal Oscillations, led to reduced recruitment and increased mortality in the region’s Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) stock. Failure to recognize the impact of warming on cod contributed to overfishing. Recovery of this fishery depends on sound management, but the size of the stock depends on future temperature conditions. The experience in the Gulf of Maine highlights the need to incorporate environmental factors into resource management."


http://m.sciencemag.org/content/earl...cience.aac9819
 
The Million Mask protest has taken place each 5 November for the past few years, with anti-capitalism and civil disobedience a permanent fixture. To find out more we headed to Parliament Square, to talk to people on this year's march.

“There’s so many reasons we’re here tonight. One; austerity. Two; the Government are corrupt. Three; internet censorship – where do you start?

"People are marching here for so many different reasons and it’s hard to sit here and list off: one, two, three, four. There’s so many. Governments — that’s where it all starts though. Half of them are paedophiles and they’ve all got knighthoods — the Queen’s honours list is like the sex offender’s register.”

Protesters are kettled The police have no love for anyone who sympathizes with Anonymous

Before we knew it, we were caught up in a containment, or kettle as they’re better known. A ring of police officers encircled us and no-one was allowed in or out. This led to further scuffles as people wanted to go either home or go protesting, only to be shoved backwards by police wearing riot gear.


http://londonist.com/2015/11/what-s-it-like-in-the-middle-of-the-million-mask-march


After the violence of previous years, the Met imposed stringent restrictions on the duration and route of the demonstration, including a ban on any protest after 9pm


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...ireworks-and-set-fire-to-police-a6723411.html

Plymouth man at Million Man March left bloodied after alleged baton attack by police


Terry Small, aged 20, and from Plymouth was photographed and filmed with blood pouring down his face after clashes between police and activists during the “Million Mask March, organised by the Anonymous hacking group.

While much of the march passed without incident, there were flashpoints of violence and destruction as the marchers were herded by officers from the Metropolitan Police.

(Were there outside agitators, that caused violence and confusion ?)

Mr Small told reporters he was “hit by the police with a baton for or five times on the head”.

He told other reporters he had become trapped between officers and protestors, adding “I couldn’t move."


http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Ply...eft-bloodied/story-28127935-detail/story.html
 
Nov. 5, 2015

Cynicism confirmed


Stew and Christine Nyholm have lived in the Wadley Farms neighborhood north of Denver for close to 30 years, raising five children in the same house. The couple enjoys the quiet neighborhood and ample space it provides. “We’re a small enclave of a little tiny piece of unincorporated Adams County surrounded by Thornton,” Christine describes. “You’re talking about a densely populated area that is really close to Denver.”

But in May of this year the couple discovered plans by Synergy Resources Corporation to significantly add to a threewell oil and gas site adjacent to the neighborhood. They have heard estimates the company plans to add between 6 and 20 additional new wells, with the most consistent estimate being 19, Stew says. If approved, the new, and quite massive, production site would sit only 505 feet from the nearest residence.

Shocked by the prospect of such a large industrial facility so close to homes and schools, a group of Wadley Farm residents, including the Nyholms, convinced the Adams County Commissioners to postpone signing an agreement with Synergy until the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) finalized new regulations regarding large scale oil and gas facilities near residential areas.

“Then of course we read these regulations and we realize this not only doesn’t help us, that it’s a green light for them to take all these smaller one-, two- or three-well sites and transform them into multi-well sites,” Nyholm says.

The COGCC released new draft regulations for “large scale oil and gas facilities” at the beginning of October in an attempt to mitigate the ongoing concerns of local governments and communities regarding oil and gas development near homes and schools throughout Colorado. But like Stew and Christine Nyholm, several individuals as well as community groups, local governments and even members of Gov. Hickenlooper’s now-disbanded Oil and Gas Task Force are publically criticizing the draft regulations.

“Unless the oil and gas conservation commission makes significant changes and takes local governments seriously as they deliberate and adopt this rule, it will fall far short of addressing the problem it was created to solve,” says Boulder County Commissioner Elise Jones. “And it will just be another disappointing experience where once again Colorado residents are not adequately protected from the industrial, intensive activity of oil and gas development in neighborhoods.”

Boulder Weekly began contacting Todd Hartman, communications director at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the umbrella agency for the COGCC, regarding the draft regulations on Oct. 26. After receiving no response, COGCC Executive Director Matt Lapore, his assistant Jan Missey and DNR Executive Director Mike King were also contacted by phone and email. They were also completely unresponsive. Eventually, five days later and after BW had already pushed the story a week in an effort to get a COGCC response to our questions, Hartman responded with a link to the COGCC regulations website. When asked again for an interview to specifically address BW’s questions regarding the draft regulations, Hartman responded by asking for the questions via email to see what he could do. More than two days later and as of press time, neither Hartman nor any representative of the COGCC or DNR have responded to even the emailed questions.

With public hearings scheduled for Nov. 16 and 17, roughly 65 different groups and individuals have registered as interested parties and submitted pre-hearing statements, including Boulder County and the City of Boulder, as well as several oil and gas companies and interest groups. Several other individuals have submitted comments or have requested to speak at the hearing with a non-party status, with more expected before the Nov. 6 deadline.

The draft regulations are based on recommendations No. 17 and No. 20 from Gov. Hickenlooper’s Oil and Gas Task Force, which was created as part of the Hickenlooper-Polis compromise. [see “Who killed the vote on fracking?” News, Oct. 24, 2014] This resulted in the trading of a quarter of a million citizen signatures that would have put two initiatives on the 2014 ballot for the Task Force and other considerations. These initiatives would have given local governments more control over oil and gas extraction and created a 2,000-foot setback for oil and gas development.

Recommendations No. 17 and No. 20 seek to define large scale oil and gas facilities, where such developments can occur and increase collaboration with local governments regarding the oil and gas industry’s long-term development plans. The recommendations are an effort to mitigate impacts on and conflict with local communities.

Of the 50 proposals the Task Force considered, only nine received the two-thirds majority vote and were passed on to regulating agencies. Several other recommendations received positive votes from more than half of the Task Force, but did not meet the two-thirds majority vote requirement.

Task Force members Jim Fitzgerald and Matthew Sura agree that the understanding at the Task Force meetings was that any proposal which did not require new or amending legislation needed a simple majority to be forwarded to the COGCC for consideration. However, at the end of January 2015, just a month shy of the deadline for Task Force recommendations, Gov. Hickenlooper wrote a letter stating that a two-thirds majority would be needed for any recommendation to be considered for implementation.

“There was no vote on this change. It was simply announced,” Fitzgerald writes in his comment letter to the COGCC. “…The result was that several important proposals to give local governments more standing have not been considered even when they had as many as 13 positive votes.”

In the end, recommendations that received more than half the Task Force votes, but fell short of a two-thirds majority, were submitted to the Governor as part of a minority report but are not being considered by the COGCC for implementation.

Several of the nine recommendations that received a two-thirds majority vote received unanimous support by Task Force members, including No. 17 and No. 20. The COGCC draft regulations are based on these two recommendations. “None of the people who were interested in something more serious were going to vote against these proposals so they got unanimous support,” Fitzgerald says. “But that wasn’t what we were hoping would come out of that [Task Force].”

No. 17 seeks to define what constitutes a large scale oil and gas facility, the procedure for local government participation in permitting such facilities and the COGCC procedures to site such facilities.

Many critics agree that the definition of a large scale facility in the draft regulations is simply too large to be near neighborhoods and are asking the COGCC to reduce the size by half. “It only deals with extra large facilities that industry can easily stop just shy of and completely bypass this rule,” Jones says.

Plus, the draft regulations only apply to a few densely populated areas along the Front Range and fail to address communities threatened by oil and gas development across the state. If passed, the regulations would apply to only one percent of land in the Wattenberg gas field, which is located in Adams, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Larimer and Weld counties.

“There are only 14 locations in the last two years that have been approved that this would have applied to. It’s less than 1 percent,” says Sura, who is also the attorney representing Boulder County at the COGCC hearings. “Everybody, including the industry at the time, [agreed] this was an issue that needed to be dealt with statewide and now it’s being interpreted to only apply to a handful of locations every year.”

Sara Barwinski from Weld County and a member of the Task Force, who was part of the sub-committee that drafted recommendation No. 17, says the COGCC draft regulation does not fulfill the intent of the Task Force’s work. “I was very disappointed that it didn’t realize the potential of that recommendation,” she says. “We really wanted to be able to say that wherever you live in Colorado, that decisions around where these very large industrialized sites [were placed] had some oversight beyond what industry thinks is expedient or economically most practical for them.”

In his pre-hearing statement, Bernie Buescher, Task Force member who also helped draft No. 17, agrees that the recommendation was intented to apply to all large scale oil and gas facilities regardless of location and suggests the COGCC reduce the size of large scale development significantly.

“It refers only to the Front Range dense areas where there is a density of houses so all of us down here who’ve been suffering with this [industry] forever just got excluded from that,” criticizes Fitzgerald, who lives in La Plata County. Plus, “all they talk about is consultation, but they certainly do not ever give the local government the opportunity to refuse to offer a permit or turn down a well.”

On the other hand, the COGCC is taking the intentions of recommendation No. 20 literally. This recommendation lays out communication regarding oil and gas development between industry and local municipalities for the sake of comprehensive planning. The original language in the Task Force document does not apply to county governments but only municipalities. However, Jones and Sura both affirm that throughout the COGCC stakeholder meetings, every county requested to be included under the regulation, with the exception of Weld County.

“Again, the administration says we have to read these recommendations and we want to ensure that they are implemented exactly how they are written in the case of recommendation 20,” Sura says. “But in the case of recommendation 17, they’re misreading it and refusing to listen to how it’s written and implementing it very narrowly to benefit the industry.”

Jones says counties are completely disregarded in No. 20 and under the current language will receive no information from oil and gas industry plans on unincorporated county lands. Which is significant given the fact that counties have land use authority over every other single industry except oil and gas development and this development is most likely to occur on county, not municipal, land.

“This development is going to happen some place, presumably getting it away from homes and schools and hospitals is the desired outcome. Well, that’s counties,” Jones says. “It makes no sense for it to be crafted this tightly. It’s as if people are going out of their way to make it apply to as little ground and as to help as few communities as possible.”

Barwinski agrees there doesn’t seem to be any rational reason to exclude counties from No. 20. “Especially when the intent is to avoid conflicts in the future, why wouldn’t you be sharing the information that could help industry plan and could help counties as well as municipalities?” she questions.

But despite the requests by counties to be included in the No. 20 provisions, the COGCC draft regulations only apply to local municipalities, greatly lessening the effect of the ruling on a majority of land where oil and gas development is set to take place. This leads to an overall sentiment by citizens and local governments that despite COGCC outreach meetings across the state throughout the summer, the agency is not listening.

In addition, the Commission released second draft regulations following three days of stakeholder meetings Oct. 14-16. There is no significant change between the two drafts, other than reorganization, as admitted by the COGCC in a memo. Although the memo concludes by admitting that there is still significant “distance” between the regulations and interested parties.

Weld County resident Anne Harper says she was pleasantly surprised by the three days of stakeholder meetings. Harper lives in the Pleasant View neighborhood just a half of a mile from Boulder County. She has been outspoken and resistant to the two five-acre oil and gas production platforms being proposed near her home and is a registered party in the upcoming COGCC hearings.

“This particular stakeholder meeting was very publically welcoming and it was the first welcoming experience I’ve had with them,” she says. “[But] it didn’t change a thing. So we did those three days and then the second version came back worse.

“They wrote them in this way that leaves the director all of this power, that leaves gaps the size of trucks for the industry to pretty much do what they want,” she continues. “I’m not saying take fracking out of the state of Colorado. I’m saying you need to be accurate about how you define a large scale operation in Colorado … I just want [the Commission] to hear and do something about what all these communities are saying, which is keep your large scale industrial fracking away from our homes and schools.”

Commissioner Jones says that although she started the stakeholder process with optimism, ultimately the process has been disappointing. Despite her sense that the COGCC staff listened throughout the meetings, the concerns and suggestions weren’t translated into anything meaningful in the draft regulations, she says.

However, Jones points out, the process isn’t over and the regulations can still be amended to address the concerns of communities. The COGCC website gives no indication of when to expect a decision by commissioners, other than to say the hearings may extend to the Dec. 7 COGCC meeting and the agency intends for the regulations to become effective as soon as bureaucratically possible.

“I want to leave that door open that commission members could actually try to solve the problem that this whole process was initiated to solve, which was to give local governments a more meaningful role in the siting of oil and gas development so that they can protect their residents and assure some level of confidence that their health, quality of life [and] property values wouldn’t be negatively affected,” Jones concludes.

“The whole purpose of the Task Force was to navigate these kind of difficult situations but I don’t think as written it really gives us the tools to do that,” Barwinski says.

In her estimation, Weld County should serve as a “cautionary tale” to the rest of Colorado — a situation where an economic driver, such as the oil and gas industry, can sway a local government’s allegiance away from its own citizenry in such a way that threatens democracy. However, she remains hopeful that the commission can improve the regulations and address the concerns of Task Force members, local governments and citizens.

“It’s really important for Coloradans to see that a process can work and not be cynically twisted around. Instead of losing their faith in government, losing their faith in the process,” Barwinski says. “Another unfortunate casualty is people’s disillusionment with government and with government processes and with who controls decision making. That is very detrimental to democracy. Even in larger ways than the oil and gas controversy.”

But Fitzgerald for one has admittedly always been cynical about the process, and the draft regulations only affirm his skepticism.

“The governor has chosen to make a mockery of the entire Task Force purpose and process,” he concludes in his comments to the COGCC. “There were many who chose to participate in that Task Force who did so with much skepticism about accomplishing a whole lot.

But I believe that even the most cynical of us never thought that there would be such shameless manipulation to ensure an outcome that had been pre-decided. An outcome that did not reflect in any way the hard work and sincere effort that the majority of Task Force members put into this.”

Christine Nyholm also doesn’t share Barwinski’s hope. The regulations “are going to be what they’re going to be,” she says. “I don’t think they are going to be dramatically changed in the favor of homeowners or surface right owners. … I don’t see, personally, that we’re going to make a dent. It’s bent on favoring the industry.”

She says that the draft regulations, as written, would not only allow Synergy to proceed with the plans in Wadley Farms, but the ruling would also open the door for oil and gas development in any neighborhood in Colorado.

“If they come in here, then no neighborhood is safe from this.”




http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-15201-cynicism-confirmed.html



http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-13435-who-killed-the-vote-on-fracking.html



What happened to the ballot measures?

Within hours of the breaking news that the anti-fracking ballot measures were not going to make it onto this year’s ballot, Boulder Weekly began receiving copies of an email that had been sent out by Nick Passanante, the campaign director for Safe. Clean. Colorado., the group funded by Polis that controlled the measures.

The email apologized to activists in the anti-fracking movement for blindsiding them with the decision to pull the measures and explained that the concessions from Hickenlooper were the best outcome that could be arranged under the circumstances.

The email read, “There would have been absolutely nothing worse for the movement had we gone to the ballot box and lost... which was absolutely a reality we were facing. We had numerous polls showing we could win — but only IF we had the resources to compete at a relatively fair level. We could have been outspent 3-1, 4-1, 5-1 and still have won.

But not 8-1, 10-1, 12-1. And as disappointing as it is to say, we simply did not have the financial backing to make that happen. In fact, we were being actively blocked by three of the largest national enviro groups in the nation — Sierra Club, Environment America, and to a lesser extent LCV (national, not the CO chapter). We can do a lot with grassroots movements; but at the end of the day it takes money to win campaigns of this scale and with that obstructionism we were left in a very difficult position.”

After reading this email, it was clear that there was more behind pulling the plug on the anti-fracking measures than just the Democratic Party’s publicly stated position that it feared that the measures could spark a $100 million spending spree by the oil and gas industry that could possibly, by increasing Republican turnout, work against Democrats this fall, particularly Sen. Mark Udall and Gov. Hickenlooper who are both in tight races if the polls can be believed.
 
Even the rich and famous have trouble with hard-hitting family conversations about life and ethics - just ask Ethan Hawke.

The Hollywood star has written a book to help start a dialogue with his children, and provide guidance for parents and children around the world.

In Rules for a Knight, the four-time Oscar nominee and father of four outlines 20 guidelines to living a better, and more principled, life.

He tells the BBC's Jane O'Brien about his frustrations that parents today teach their kids about sex, but not ethics.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34805223
 
"...we must cling to what matters most to us and use our love of those principles to pull ourselves up to a higher level. And from this higher point of view, we can see the situation with more clarity."


"The world that the majority of us are striving to create and live in is one in which light, life, love, and liberty are the four emanations of the one true law of existence. We collectively believe that these qualities exist inherently in the world, in the same way as other laws of nature exist."


"The law of humanity is ultimately the law of nature and is as incorruptible and as strong as the forces which bind our universe together in space and time. These natural forces are the definition of goodness and synonymous with truth."

"We can live for truth. We can fight for light, life, love, and liberty."


"We have all of history and humanity on our side. We have the entire universe on our side. No force is strong enough to ultimately stop the unfolding of the universe. No person is strong enough to ultimately stop the unfolding of another person's spirit."


"Enjoy life and live every moment for all it's worth."


http://www.villagevoice.com/music/ask-andrew-wk-how-should-i-feel-about-terrorism-7921912
 
Murdock (spell check said Murdick, ha ha) plunged his ugly fingers into National Geographic.

What could go wrong ?

Experienced journalists and writers lost their positions.


A new film airing this month on the National Geographic Channel

Saints & Strangers” is a four-hour, two-night movie


"...the film comes with a warning from Sonny Skyhawk, founder of American Indians in Film and Television, an organization established in 1981 to “create a better understanding of issues pertaining to the image, portrayal and depiction of the American Indian.” Skyhawk, who is Lakota, said Nat Geo approached him for consulting services on the film, but he walked away because the project lacked integrity."


"Among other things, Skyhawk takes issue with the producers’ failure to consult in depth with the Wampanoag Tribe. The Wampanoag gathered with the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving feast and today operate Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum built near the point where the Mayflower hit land in 1620."

“The American Indian people have grown weary of being optimistic about the subject matter or story to be rehashed in ‘Saints & Strangers,’” Skyhawk said. “Unfortunately for them, 523 years of historically mitigated fabrication will not now magically produce any semblance of the truth. The opportunistic exploitation by the Nat Geo Channel, in release of their version of that history, coinciding with the again-fabricated theory of Thanksgiving Day, smells a little overdone.”


http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...sgiving-162325

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...-africa-161249


46th National Day of Mourning: November 26, 2015
12:00 noon
Coles Hill Plymouth, MA


Plymouth has agreed, as part of the settlement of 10/19/98, that UAINE may march on Day of Mourning without the need for a permit as long as we give the town advance notice.

Horrific truth


The first official "Day of Thanksgiving" was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who had gone to Mystic, Connecticut to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children, and men.
 
You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

President George W. Bush, November 6, 2001
 
A reason to give thanks


Federal officials say they are prepared to cancel a long-suspended oil and gas lease in the Badger-Two Medicine area near Glacier National park.

Monday’s announcement follows an October court order from a federal judge requiring the Interior Department to make up its mind about lifting suspension of the lease or moving toward cancellation.

The leaseholder is a Louisiana company called Solenex. It sued the government in 2013 to force a decision on the nearly 30-year land dispute.

Solenex attorney William Perry Pendley:

"Well, I’m not surprised. They’ve been making noise like this for some time. Obviously it is a disappointment. We’ve made very clear that we believe that the federal government has zero legal authority to cancel the lease.”

Monday the Interior Department said Solenex’s lease, dating to the Reagan era, was issued without full environmental review and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has the authority to void the lease.

The statement also said when the lease was issued there was failure to consider the impacts of drilling on the cultural and religious values of the land.

The Badger-Two Medicine is part of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, but is sacred to the Blackfeet tribes of the U.S. and Canada.

Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation officer John Murray:

“This is what we expected. We are just going to sit and wait. We are very confident that Sally Jewell is going to do the right thing. But we don’t know what the judge is going to do. So we are still sitting on the edge of our seat.”

The Interior Department said a final cancellation decision could be made as soon as December 11.

Solenex has 10 days to respond to the Interior department’s decision, which Interior is still calling preliminary at this point. And for any cancellation to happen, a U.S. district court judge would have to agree that Interior does have the authority to cancel the lease.

http://mtpr.org/post/interior-plans-cancel-drilling-leases-badger-two-medicine

Solenex will collect millions in compensation for a lease that was given by Secretary James Watt, in an illegal manner.
 
My, how the times have changed!


US to open all combat roles to women, defence secretary says


A ban on women serving in combat roles was lifted in 2013 but the military was given until 2016 to make the case for specific posts they thought should remain closed.


As long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before.

"They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, lead infantry soldiers into combat."
Nancy Duff Campbell of the National Women's Law Center said it was a "thrilling day for women serving in the military, and for women across the country".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34994134


The male soldiers will no longer be forced to dump soldiers who are women, in the field, to fend for themselves. (To cover their own male asses, defending themselves against charges that they allowed women to take part in combat, which was against the rules.)
 
This morning, I am contemplating the people who thought it was OK to create zombies.


Their zombies went rogue, and made zombie mistakes.

The Jewish Conspiracy Zombies killed good Christian citizens and children that were Christian.

The Gun Fanatic Zombies killed people that had nothing to do with control of guns.

The Fetus Fanatic Zombies killed pregnant women and fathers with families.

The Fanatic White Christian Supremist Zombies kill good people that are in a church, praying to the Christian God/god.


A Narcissism Zombie that killed many women at a university, because his image of himself disappointed him.


Today, we fear another zombie may emerge, when the new Star Wars movie starts attracting large crowds of movie goers. That zombie killed 12 people, and injured 70.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/james-holmes-diary-aurora-gun-free-zones-debunked


All of these Zombie Movies and Zombie TV series, are not giving us any useful information.


Not everyone turns into a zombie, after indulging in unhealthy fanaticism.
Not everyone turns into a zombie after exposing themselves to propaganda.


Tell tale signs of a zombie is the inability to reason, a loss of the ability to use logic.
Zombies lose their human capacity to communicate reason and logic.

Donald Trump may be leading healthy people into becoming zombies...

Trump encourages violence. The latest was two security guards in dark suits at the 1,000.00 a plate fundraiser for Trump at Park Plaza in Pennsylvania. They violently threw a girl to the ground. Two witnesses for victim.

"And every time a new Congress comes into session, Republican leaders renege on their promises.

Is the GOP too stupid to learn its lesson? Almost certainly. Republican voters are furious - so furious that many of them aren't thinking straight.

A large swath of conservative voters, even voters who don't support Trump, wouldn't mind seeing the current party establishment burned down. The GOP leadership does not appear to understand the gravity of the situation.

From time to time, a demagogue emerges who captures the imaginations of the people. Trump's supporters tell us they like him because "he is his own man" and beholden to no patron or special interest. That's fine as far as it goes. But don't be surprised when Trump decides he isn't beholden to the Constitution, checks and balances, or the American people.

Trump is, to use his favorite locution, a disaster - for Republicans and for the republic."

http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2015/12/theres_no_question_-_donald_tr.html#incart_river_index


Gabrielle Giffords survived an attack by a zombie in 2011
The zombie killed 6 people and wounded 13.
The zombie killed people in a shopping center.
Gabrielle attended the sentencing hearing for the Zombie.
The zombie expressed rage at survival of the human being it had attacked.
The zombie seemed to be confused when it witnessed the victim being alive and well.
The zombie displayed no sorrow for the attack, no empathy for its victim, no remorse for the attack.
The zombie had felt that it had triumphed over a human being that it had unreasoned and unceasing hate against.
It lost that triumph and hated the survivor.
It was once a human being.
But it became ill and became a zombie.


The zombie shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head.
She survived, and has devoted her new life into helping people become informed.
Gabrielle tries to reason with human beings who use guns.
She is not afraid of guns.
She uses guns, herself.
Gabrielle just wants to keep guns out of the hands of people that should not have them.

Gabrielle has been writing books.
Her latest book was written in 2014
Enough:
Our Fight to Keep America Safe from Gun Violence

Gabrielle has her work cut out for her.
Two zombies killed people in San Bernadino.
These zombies were not fed fanatic poison from America.
These human beings were fed ISIS poison.
For some strange reason, the NRA does not to stop
giving guns to dangerous people.


This is America. You get arrested after you have done something evil.
The zombies are sly enough to know this fact.
They stay hidden under the cover of creative electronic darkness.
They collect massive amounts of powerful weapons and wait.
Zombies hate the living ?


I had gathered that zombies attacked because they were hungry.
The new films sometimes state theat the zombies are infected with a disease that triggers rage and violence.

Fanaticism seems to trigger rage and violence.


Spellcheck gremlins strike again.
arrrggghhhh
 
Last edited:
"Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."


Context

The Dark Knight (film)

Bruce Wayne: Targeting me won't get their money back. I knew the mob wouldn't go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.

Alfred Pennyworth: You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand.

Bruce Wayne: Criminals aren't complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he's after.

Alfred Pennyworth: With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that *you* don't fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

Bruce Wayne: So why steal them?

Alfred Pennyworth: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Donald Trump

June 14, 1946 (age 69)

Donald Trump, a soon to be 70 year old crackpot, to be our president ?
A member of the 1% is who we want to look after the United States ?
He is doing the same things to raise money, as the other Republicans.
He is getting donations. He sells books. A business man, he does not put his own money at risk.

Stephen King the horror writer went through the trouble of writing "The Dead Zone," to warn us against candidates who are all gimmick and no substance.


This week we were treated to the gathering of the Wicked Wingnut Witch of the West, Carly Fiorina and her seven Wingnut Flying Monkees.

John Kasich



Not the favorite, in the lineup of Wingnuts

The Ohio governor's presidential campaign has stagnated after a rough GOP debate performance last month in Milwaukee. Two weeks earlier, he'd rebooted to his usual aggressive persona, interrupting his way into the conversation and attacking ideas -- especially those of Donald Trump -- that he finds "crazy." By the time he left the stage in Milwaukee, the approach had turned off audiences, culminating with Kasich's getting booed as he sparred with a rising Ted Cruz.


http://www.cincinnati.com/story/new...ich-tweak-combative-debate-approach/77305084/

"John Kasich laid aside his combative approach at Tuesday night's CNN debate and sought to return to his early platform of unifying Republicans and Democrats."

"The strategy yielded mixed results. Kasich cut through a heated exchange between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, calling out rivals for “fighting and arguing” instead of uniting people to solve problems."

Bush and Trump got into their second shouting match of the night, Kasich broke in with the same message he’d used in his opening statement.

“All the fighting and arguing is not advancing us,” Kasich said. “A leader has a sound program, has a good policy and then brings people together to solve problems."


http://www.cincinnati.com/story/new...-debate-cnn-republican-donald-trump/77351486/


They all have the same gimmick.

What is the element that has sent Republcans to Washinton ?

The religious extremists. If you are not heterosexual, these people want you dead.

They do not want you to have an abortion, or to have birth control, even if it is a medicine that is keeping you alive.


That creepy little weasel, Ralph Reed, is still involved.

Steve King of Iowa has given Ted Cruz the nod of approval.

Ted Cruz is now ahead of Donald Trump in Iowa polls.

Religious Right Leaders Rally Around Ted Cruz At Secret Endorsement Meeting


http://www.rightwingwatch.org/conte...ly-around-ted-cruz-secret-endorsement-meeting


So, how did the budget agreements go ?

Considering how prominent the Wingnut protest is, about taxes...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-reaches-year-end-deal-on-taxes-and-spending/


Fiddling, as the world burns...
 
*looks at Politifact*

They were in front of the public, and they knew cameras were recording during the debate. They knew journalists were listening. The Wingnuts could not help themselves. Telling lies has become second nature.

The most sociopathic of all sociopaths make it to the top of the Republican heap.

It is said, that Republicans do not care if children die, and they use that against Democrats. Democrats do care (unless they are from parts of the USA, where they produce fake Democrats that vote along with Republicans to hurt people.) and Democrats have the insult of "bleeding heart" tossed at them.

The Republicans who make it to the top of the heap, do not care about anyone but themselves.

Politico observed elsewhere that "Trump is rewriting the playbook in which politicians who offend respond by equivocating, clarifying or apologizing. Instead, he goes on offense."

"But of course Trump is not "rewriting the playbook" at all. He is, rather, borrowing heavily from Joe McCarthy's playbook. Never apologize; always attack, and counterattack."

"In pursuit of the White House, Ted Cruz got in on McCarthy's rhetorical racket before Trump did. Both men are now following the same playbook, and thus we see the simpatico and authentically offensive alliance between Cruz and Trump. At any rate, the old McCarthyite tactic of rhetorical bullying is often interpreted — "out there" — as a sign of strong leadership."


What was it, that brought Joe McCarthy down, after such a long career of bullying people, and destroying their lives ?

Clue #1

Joseph Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency ?

The Republican party has come a long way in 60 years. The sense of decency that existed back then, does not exist now. Everything is pretense, now.


Donald Trump flirted with his mistress Marla Maples, in front of his wife and children.
Why were the television cameras following Trump and his family, in Aspen ?

Anthony Savignano did some research


Ivana told her friends that Donald had stopped sleeping with her. She blamed herself. “I think it was Donald’s master plan to get rid of Ivana in Atlantic City,” one of her assistants told me. “By then, Marla Maples was in a suite at the Trump Regency. Atlantic City was to be their playground.”


Marla Maples was in Atlantic City, and it was close to New York. Trump had become, according to one friend, “so focused on Marla he wasn’t paying attention to his business.”


Though Ivana had established herself in Atlantic City to please Donald, her presence there now, with Marla on the scene, was an inconvenience to him.

The entire sordid history of Marla Maples and Ivana fighting on the Aspen ski slopes was all over the papers.

Ivana had done to Donald what years ago he had done to Jay Pritzker in Nepal.

From the airplane, Trump called Liz Smith. “Congratulations on your story,” he told her sarcastically. “I have had it with Ivana. She’s gotten to be like Leona Helmsley.” “Shame on you, Donald!” Smith replied. “How dare you say that about the mother of your children?” “Just write that someone from Howard Rubenstein’s office said it,” Trump told Smith, referring to his well-connected press agent. (“I never said that,” Trump told me. “Yes, he did,” said Smith.) The Japanese bankers with whom Trump had negotiated a tentative sale suddenly backed off. “The Japanese despise scandal,” one of their associates told me.


When Donald and Marla Maples attended the same Elton John concert, Donny junior cried, for his father had told the children he would give Marla Maples up.

An eye opener


Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.

“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.

Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner
 
Christmas Eve in Bethlehem began less than peacefully Wednesday when a shoving match broke out between a marching band and police during holiday celebrations.

A day earlier, Palestinian demonstrators in Santa Claus suits clashed with Israeli security forces as they marched toward a checkpoint connecting Bethlehem to Jerusalem.

"Today we want to show that we are preparing ourselves to show the whole world the aggression of the Israeli army and the Israeli government, how they are besieging Bethlehem and controlling everything in Bethlehem. And they don't want the Palestinians to be happy, even at Christmas," said Munther Amira, Bethlehem demonstrator.


Violence between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police heightened tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank in recent months, on the heels of a violent 50-day war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel that killed more than 2,000 people.


http://m.voanews.com/a/in-bethlehem-christmas-eve-scuffle-caps-tense-year/2572341.html


Israeli authorities said Thursday that three Palestinians were killed after they carried out or attempted to carry out attacks against Israelis across the West Bank.

The three separate incidents were the latest in a three month-long wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and came as revelers were gathering in the West Bank city of Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations.


http://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...stinians-killed-in-stabbing-and-failed-attack


Last night, PBS aired a show that featured King Herod's tomb, and a very well planned settlement. It had better water supplies than California does.
King Herod had excellent engineers.
 
liberalism is a sign of mental aids....



attachment.php
 
90 assaulted on New Year's Eve, in public


The two women tried to get through the crowd, but were pushed and squeezed from all sides, and suddenly "someone had his hands between my legs, but we managed to get away before anything worse happened," Anna told DW.

Inside the station, Anna noticed that her cellphone was gone and went to the police station to report it stolen. "There were lots of girls, all crying uncontrollably," she remembered. The police, clearly stressed, told her to report the theft elsewhere.

There has been been serious fallout from the incident, with intense criticism of the reaction from Cologne's police.

An unknown number of young men from a throng of up to 1,500 are thought to have attacked and sexually assaulted women on the square in front of station, a few steps from the many bars, restaurants and discos in downtown Cologne.


By Tuesday, the number of criminal complaints of sexual assault and robbery filed with the Cologne police department had risen to 90, while one rape was also reported

Both Chancellor Angela Merkel and Justice Minister Heiko Maas condemned the assaults, the latter describing the incident as a "completely new dimension of organized criminality."


For months, Cologne police has had an eye on groups of young North African pickpockets operating in Cologne in groups of three or four. A big organized group like the one on New Year's Eve, however, is something "totally new," police investigators said.


http://m.dw.com/english/mobile.A-18959299-9097.html


The state's police union leader Arnold Plickert said there had been similar incidents in Hamburg and Stuttgart on New Year's Eve, though to a much lesser extent.

http://m.dw.com/english/mobile.A-18958334-1432.html


Mayor Henriette Reker, who made international headlines in October when she was stabbed on the campaign trail, has called a crisis meeting, which will include local and federal police, for Tuesday to address the crimes.

Reker told the local press she found the men's actions "monstrous."
"We cannot tolerate this development of lawlessness," Reker told the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" newspaper.

http://www.thelocal.de/20160104/refugees-blamed-for-mass-sexual-assault-in-cologne


As the extent of the crimes emerged on Monday, the story became the central theme of Twitter with #Köln and #aufschrei (outcry) both ranking in the top five hashtags.


In its details, the case is reminiscent of the mass sexual assaults which took place in north Africa during the huge Arab Spring protests of 2011-2013, Schunke points out, writing of her concern that so many people are moving to Germany from “patriarchal, Muslim societies.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-mass-sexual-assault-in-cologne-a6797126.html



One of the victims, named only as Katja L, told Der Express her buttocks and breasts were grabbed.

“I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and beat them, the guys did not stop. I was desperate and think I was touched around 100 times in the 200 meters,” she said.

“Fortunately I wore a jacket and trousers. A skirt would probably have been torn away from me.”
 
Christine Stuart.

She’s the Connecticut journalist who appears to have solved at least part of the mystery involving an article that was published by the New Britain Herald criticizing a Nevada county judge who had tangled with Adelson.

The recent sale of the Las Vegas Review-Journal is such a strange and complicated morass that it’s hard to know where to begin. There was the shroud of secrecy that was pierced when we learned that the buyer was casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. The threads connecting the transaction to Russel Pergament, a former top executive with The Real Paper, the Tab newspapers, and the short-lived commuter tabloid BostonNOW. And, above all, the role of Michael Schroeder, a former BostonNOW executive who’s emerged as a principal player in all of this.

If you haven’t been following the epic tale, The New York Times has a decent overview, though it lacks the sense of drama and just plain weirdness that have already made it one for the ages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/b...f-a-paper-in-las-vegas.html?ref=business&_r=0

"...the fate of the Review-Journal, it is likely to be grim. The editor, Mike Hengel, has resigned. No doubt the staff will soon be ordered to stop poking into Sheldon Adelson’s affairs. But what does Adelson intend to do with his newspaper? Promote his casino interests? Advance his support for Israel’s Netanyahu government? Both?"

Michael Schroeder, meanwhile, has added to his holdings by purchasing Rhode Island’s Block Island Times. “It’s close enough and a beautiful place and they do a really good job,” Schroeder told the GateHouse-owned Providence Journal. No doubt Schroeder—like his business associate Michael Reed—will be keeping his focus on the positive, not the negative.


http://m.wgbhnews.org/?utm_referrer=http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/#mobile/50627


http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/
 
I followed my impulse to follow the thread, that was attached to the international seafood industry.

*stumbles out of the abyss*

Immense international corporation bullies a country ?

You don't say! /end sarcasm sequence

China, poisoning everyone, in every manner possible.

*sigh*

Of course, global climate change. *flinches at the harsh reality of effects*

Ignorance and denial are bliss. Until it is not.

*blanching*
 
Elk hunting is legal on private land with written permission from the landowner during seasons that span from October to December, according to the Oklahoma Hunting guide.

Hunting is not allowed at the J.T. Nickel Preserve.


There are many signs posted, to inform people that hunting in the preserve is against the law.


The elk was well known to visitors. He was smaller than the herd's numerous bull elk, his antlers were smaller, and he was much more tame. They named him Hollywood, because he calmly accepted being photographed. Cars would be yards away from him, and he would not move from his resting spot.


The elk was visited by many people, regularly. The elk learned to trust.

Along came two arseholes, that decided an elk that was friendly, calm, and tame, should be shot with crossbow and a rifle. The elk was just a few yards off of the road.


They hacked off his head, and cut off a haunch. They left the rest of him to rot.
They left his remains 30yards off the road.


The reward to find these arseholes started small. It is up to $4,000.00
They robbed a community of an animal friend. They preyed on an innocent tame animal.


Reward is up to $4,000 to catch poachers of Nickel Preserve elk

Operation Game Thief

On Monday, Tulsa-based conservation group NatureWorks pledged another $1,000 and the Oklahoma State Game Warden Association added another $500. The Nature Conservancy said Tuesday that Wagoner business owner Bobby Mahan pledged $1,000 to make the potential payout $4,000.

“Our board members are outraged by this totally classless act. NatureWorks hopes in matching the reward that the responsible party will be apprehended and prosecuted to the full extent,” NatureWorks President Michael Linscott said via email.

Nickel Preserve Director Jeremy Tubbs said the elk’s small rack and scruffy look may have actually kept him safe for a time.

“I always felt that kind of protected him in a way,” he said. “I thought people wouldn’t take the risk poaching an elk like that.

“If he had large antlers, this may have happened sooner, but someone must have come through here this weekend and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The Nature Conservancy’s 17,000-acre Nickel Preserve, in the Cookson Hills northeast of Tahlequah, is home to a herd of about 50 elk. A group of five bulls and 15 cows was transplanted to the preserve in 2005 to re-establish an elk herd in the Ozarks.

The bull is not the first to be killed illegally in the area, Tubbs said.
“It’s just that this one was always there and we could direct people over there. People with kids could drive through, and it was almost guaranteed they would see him. … There are no other elk like that on the preserve; they are typically pretty secretive animals.”

Tubbs nicknamed the elk Hollywood because the 8- to 9-year-old had taken up residence near the county road on the preserve and was a regular feature of social media posts from nearly everyone who visited the facility for the past four or five years.

The elk seldom left the area, not even to establish a harem during breeding season.
“I can’t say he never mated, but he really wasn’t a large bull, and even at this age he never developed large antlers,” Tubbs said. “He wasn’t one of the big-herd bulls.”

http://m.tulsaworld.com/homepagelat...725-f0bb-50b0-bee8-b8f953cd1f8a.html?mode=jqm
 
I caught a glance of what I had guessed were two history enactors.
Handsome enough to be actors, ( the kind that win Oscars.)
Dressed as lobster backs. Redcoats.

The sound was off on the TV. I had no idea what the kernel of exhibition, was.

January 27, 2016

Amherst College says it will stop using the controversial "Lord Jeff" as an unofficial mascot following complaints that the character is racist.

The mascot is a caricature of Lord Jeffery Amherst, an English general who proposed giving blankets from smallpox patients to Native Americans.

"Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians?" Lord Amherst wrote in one letter, the college says.

In later correspondence, Amherst wrote, "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race."

Campus student activists have been calling for the university to abandon Lord Jeff, The New York Times reports.

"Hundreds of students calling themselves the Amherst Uprising staged a sit-in at the library, presenting the administration with a list of demands — one of which was formally cutting ties with Lord Jeff, who was criticized as an inappropriate symbol and offensive to many members of the student body."

Proponents of keeping the mascot "saw his removal as an affront to campus traditions," the Times reports.

Following Tuesday's decision, the board of trustees said "Amherst College finds itself in a position where a mascot — which, when you think about it, has only one real job, which is to unify — is driving people apart because of what it symbolizes to many in our community." Here's more:

"It is fair to recognize that historical context may influence, or make us cautious about, judgments concerning Jeffery Amherst the man. It is equally fair to decide that 18th-century standards should not govern a 21st-century choice of symbol."


http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...d-as-offensive


What has been lingering on my mind, is that each place on the Earth that the invaders touched, suffered. Each tribe of original people, that adapted to the land over thousands of years, was not allowed to evolve at their own pace.


The disease of Empire ravaged the whole world. The oppressors had to learn from the remnants of the originals, when they wanted liberty and equality for themselves.
 
The film, Making A Killing: Guns, Greed and the NRA, shows the NRA and the politicians whose campaigns they bankroll using the Second Amendment and a raft of other excuses as diversionary tactics to serve the financial interests of biggest gun manufacturers, where CEOs make more than a million dollars in annual salaries and benefits. Currently, the NRA budget is $345 million dollars, with over $43 million dollars of that budget spent on salaries.


The film uses personal stories of five categories of victims—suicide, domestic violence, mass shootings, unintentional shootings, trafficking—to unwind myths promoted by the NRA that keep guns unregulated and easily accessible to vulnerable individuals or children with often deadly results. More than 30,000 Americans are killed annually from gun-related violence, while the industry’s profits exceed $11 billion.

http://www.alternet.org/investigations/nra-and-us-gun-makers-getting-rich-thousands-die

gsgs comment-

Does the firm approach the subject of the industrial, military, and political complex ?
The government will always pay the Pentagon's gun bills. There will be politicians waiting for "incentives" to support a gun manufacturer. The manufacturer is just as greedy as the other participants in the gun related troika.


Selling guns to practical minded buyers,gun enthusiasts, and gun fanatics, is just the cream on top of the milk. The regulations and laws concerning gun markets are ignored. America is weighted down with guns. There are newly manufactured guns, waiting to be sold.


The lovely NRA, is there to tell.people what they want to hear. Not what they should know. Who stands in the shadows, to support the NRA's fight for guns ?

troika (Gorky Park film reference ?)

"Send lawyers, guns, and money."
- Warren Zevon
 
Is this the Canadian version of "The Onion" ?

AUGUST 4, 2015

Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson announced today that he is stepping in immediately to replace HitchBot, the polite little robot that was kicked to pieces in Philadelphia while on a goodwill hitch-hike to San Francisco.

“This is a unique diplomatic opportunity for Canada to smooth ruffled feathers with the U.S.,” Nicholson told the Ottawa Citizen while imitating HitchBot’s female robotic voice.


http://thelapine.ca/canadian-govern...r-gloves-and-wellies-to-fill-in-for-hitchbot/


Seems as though the site is not shying away from taking a poke at our American underbelly...


79-Year-Old Bird Watcher Takes Down Oregon Militant With Old High School Wrestling Move

BY THE LAPINE · JANUARY 10, 2016


http://thelapine.ca/79-year-old-bir...militant-with-old-high-school-wrestling-move/
 
*listens to a boast*

Marc Koplik: They don't send the lawyers to jail, because we run the country.

Ralph Kayser: Do you run the country?

Marc Koplik: Still do.

Ralph Kayser: I love it.

Marc Koplik: Still do.

Albert Grant: I should say, some lawyers run the country.

Ralph Kayser: So, you are, you are some of them? Two of them?

Marc Koplik: We're still members of a privileged, privilege class in this country.

Ralph Kayser: So, how, what does it mean you run the country? It means you?

Marc Koplik: We make the laws, and when we do so, we make them in a way that is advantageous to the lawyers.


"...how dictators, drug dealers, corrupt politicians, and other crooks avoid getting caught by transforming their ill-gotten gains into assets that appear to be legitimate."

They do it by moving the dirty money through a maze of dummy corporations and offshore bank accounts that conceal their identity and the source of the funds.

And most of it would never happen without the help -- witting or unwitting -- of lawyers, accountants and incorporators; the people who actually create these anonymous shell companies and help move the money. In fact, the U.S. has become one of the most popular places in the world to do it.


Last year, two million new corporations were set up in the United States, many with no offices, products or employees, just an address and perhaps a bank account.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anonymous-inc-60-minutes-steve-kroft-investigation/


https://www.globalwitness.org/shadyinc/


It is so easy to get a shell company, in the USA.
 
..you may be wondering why you should give a damn that some ultra-conservative editor at some ultra-conservative website has a bad take.

And in the grand scheme of things, you probably shouldn’t! But if you’re worried, as you should be, about the general direction of American politics — and, specifically, about the rising popularity of unvarnished ethno-nationalism on the right — then this fight over words is worth your attention."

Why? Because the more we forget what “fascism” actually represents, and the more we allow any kind of communal politics to be smeared with the label, the harder it will be to recognize real-deal fascism where it exists.


http://www.salon.com/2016/01/05/delu...not_a_fascist/

Federalist senior editor Dave Harsanyi tries his hand at a pop culture reference.


"...Harsanyi was half joking, he still reflects how confused many right-wingers are when it comes to fascism."

"Ian Kershaw recently wrote, defining the term “is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.” Fascism, then, like most important concepts in politics, is more art than science.

Knope is fascistic, he (Harsany) writes, not because of any specific policy she supports (like, say, invading the Soviet Union and annexing much of its territory) but because she believes in public service — “a preposterous term,” according to Harsanyi, “that treats politics as if it were a sacrifice without pay, power, or prestige.

And since the reader is clearly meant to infer that Knope’s “fascistic” inclinations are shared by the current president, we’re left to conclude that the reason Obama and Knope are “fascistic” is because they believe in public service — i.e., that the government is not always and inherently alien, illegitimate, and corrupt.

Who is Knope ?

Leslie Knope is a fictional character, in the "Parks and Recreation" TV series.
She is portrayed by Amy Poehler.


Link to the fictional town of Pawnee-

http://www.pawneeindiana.com/home.shtml
 
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Governor Karyn Polito have endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in his presidential campaign, according to a press release from Christie's campaign.

According to the release, Baker will attend a rally with Christie in New Hampshire Saturday.

(gsgs comment- Massachusetts Rightwing set Mitt Romney up as governor. Romney left office in 2007. Only those who walk the halls of the Massachusetts State House, know why that happened.)

The student population of the Boston universities may come and go. The system that keeps Boston and Cambridge up and running, lives on. It involves the time and labor of many. It involves money. The Democrats fight to keep the sense of humanity in our cities. The Republicans fight for their alliance.

If anything illustrates what happens to money inside an alliance, it is Chris Christie's history.

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/16/5_c...hat_blow_bridgegate_out_of_the_water_partner/
 
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