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November 2016

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

Worried About Climate Change and Income Disparity? For only $150K, you, too, can tour the globe by private jet with the New York Times’ finest thought leaders. By Heather Mac Donald

By on November 14th, 2016

The New York Times has been editorializing on a nearly daily basis since the election about the danger posed by President-elect Donald Trump to the very future of the earth. Rallying its readers on Thursday for the coming “Trump Years,” it argued against “fear or despondency” because “there is too much to be done.” For starters, according to the Times: “There is a planet to save. The earth is in peril from a changing climate no matter how many deniers say otherwise.” The day before, the paper had lamented that Trump may “repudiate last December’s Paris agreement on climate change, thereby abandoning America’s leadership role in addressing the biggest long-term threat to humanity.”

In the short term, however, if you’re a Times executive, marketer, or columnist, it’s still time to party, with all the oomph that a gasoline-fueled, capitalist economy can provide. In October, the Times announced its first-ever “Around the World by Private Jet” tour, slated for early 2018. “An Exclusive Private Charter,” in the words of the “luxury travel” firm of Abercrombie & Kent, will transport a mere “50 guests” to exotic locales in luxury hand-made leather flat-bed seats with “relaxing massage and adjustable lumbar support,” as a “dedicated flight crew attends” to their needs. The “guests” will “Enjoy Exclusive Events & Privileged Access,” such as private dining in Bogota’s Salt Cathedral, camping in luxury in the Moroccan desert, and exclusive after-hours access to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland.

The tour’s “exclusively chartered Boeing 757” ordinarily seats up to 295 passengers, of the pathetically non-“high-luxury” variety. So the carbon footprint of the Times’ 50 guests will be close to six times that of a commercial-jet traveler. If any of the guests feels a twinge of guilt over his greenhouse-gas emissions, he can chase it away by “enjoying a champagne toast inside an Icelandic ice funnel,” before learning “how climate change is affecting the land of fire and ice.” That’s after having been whisked to Easter Island to “learn how climate change is affecting” that location.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sidney Blumenthal, Birtherism, and the Law of Unintended Consequences Sidney Blumenthal’s opposition research in 2008 may have had unintended consequences. By John Fund

By on November 14th, 2016

Historians will be writing for decades about how Donald Trump improbably became president. Here’s one angle I hope they don’t ignore. Hillary Clinton’s 2008 supporters set in motion Trump’s candidacy when they began spreading rumors that Barack Obama had been born in a foreign country. It wasn’t until 2011 that Donald Trump picked up that bizarre torch and ran with it, only to finally drop it in September when it was clearly a spent flame.

The same mainstream media that slammed Trump for his birther obsession has long failed to properly mention its origins in the “dark ops” wing of the 2008 Hillary campaign. As Britain’s Telegraph reported in 2011: In April 2008, “an anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama’s main rival for the party’s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the national spotlight — that he had not been born in Hawaii.” The first lawsuit to make birther claims was filed by Phil Berg, a Democratic attorney and a Hillary Clinton supporter.

Hillary herself has dismissed claims that her campaign had anything to do with spreading the birther rumor. She told CNN that the suggestion was “ludicrous,” saying, “I have been blamed for nearly everything, that was a new one to me.” But the Clintons rarely leave fingerprints of their own involvement in skullduggery. Last September, former McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau chief James Asher revealed the role that Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal played in stirring up the birther scandal. “He strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya,” said Asher, who at the time was McClatchy’s investigative editor and in charge of Africa reporting. “We assigned a reporter to go to Kenya, and that reporter determined that the allegation was false.”

Denials of the Clintons’ involvement in the original birther controversy come from the same aides who denied that their candidate had personally approved trolling against the Trump campaign even though an undercover video by James O’Keefe confirmed that. Other O’Keefe videos showed that operatives linked to Hillary’s campaign paid people to disrupt Trump rallies and plan voter-fraud schemes.

None of this excuses Trump’s decision in 2011 to stoke the birther controversy and demand a copy of Obama’s birth certificate. (“But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”)

Trump’s attacks clearly irked Obama, and in April 2011, Obama released a copy of the long-form version of his Hawaii birth certificate. The annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was three days later, and Obama knew that Trump would be in attendance as a guest of the Washington Post. Obama made a point of strolling onto the stage to the strains of Rick Derringer’s “Real American” and later “revealing” his “long-form birth video,” which ended up being a clip from The Lion King. Obama then proceeded to fillet Trump like a master sushi chef:

I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier — no one is prouder — to put this birth certificate issue to rest, and that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter: Like, Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Stopping The Global Jihad: Why Is The U.S. Failing? The hope that a President Trump represents. Jeff Ludwig

By on November 14th, 2016

This writer is one of the numbed masses of people who have spent their entire adult lives witnessing mass atrocity after mass atrocity committed against Americans around the world and on U.S. soil by evil persons acting in the name of Allah. Actually, attacks by militant Islamists on Americans go all the way back to the administrations of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Those attacks on American ships and sailors off the coast of what is today Libya were finally stopped by the Marines led by Stephen Decatur. Fast forward to World War I. At that time, the U.S. joined with Britain and France to fight against, and defeat, the aggression of the Central Powers of Europe that were allied with the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Only after that victory was this last caliphate dismantled into the various Islamic nation-states we now find in the Middle East.

The post-World War I decades have seen the expansion of Arab oil wealth and continued internecine quarrels within the divided Arab world. Further, Islamist aggression internally and against the West – nay, against the entire world — has not only continued but grown exponentially with each passing decade since 1918.

During October 1983, 241 U.S. troops were massacred in Lebanon by Hezbollah (as well as 58 French troops at a different location). President Reagan, for many citizens the very incarnation of the warrior spirit, nonetheless, by Feb. 1984 withdrew all remaining U.S. troops from Lebanon. Thirty years later, relatives of the soldiers killed in that attack were awarded $2.65 billion in reparations in a lawsuit against Iran, but have yet to see any of that money. At the same time, President Obama has negotiated a deal with Iran releasing $150 billion in frozen Iranian assets to Iran from various financial institutions as part of a new so-called detente with that malignant terrorist nation. And, by the way, Iran is still on our State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Fast forward to 1996, thirteen years later, part of a housing complex where Americans lived in Khobar, Saudi Arabia was bombed by a truck carrying the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. On that occasion “only” 19 Americans were killed. After intense investigation, again Hezbollah and Iran were blamed for the bombing by a U.S. court; however, payments were not made to the affected U.S. citizens. It took 20 years before the mastermind of this attack was arrested, raising many suspicions about whether or not there has been a partial or total cover-up.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Watches Ominous Developments in Syria with Weary Eye Rising enemies in a volatile region. Ari Lieberman

By on November 14th, 2016

Last Friday, a senior Iranian general confirmed that the Islamic Republic was manufacturing weapons including rockets in Aleppo and that some of those rockets were transferred to Hezbollah, bolstering the terror group’s already formidable stockpiles. The revelation of Iranian military production facilities in a foreign country was the first such acknowledgement by a senior Iranian official.

Chief of Staff of the Iranian Army, Major General Mohammad Bagheri noted that Iran’s production of missiles in Syria began in 2002 and that rockets manufactured at the Aleppo facility were transferred to Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon War also known as the Second Lebanon War. During that 33-day conflict, Hezbollah fired in excess of 4,000 rockets at Israel. Since the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah, primarily with Iranian assistance, has increased its rocket and missile arsenal tenfold, from 12,000 to an estimated 120,000.

The general’s acknowledgement provides us with some sense of how entrenched the Iranians are in Syria and how they’re utilizing Syrian resources to supply their proxies. It is believed that the Iranians are employing between 7,000 to 10,000 Hezbollah operatives in Syria. Hezbollah represents one of four foreign pillars propping up the Assad regime and his flagging army. Iran maintains a military force of between 13,000 to 16,000 soldiers and, aside from Hezbollah, is believed to have recruited some 40,000 foreign fighters from Middle Eastern and Central Asian states. Russia maintains a sizable air and naval presence in Syria, supplemented by Special Forces and electronic warfare specialists.

Israel is watching these developments with keen interest. The Israelis are cooperating closely with the Russians to ensure that that their respective military forces, particularly their air forces don’t mistakenly tangle over the skies of Syria. The last time Israel dueled with the Russians was in July 1970 over the skies of the Suez Canal, during the height of the Cold War. Five Soviet MiG-21 fighters were shot down by Israeli F-4 Phantoms and Mirage jets. But so far, the Israelis and the Russians have managed to avoid hostile encounters with each other due to unprecedented cooperation between their respective military and political leaders.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Al-Qaeda Slams Obama for ‘Astonishing and Deceptive’ Inaction on Climate Change By Bridget Johnson (???!!!)See note please

By on November 14th, 2016

The color green is mentioned in the Koran and it is prominent in the symbols and flags of Hamas , Hezbollah
Image result for flag of hezbollah
Image result for hamas flag

and other assorted vermin……rsk

Al-Qaeda slammed the Obama administration for being all talk and no action on climate change and protecting the environment in a new issue of their English-language how-to magazine for lone jihadists.

The new special issue of Inspire, published by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Al-Malahem Media, is titled “The 9/17 Operations” — the Sept. 17 attacks on a race in New Jersey, a street in Manhattan and a shopping mall in Minnesota. ISIS claimed responsibility for the third attack, in which nine people were stabbed.

But Inspire editor Yahya Ibrahim said of the pressure-cooker attacks on the East Coast: “This time Al-Qaida did not come out to declare responsibility for the operations, this is because America is witnessing a new form of operations and new form of tactics … They are indeed the heroes of Lone Jihad.”

Inspire said the timing of the attacks “has both a political and security dimension, this is because carrying out an operation during the same days of the 9/11 anniversary increases the sense of fear, insecurity and brings back the past memories in details; especially when the operation targeted the same place – Manhattan.”

They theorized that “because preparing a single pressure cooker bomb may take at least a week, it is likely that preparations for the operation took more time than anticipated” and may have been planned closer to the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Al-Qaeda praised all of the operations as an “exceptional success” for achieving a goal of “reviving fear and terror at a time when successive American administrations lie to their people, convincing them that they have crushed ‘terrorist’ groups and disrupted their capabilities and therefore the American citizens live in a peace, safe and stable life.”

They panned, though, the use of a timer for the New Jersey bomb; runners were not injured in the explosion as the race had been delayed. “In this case, we prefer the use of a remote control detonator as used by the Tsarnaev brothers in the Boston Marathon.”

They suggested that a restaurant in Chelsea would have been a better target than a Dumpster, and cautioned jihadists who don’t plan on committing suicide to be careful about leaving fingerprints. “It was better to put the bomb in a place where people are gathering and standing around it, such as a shopping center,” said the review of the attack. “This is because people pass by quickly besides garbage containers and they don’t normally stand beside them. This explain[s] the result of the injured in the operation.” Thirty-one people were injured in the blast.

The issue reviews pressure-cooker bomb construction, locations and camouflage in order to cause the most harm.

The magazine also notes that U.S. airstrikes against al-Qaeda leaders doesn’t degrade the group but makes the terrorists “more committed to their principles.”

As al-Qaeda has previously done in the pages of Inspire, this issue tried to appeal to African-Americans by highlighting police shootings of black men.

Donald Trump was not specifically mentioned in the new issue. President Obama’s final address to the United Nations General Assembly in September was slammed as rehashing U.S. policies such as support for Israel that carry over regardless of the administration. “Some of them say that they will wait for the next president who might give them hope and best handle their issues… Undoubtedly, the kitchen that draw most of the American foreign and internal policy is the same one, the parties rotate to play the same roles and the president executes the outcomes. Therefore, the role that the president is playing is just an executive role.”

“We admit to say that America has ruled the world for the past two decades, and is still considered the most powerful nation in the world,” states the review of Obama’s speech. “And America has to admit to us that we have insulted and subjugated its arrogance.”

Al-Qaeda makes clear that they don’t care about party affiliation. They do, however, make a pitch against climate change.

“The environment has suffered from America’s policies. In latest official statistics of International [sic] Health Organization, it mentions that 92% of the world population are breathing polluted air. Moreover, 6.5 million people are dying annually because of air pollution,” the magazine says. “One of the main cause of pollution results from American factories, which produce 36.1% of greenhouse gases. Despite that, up to this day America hasn’t taken any tangible steps to reduce these harmful gases.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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MEDIA Comments turned off

NY Times Publisher Tells Readers the Paper Will ‘Rededicate’ Itself to Honest Reporting By Rick Moran

By on November 14th, 2016

New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. sought to limit the damage done by the paper’s relentlessly biased reporting of the presidential election by penning a letter to readers that promised the Times would strive “to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.”

Does he really believe that load of crap?

I’m afraid he does. Sulzberger and the media in general live in a bubble where they may try to understand how the rest of the country thinks but have no clue because of a built-in bias against ideas that do not comport with their static and rigid ideology. I’m sure there are many reporters who believe they are being objective when they express disapproval for a worldview that is alien to their experience. The election exposed the media as acting — deliberately or not — as surrogates for the Democratic Party.

Will they learn anything? Sulzberger’s letter to readers was at least partly in response to a scathing analysis of the Times’ election coverage by public editor Liz Spayd:

Certainly, The Times isn’t the only news organization bewildered and perhaps a bit sheepish about its predictions coverage. The rest of media missed it too, as did the pollsters, the analysts, the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign itself.

But as The Times begins a period of self-reflection, I hope its editors will think hard about the half of America the paper too seldom covers.

The red state America campaign coverage that rang the loudest in news coverage grew out of Trump rallies, and it often amplified the voices of the most hateful. One especially compelling video produced with footage collected over months on the campaign trail, captured the ugly vitriol like few others. That’s important coverage. But it and pieces like it drowned out the kind of agenda-free, deep narratives that could have taken Times readers deeper into the lives and values of the people who just elected the next president.

In other words, The Times would serve readers well with fewer brief interviews, fewer snatched slogans that inevitably render a narrow caricature of those who spoke them. If you want to further educate yourself on the newly empowered, check out the work of George Packer in The New Yorker. You’ll leave wiser about what just happened. Times journalists can be masters at doing these pieces, but they do them best when describing the lives of struggling immigrants, for example, or those living on the streets. CONTINUE AT SITE

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MEDIA Comments turned off

New York Times Promises to Lie No More ……except when it involves “hard data”. By Henry Percy

By on November 14th, 2016

On Friday, Pinch Sulzberger, publisher of the NY Times, wrote a letter to his newsroom apologizing for their coverage of the Clinton/Trump campaign while simultaneously asserting they were completely unbiased. As non-apologies go, his is a classic. It took him 279 words to say the equivalent of “We told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about both candidates — and we promise to stop lying about Trump in the future.” He sounds like a kid caught shoplifting: “I didn’t’ steal nothin’, and I’ll give back anything that wound up in my pockets, honest I will!”

And then the very next day Pinch’s “newspaper of record” published a story wherein Hillary blames her loss on James Comey:

Mrs. Clinton’s contention appears to be more rooted in reality — and hard data. An internal campaign memo with polling data said that “there is no question that a week from Election Day, Secretary Clinton was poised for a historic win,” but that, in the end, “late-breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome.”

So an “internal campaign memo” from Hillary’s campaign is now “hard data”? And this just 24 hours after your letter to the newsroom? Your “journalists” just can’t help themselves, Pinch.

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When the Left-media Becomes a Crying Cult By James Lewis

By on November 14th, 2016

In July of 2011, when North Korea’s butcher-dictator Dear Leader Kim Jung-Il died, all the NK Communist Party members in the land were ordered to cry hysterically, to ululate in grief at the death of Dear Leader, in public, altogether, on command. You can see it in this video, the Party cadres lined up on the hard snow in military platoon formation, men and women, bursting into tears when the command was given.

The BBC wondered at the time whether all that public crying was real or not, since Dear Leader controlled every human being in that country, by sending any wrong ‘uns to his vast concentration camps to be starved and worked to death. Every tear-stained face in those black-clad platoons knew with absolutely certainty that they would be arrested and sent to death if they failed to show enough dramatic grief. Some unconvincing mourners were undoubtedly grabbed and taken away to the camps.

North Korea’s national cry-in for the loss of Dear Leader is an important lesson about human politics: the power of closed cult indoctrination. Turns out you don’t even need death camps. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment showed how it could be done with legally free Stanford students in the prime of life, able to walk away from the experiment any time they liked, without murderous guards armed with guns. All you needed was a Stanford grad student wearing a white lab coat. A whole series of experiments showed the same kind of thing.

The iron key to mind control is having one source of “real” information, and shutting off any competing ones. It’s all Scientology has to deliver for its faithful followers to stay in that imaginary world. Most of the more fanciful religious and non-religious cults on the web have followers who indoctrinate themselves. The Five Star Movement in Italy started as an internet cult in the ‘90s telling teenage kids about airplanes spreading out chemtrails to control the minds of Italians; today the Five Star Cults controls a plurality of votes in the Parliament in Rome. Today “brain hackers” are no doubt using the same dark arts on the more gullible of their webizens. It’s one reason why teenage kids a decade ago started to put metal objects through their ears, lips and noses. To them those were magical symbols as surely as a reversed swastika was an object of power to the Hitlerjugend.

Cults are human universals. A lot of tribal groups are nothing but cults: The key is always restricting information, and crushing dissent. That’s why U.S. cults often block communication between members and their families.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump and International Security by Richard Kemp

By on November 14th, 2016

In fact, it is the EU, not Donald Trump that threatens to undermine NATO and the security of the West.

An EU defence union will also present a direct threat to NATO, competing for funds, building in duplication and confusion, and setting up rival military structures.

This is breath-taking hypocrisy from the defence minister of Germany, which spends less than 1.2% of GDP on defence against an agreed NATO minimum target of 2%, while freeloading off the America’s 73% contribution to NATO’s overall defence spending.

European leaders would do well to recognize that they need the US more than the US needs them, and that real, concrete, committed defence from the world’s greatest military power is more beneficial to them than a fantasy army that will have plenty of flags, headquarters and generals but no teeth.

Trump should also prioritize both practical and moral support to anti-Islamist regimes in the Middle East, such as Sisi’s Egypt.

Trump described Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran as ‘the worst deal ever negotiated’ and has vowed to counteract Iran’s violations, if necessary hitting them with tough new sanctions and perhaps tearing up the deal altogether.

Rather than spreading fear and false propaganda about Donald Trump, they should be praying that he will provide the strength that is so desperately needed today, and working out how best they can support rather than attack him.

Since Donald Trump’s election, media-fuelled panic has engulfed Europe, including over defence and security. We are told that World War III is imminent, that Trump will jump into bed with Putin and that he will pull the US out of NATO. Such fantasies are put about by media cheerleaders for European political elites, terrified that Trump’s election will inspire support for populist candidates in the forthcoming elections in Germany, the Netherlands and France.

In fact, it is the EU, not Donald Trump that threatens to undermine NATO and the security of the West. In recent days EU president Jean-Claude Juncker, his foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen have suggested that Trump’s election should give greater impetus to a European defence force.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Difficult Ally in Ankara by Burak Bekdil

By on November 14th, 2016

They will have to deal with a man who says he does not mind being called a dictator.

Most recently, the World Justice Project placed Turkey 99th out of 113 countries on its Rule of Law Index 2016, performing even worse than Myanmar and Iran.

Turkey is also now the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and academics. It also claims the title of the world’s biggest jailer of opposition politicians.

There is little Europe can do about the new dictatorship emerging at its doors. Germany is offering dissidents asylum. But asylum can only be an individual, tentative solution for a few Turks when at Erdogan’s target are millions.

Bilateral relations with NATO ally Turkey are probably not on president-elect Donald Trump’s top-50 priority list. All the same, when Trump’s diplomats will have to work with Turkey on issues that may soon gain prominence — such as Syria — they will have to deal with a man who says he does not mind being called a dictator.

Instead of resembling a Western democracy in the European Union — to which Turkey has long been struggling to join as a full member — Turkey increasingly looks like Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea. Most recently, the World Justice Project placed Turkey 99th out of 113 countries on its Rule of Law Index 2016, performing even worse than Myanmar and Iran. The index measures nations for constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement and civil and criminal justice.

Turkey is also now the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and academics.

It also claims the title of the world’s biggest jailer of opposition politicians. A dozen lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish, opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) were detained on November 4 because they refused to give testimony in criminal proceedings. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that democratically elected officials normally can only be forced from office in an election, but those officials who mix with and encourage “terrorism” must face legal proceedings. Turkish prosecutors began probing more than 50 HDP members of parliament after the legislature voted to scrap immunity in certain cases. Turkish officials say HDP lawmakers were detained because they refuse to testify in their cases.

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