- Australia: The Madness Continues
Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,
- "While terrorism's origins have many factors, Islamic terrorists, as heinous as their acts are, they are often merely doing what the scriptures are telling them." — Tanveer Ahmed, Muslim psychiatrist.
- In Australia, according to judges, women and children must accept sexual assaults because it is part of the "Islamic culture" of their attackers. It would seem that in parts of Australia, this "Islamic culture" has replaced the rule of law. None of the above, however, seems to be enough to appease Muslim sentiments. In March, Anne Aly, Australia's first female Muslim MP, said that racial-discrimination laws should be expanded to cover insults based on religion as well.
- In March, a teacher at Punchbowl Primary School quit her job after she and her family received death threats from the children in the school, with some of them saying they would behead her. The teacher's complaints to the New South Wales Department of Education were dismissed.
During the month of Ramadan alone, the world witnessed 160 Islamic attacks in 29 countries, in which 1627 people were murdered and 1824 injured. Nevertheless, the dual efforts to deny any links between Islamic terrorism and Islam on the one hand, and the efforts to accommodate Islam to the greatest extent possible on the other, seem to continue unaffected by the realities of Islamic terrorism — in Australia, as well, which is experiencing its own share of sharia and jihad.
At the end of May, the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) called on the Australian Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade to:
"…include a recommendation in its report that disavows the notion that there is any inherent link between Islam and terrorism… The Committee should condemn any politician who refers divisively (expressly or implied) to any religious or ethnic group for the purpose of political gain."
PHAA Chief Executive Michael Moore said that there is no inherent link between any religion and acts of terror:
"When you look at terrorism and the IRA, I don't think many people blamed Christianity for terrorism when clearly there was an overlay. In fact there's nothing inherent in Christianity that links to terrorism".
Since when are public health officials qualified to make authoritative statements on the theology of Islam or its linkage to Islamic terrorism?
Muslim psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed, would disagree. Speaking in June about the Australian media's disproportionate focus on "Islamophobia" he said:
"While terrorism's origins have many factors, Islamic terrorists, as heinous as their acts are, they are often merely doing what the scriptures are telling them."
While Australian officials rush to declare that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, revealingly they have referred to Islam or Islamic culture to exonerate Muslims on several occasions. In April, despite pleading guilty to sexually assaulting eight women and girls on a beach in Queensland, a young Afghan man was acquitted. The reason for the acquittal: "Cultural differences". According to the judge, "seeing girls in bikinis is different to the environment in which he grew up". The teen received two years' probation without being convicted of anything.
Similarly, in 2014 , a registered sex-offender and pedophile, Ali Jaffari, was accused of attempted child-abduction. However, Australian police dropped all charges against him, after a magistrate told prosecutors that he would have difficulties finding Jaffari guilty. According to news reports:
Magistrate Ron Saines said if he was hearing the matter, he would have reasonable doubt, citing "cultural differences" as one factor, which would result in the charges being dismissed.
In Australia, according to judges, women and children must accept sexual assaults because it is part of the "Islamic culture" of their attackers. It would seem that in parts of Australia, this "Islamic culture" has replaced the rule of law.
A recent taxpayer-funded study about domestic violence is an example of the trend, in certain parts of Australia, towards replacing Australian values with Islamic ones. According to the study, while refugees are grateful for, "peace, freedom, healthcare and education", the "major point of contention" is the issue of women's and children's rights:
The three-year study, funded by the Australian Research Council, concludes: "Many refugees see some human rights, in particular those relating to women and children's rights, as detrimental to their successful settlement in Australia."
It says some refugees argue "women's and child's rights contravene the cultural values, norms and mores" of their ethnic groups.
The study called for "cultural sensitivity and understanding of the impact on male refugees and… feelings of alienation and disappointment".
Domestic violence in Muslim households is already a hot topic in Australia. Keysar Trad, a former President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, told Sky News in February that an angry husband can beat his wife as "a last resort". In April, the women's branch of Islamic group Hizb Ut-Tahrir posted a video from an all-women's event in Sydney to Facebook, in which two women demonstrated wife beating and called it "a beautiful blessing".
Accommodating Islam in Australia takes other forms as well. For Ramadan this year, Muslim inmates of two maximum-security prisons in the State of Victoria were given taxpayer-funded microwave ovens in their cells for the month, so they could heat their food up after sunset, when they can break their fast. The issue apparently caused unrest among the non-Muslims in the jails.
In Auburn, female Muslim swimming pool users were given a separate curtained pool, so that they could swim without male pool users seeing them. Belgravia Leisure, which operates the facility, said, "the curtain was installed to overcome cultural barriers and encourage Muslim women to use the pool". The company's general manager, Anthony McIntosh, said it was "a move to make the pool accessible for all cultural groups".
None of the above, however, seems to be enough to appease Muslim sentiments. In March, Anne Aly, Australia's first female Muslim Member of Parliament, said that racial-discrimination laws should be expanded to cover insults based on religion as well. The Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, has voiced similar opinions.
In June, the Islamic Council of Victoria made a submission to a Parliamentary inquiry, requesting from the government:
"To create safe spaces urgently needed by Muslim youth to meet and talk about a range of issues in emotional terms, where they can be frank and even use words, which in a public space would sound inflammatory".
In other words, Muslims should have a taxpayer-funded "safe space" where they can incite unhindered against Australians?
Some Muslims have decided to create a "safe space" on their own, segregated from the rest of Australian society. In Brisbane, the Australian International Islamic College is planning an exclusively Muslim enclave, including a mosque covering 1,970 square meters; a three-storey elder-care and residential building, 3,000 square meters of retail space and 120 residential apartments, in addition to new classrooms and a childcare center for 2,000 students. The existing site is already home to the college, which caters to students from kindergarten to 12th grade. So much for "multiculturalism".
Clearly, the appeasement is not working. It never has. Appeasement, in fact, usually seems to have the opposite effect. Here are a few recent examples of how Australian policies have been working out lately:
In April, a Christian man in Sydney wearing a cross was attacked by a Muslim gang of youths, who, while screaming "Allah', and "f**k Jesus", threw his cross to the ground and violently assaulting him. According to Baptist Pastor George Capsis, this was the fourth such attack on a Christian in Sydney in the past six months.
In Sydney's Punchbowl Boys High School — one of 19 schools in New South Wales identified as at risk of radicalizing Muslim students — students were "pressured to attend daily prayer meetings, lectures on the Koran and even cut their hair by peers badgering them to conform to Islam".
The 19 at-risk schools all participate in an anti-radicalization program, but the principal of Punchbowl Boys High School, Chris Griffiths, a convert to Islam who has since been fired, had refused to participate in it; he said that he was "not comfortable with prayer groups being monitored or the school being 'stigmatised'".
Griffiths need not have worried. Those de-radicalization programs apparently do not work very well. In March, a Sydney teenager who was in a de-radicalization program pleaded guilty to planning a terrorist attack on Anzac Day in 2016. The teenager was accused of trying to obtain a gun for his intended April 25 attack; then, when that failed, a bomb manual.
In March, a teacher at Punchbowl Primary School quit her job after she and her family received death threats from the children in the primary school, with some of them saying they would behead her:
She said she was abused by students when she stopped them from hanging a Syrian flag in the classroom.
…
Many of the students also reportedly spoke of family members fighting in the war in Syria and pupils would walk out mid-way through a lesson to go and pray.
According to news reports, the teacher's complaints to the New South Wales Department of Education were dismissed.
Jihad also came to Australia during the recent Ramadan. After ISIS had told its supporters to attack the infidels "in their homes", Yacqub Khayre, an Australian Muslim, took that literally. On June 5, in a serviced-apartment block in an affluent Melbourne suburb, he took a woman hostage, killed another man, then, during the attack, called a television station and told them that his attack was for ISIS and al-Qaeda. But the Australian police are not easily fooled: they said at the time that terrorism was just "one line of inquiry". Khayre, a Somali immigrant, was, it turned out, well-known by the authorities. He had, in fact, been acquitted of plotting a terror attack at a Sydney army base in 2010; had served sentences for arson and violent crimes, and had been paroled in November 2016.
Police investigate at the scene of an Islamist terror attack in Melbourne, Australia, on June 6, 2017, the day after police shot dead the attacker. (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)
- The Dark Side Of Independence Day
For most people, the 4th of July is all about great barbecues, ice-cold beer and stunning fireworks displays. However, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, for an unlucky few, the holiday has a dark side…
You will find more statistics at Statista
Last year, 4 people were killed and thousands more were hospitalized due to accidents involving fireworks.
According to Journal of Surgical Research data published by Vox, young men and teenage boys are far more likely than anyone else to get injured by fireworks. Last year, they accounted for 61 percent of all hospitalizations. In 2016, 1,300 hospitalizations were caused by firecrackers, 900 were attributed to sparklers, 500 were from Roman candles, and 400 were caused by bottle rockets.
As the infographic above shows the toll inflicted by fireworks every month in the U.S. between 2006 and 2010. New Year’s Eve resulted in 1,515 visits over those four years but that has nothing on Independence Day. The spike in July stands out like a sore thumb with over 15,500 people hospitalized due to fireworks over the same time period.
- Professor Teaches Students About "The Problem That Is Whiteness"
Authored by Nathan Rubbelke via TheCollegeFix.com,
Serious explorations into race should focus on the problem of whiteness and be grounded in the claim that it’s a hegemonic “power apparatus,” a Fairfield University professor suggested at a recent conference aimed at pushing “radical social change” in higher education.
The remarks from associate professor of philosophy Dr. Kris Sealey, who spoke about her strategies for discussing race in the classroom, were presented at a diversity conference for employees of Jesuit colleges.
“So more and more, the courses that I teach on race have become courses in which I expect my students to engage in the hegemonic power of whiteness,” said Sealey, who’s taught courses such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Critical Race Theory.”
Sealey, a scholar of color, said her approach toward teaching race has much to do with teaching at Fairfield University, a predominately white institution, and requires difficult conversations that force students to reevaluate how they understand themselves.
“Hence, part of what makes pedagogies of racial justice particularly difficult are the stakes that they invariably include for all parties involved,” she said.
Sealey’s comments were based in the book “Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race” by Emory University philosopher George Yancy.
Discussing Yancy’s work, the professor said she’s moved by his premise that “any inquiry into the experience of blackness must include some genealogy or some history of the white gaze.”
Taking the thesis seriously, Sealey said, means “to acknowledge that any critical investigation of race should devote some time to the problem that is whiteness.”
While saying there’s no single strategy on discussing race that works best for all students, Sealey touted what she called the “proven advantages” of her approach. Those advantages, she said, establish “objectively grounded claims” that she listed as the following:
Whiteness means a specific power apparatus that exists at the expense of the disempowerment of black people.
To be white in the U.S. is to be a perpetuator of the power apparatus unless one actively and consistently resists.
It is possible, perhaps necessary, to acknowledge one’s personal implications in the white power apparatus.
Sealey said it’s helpful for her students to see that their time in the classroom isn’t about existential conversion or evaluation of one’s character, but rather “the goal is to understand the role of the white gaze in the confiscation of the black body.”
In a 2013 op-ed published by The New York Times, Yancy described the white gaze as “hegemonic” and wrote that it includes “poisonous assumptions and bodily perceptual practices.” Recalling an experience he had with a white police officer in the late 1970s, he said the white gaze includes seeing “the black male body as different, deviant, ersatz.”
Drawing on Yancy’s work and speaking in philosophical terms, Sealey said she frames her class toward the concept of “un-suturing” — an idea she described as opening one’s self to what is other.
Expanding on the concept, Sealey said that “if to suture is to keep closed,” then to un-suture means being able to be influenced by sensibilities or attitudes that run counter to one’s worldview.
Sealey said Yancy applied this approach to suggest when white people engage in un-suturing, there’s an “undoing of a white-centric universe.”
- Maduro Thugs Storm Venezuela National Assembly, Beat Opposition Lawmakers, Default Risk Jumps
Venezuela celebrated 206 years of independence in a manner uniquely befitting Latin America’s socialist paradise: A gang of armed Maduro supporters broke into the National Assembly and viciously assaulted opposition lawmakers, nearly killing one.
Here’s Reuters:
“The melee, which injured seven opposition politicians, was another worrying flashpoint in a traumatic last three months for the South American OPEC nation, shaken by opposition protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
Pipe-wielding government supporters burst into Venezuela's opposition-controlled congress on Wednesday, witnesses said, attacking and besieging lawmakers in the latest flare-up of violence during a political crisis.
The melee, which injured seven opposition politicians, was another worrying flashpoint in a traumatic last three months for the South American OPEC nation, shaken by opposition protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.”
Mobs of anti-government protesters have been gathering daily in the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities to protests Maduro’s intensifying crackdown on dissent. As is well known, government mismanagement in the country with the world's biggest oil reserves has led to hyperinflation of over 10,000% and a total collapse in the standard of life. The country's dire financial straits have led to widespread hunger while necessary supplies like medicine have become dangerously scarce. At least 90 people have died in the unrest since April, many of them young men, like a 22-year-old protester whose government-sanctioned murder was caught on tape.
Earlier this year, Maduro "annuled" the Assembly, stripping it of most of its legislative powers in favor of consolidating power in the hands of the executive branch.
After the July 5 "Independence Day" attack (Venezuela celebrates its independence one day after the US), National Assembly president Julio Borges said more than 350 politicians, journalists and guests to the Independence Day session were trapped in the siege that lasted until dusk.
‘There are bullets, cars destroyed including mine, blood stains around the (congress) palace,’ he told reporters. "The violence in Venezuela has a name and surname: Nicolas Maduro."
The crowd had gathered just after dawn outside the building in downtown Caracas, chanting in favor of Maduro, witnesses said. In the late morning, several dozen people ran past the gates with pipes, sticks and stones and went on the attack. Several injured lawmakers stumbled bloodied and dazed around the assembly's corridors. Some journalists were robbed. After the morning attack, a crowd of roughly 100 people, many dressed in red and shouting ‘Long Live The Revolution!’, trapped people inside for hours, witnesses said.”
Some in the crowd outside the legislature brandished pistols, threatened to cut water and power supplies, and played an audio of former socialist president Hugo Chavez saying "Tremble, oligarchy!" Fireworks were thrown inside. One lawmaker, Americo De Grazia, was hit on the head, fell unconscious, and was eventually taken by stretcher to an ambulance. His family later said he was out of critical condition and being stitched up.
In October 2016, Maduro quashed a recall vote organized by the assembly. Maduro, a former bus driver and chosen successor of its deceased former leader, Hugo Chavez. Venezuela's opposition has stepped up its criticism of the dictator Maduro for seeking to solidify his control through the creation of a Constituent Assembly, a superbody that will be elected at the end of July. The opposition has promised to boycott the vote, which it (rightly) claims is being rigged.
There has been a string of clashes at the country’s assembly since the opposition thrashed Maduro’s Socialist Party in December 2015 parliamentary elections.
“In a speech during a military parade for Independence Day, Maduro condemned the "strange" violence in the assembly and asked for an investigation. But he also challenged the opposition to speak out about violence from within its ranks.
In daily protests since April, young demonstrators have frequently attacked security forces with stones, homemade mortars and Molotov cocktails, and burned property. They killed one man by dousing him in gasoline and setting him on fire.
In a statement that redefines irony, Maduro condemned the violence on the opposition that was unleashed by his own supporters.
‘I want peace for Venezuela," Maduro said. "I don't accept violence from anyone.’”
Western officials quickly condemned the attack:
'I condemn the grotesque attack on the Venezuelan assembly,’ tweeted UK ambassador John Saville.
‘This violence, perpetrated during the celebration of Venezuela's independence, is an assault on the democratic principles cherished by the men and women who struggled for Venezuela's independence 206 years ago today,’ the U.S. State Department said.”
Meanwhile, Venezuela's opposition is demanding general elections to end Maduro’s rule over the OPEC member state. Police pilot Oscar Perez, who staged a coup attempt earlier this month and somehow survived, also condemned the violence.
As previously noted, Perez had not been seen since he hijacked a helicopter last week and flew through Caracas pulling a "Freedom" banner. He reportedly opened fire and dropped grenades on the Interior Ministry and Supreme Court but nobody was injured. That attack is widely believed to have been staged to divert attention from the unrest that has brought the country to the brink of economic and political collapse.
Expect violence to worsen as the Constitutional Assembly vote – slated for later this month – draws closer.
Meanwhile, international investors, who have largely ignored the political upheavals in the socialist nation, have started to notice, and as Bloomberg reports, Venezuela's default odds are once again sharply rising as its foreign reserves tumble toward $10 billion amid ongoing deadly anti-government protests and President Nicolas Maduro’s push to rewrite the constitution.
The implied probability of the country missing a payment over the next 12 months rose to 56 percent in June, based on the latest CDS data, the highest level since December. Implied odds of a credit event over the next five years increased to 91% last month.
Maduro, who has faced three months of violent protests that have left almost 80 dead, has drastically cut imports of food and medicine in order to conserve the cash needed to pay bondholders with declining oil prices and production. That hasn’t stopped a drop in reserves, which usually provide investors with a certain degree of assurance that the government will avoid default in the short-term. Recent deals to provide the government with liquidity have only resulted in minor spikes that have disappeared quickly.
The country faces payments on principal and interest of more than $5 billion in the remainder of the year, although no large sums are due before October. Judging by the recent moves in Venezuela CDS, the market is growing increasingly concerned that Maduro will have enough control over the country to make them.
- A North Korean EMP Attack: The Dark Possibility
Authored by Shannara Johnson via HardAssetsAlliance.com,
As the tension between North Korea and the US continues to grow, the possibility of war is rapidly evolving into a probability. Now some military experts worry that an attack via EMP (electromagnetic pulse) on the US mainland might be a feasible option for Pyongyang.
The signs are certainly there: Having recently completed the ninth missile test of 2017, Kim Jong-un promised to send the US an even bigger “gift package.”
Adding to Kim Jong-un’s antics and inflammatory rhetoric, the recent death of American college student Otto Warmbier after his 17-month imprisonment in North Korea has certainly fanned the flames of antagonism between the US and the rogue regime.
Han Tae Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, firmly rejected the accusation of misconduct and declared North Korea operates “according to our national laws and according to international standards.”
To add insult to injury, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also denies any wrongdoing or torture of Otto Warmbier—even going as far as to say North Korea is the “biggest victim” in this situation.
EMP: Is This The Real Threat?
Most analysts believe North Korea is not yet capable of a direct missile strike on the US mainland, but Kim Jong-un’s dogged determination to make this a reality is quite disconcerting.
Some experts believe that the more realistic threat at this point in time is an EMP attack. To make that happen, all North Korea has to do is launch a low-yield nuclear missile from a submarine, ship, or even by balloon and explode it at high altitude, above the atmosphere.
The potential result: a blackout of the Eastern grid that supplies 75% of power to the United States.
If an EMP attack did take place, it would be beyond anything we have seen before. The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, which was established by Congress in 2001, estimates that within 12 months following a nationwide blackout, “up to 90% of the US population could perish from starvation, disease, and societal breakdown.”
Electronic Armageddon
In practical terms, a catastrophic blackout would be worst in cities, because it would instantly deprive the population of access to drinking water, refrigeration, heat, air conditioning, and telecommunication. Food stores would be looted within a matter of days, and gas stations would cease to function without electricity.
Without Internet access and power, all commerce and advanced methods of communication would stop. There would be no TV, radio, phones. Credit card transactions and cash withdrawals at banks would be impossible. Paper money would become worthless, and Bitcoin would cease to exist, along with the stock market.
Newt Gingrich, speaking at the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources earlier this month, said an EMP attack “would send us back to the 18th century.”
But that’s not the only problem. If no outside help arrives, within days, chaos begins to reign. Civilization is a rather thin veneer that humans have acquired over centuries, a mask covering our hard-wired survival instincts. Once the mask slips, it could mean the end of the world as we know it.
We Are Ill-Prepared For An EMP Attack
US politicians and major utilities have kicked the can down the road when it comes to EMP preparation. Edison Electric estimates that shielding transformers for the US grid system could cost $20 billion.
Granted, American power companies have been studying ways to protect our electronic grids against attack, but tangible results are slow in coming.
The only current option after an EMP attack would be to replace damaged or destroyed transformers. However, says Scott Aaronson, managing director for Cyber and Infrastructure Security at Edison Electric, replacements for those transformers must be procured from foreign suppliers, which could take up to 18 months.
Peter Vincent Pry, leader of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, believes North Korea is closer to launching an EMP attack than many analysts believe. He wants Congress to work harder and cut the red tape to allow the innovation necessary to mitigate the threat.
In Pry’s opinion, an EMP attack would ultimately kill more Americans than a direct nuclear blast could. His book, The Long Sunday, describes several plausible EMP attack scenarios.
Pry thinks that “the first nation to use nuclear weapons today—even a rogue state like North Korea or Iran—will immediately become the most feared and credible nuclear power in the world, a formidable force to be reckoned with, and perhaps the dominant actor in a new world order.”
Is there a sensible way to prepare for an EMP attack?
Maybe not, but stocking some food, water, fuel, and batteries for emergencies is always a good idea—as well as owning a stash of gold coins as hard assets.
While “you can’t eat gold,” as some preppers say, it is the only kind of money that has prevailed over the millennia.
- It Takes Most Students Twice As Long As They Hoped To Pay Off Their Student Loans
About 70% of college students – equal to about 44 million Americans – owe a collective $1.4 trillion in student debt. And while the standard repayment plan for federal loans suggests that they should take no more than 10 years to pay back, in reality, it regularly takes twice that long.
“Research from Citizens Financial Group suggests that 60 percent of student debt borrowers expect to pay off their loans in their 40s. Data collected at the state level supports these findings. A study from the OneWisconsin Institute finds that it takes graduates of Wisconsin universities 19.7 years to pay off a bachelor's degree and 23 years to pay off a graduate degree.”
Meanwhile, the Fed reports that there are 6.8 million student loan borrowers between the ages of 40 and 49 and that together, these graduates hold a collective $229.6 billion in debt. That means that Americans in their 40s with student loan debt each have an average balance of $33,765, according to CNBC.
Many predict that the long-lasting effects of student debt threaten US housing prices as fewer millennials will be able to afford a home, while also delaying retirement.
“The Federal Reserve Board of Washington, D.C. found that an increase in student debt has led to a decrease in home ownership, and a study from NerdWallet predicts that students who graduated from college in 2015 will have to delay retirement until the age of 75, in part because of the increasing burden of student debt.”
CNBC points out that students should plan out how long it will take for them to pay off their loans, but this is easier said than done: Today's graduates face an uncertain job market, which is forcing more young Americans – members of the so-called millennial generation – to live with their parents for want of work.
Perhaps, more students should consider trade schools, which are cheaper and can often lead to steady career-track work. And as we reported last week, many manufacturing companies are recruiting heavily for well-paying management jobs that don’t require a college degree.
- The Trump-Putin Meeting And The Fate Of The Earth
Authored by Norman Solomon via Counterpunch.org,
Any truthful way to say it will sound worse than ghastly: We live in a world where one person could decide to begin a nuclear war — quickly killing several hundred million people and condemning vast numbers of others to slower painful deaths.
Given the macabre insanity of this ongoing situation, most people don’t like to talk about it or even think about it. In that zone of denial, U.S. news media keep detouring around a crucial reality: No matter what you think of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, they hold the whole world in their hands with a nuclear button.
If the presidents of the United States and Russia spiral into escalating conflicts between the two countries, the world is much more likely to blow up. Yet many American critics of Trump have gotten into baiting him as Putin’s flunky while goading him to prove otherwise. A new barrage of that baiting and goading is now about to begin — taking aim at any wisps of possible détente — in connection with the announced meeting between Trump and Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany at the end of this week.
Big picture: This moment in human history is not about Trump. It’s not about Putin. It’s not about whether you despise either or neither or both. What’s at stake in the dynamics between them is life on this planet.
Over the weekend, more than 10,000 people signed a petition under the heading “Tell Trump and Putin: Negotiate, Don’t Escalate.” The petition was written by RootsAction to be concise and to the point:
“We vehemently urge you to take a constructive approach to your planned meeting at the G-20 summit. Whatever our differences, we must reduce rather than increase the risks of nuclear war. The future of humanity is at stake.”
A war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers could extinguish human life on a gigantic scale while plunging the Earth into cataclysmic “nuclear winter.”
“Recent scientific studies have found that a war fought with the deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would leave Earth virtually uninhabitable,” wrote Steven Starr, a senior scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility.
“In fact, NASA computer models have shown that even a ‘successful’ first strike by Washington or Moscow would inflict catastrophic environmental damage that would make agriculture impossible and cause mass starvation.”
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explains why, since last year, it has moved the risk-estimate “Doomsday Clock” even closer to apocalyptic midnight – citing as a major factor the escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Russian governments.
So, the imminent meeting between Trump and Putin will affect the chances that the young people we love – and so many others around the world – will have a future. And whether later generations will even exist.
I put it this way in a recent article for The Nation:
“Whatever the truth may be about Russian interference in the U.S. election last year, an overarching truth continues to bind the fates of Russians, Americans and the rest of humanity.
No matter how much we might wish to forget or deny it, we are tied together by a fraying thread of relations between two nations that possess 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Right now it is not popular to say so, but we desperately need each other to enhance the odds of human survival.”
In that overall context, stoking hostility toward Russia is, uh, rather short-sighted.
Wouldn’t it be much better for the meeting between Trump and Putin to bring Washington and Moscow closer to détente rather than bringing us closer to nuclear annihilation?
- Malls Swap Retailers For Gyms And Restaurants In Last-Ditch Bid For Survival
With a record 8,640 retail stores expected to close in 2017, American malls are desperate to draw in customers as America’s retail apocalypse leaves them littered with empty store fronts. Now, some are experimenting with a model that worked for some movie theaters: Invest in restaurants and popular amenities like rock-climbing walls to sell customers a better shopping "experience."
To wit, Bloomberg spoke with the owner of the Newgate Mall, which plans to pour $500,000 into overhauling the outdated food court in a bid to lure restaurateurs and hungry shoppers. Rent payments from eateries are never going to recoup the renovation costs, but for landlord Time Equities Inc., that’s not the point.
“The food hall is part of an effort to breathe new life into the entire 718,000-square-foot (67,000-square-meter) center and increase foot traffic, according to Ami Ziff, director of national retail at New York-based Time Equities. The company, which bought Newgate in Ogden, Utah, from GGP Inc. for $69.5 million last year, is one of many landlords wagering that elaborate makeovers will keep them competitive as they reinvent their properties in the age of Amazon.
Costs are escalating as mall owners work to keep their real estate up to date and fill the void left by failing stores. The companies are turning to everything from restaurants and bars to mini-golf courses and rock-climbing gyms to draw in customers who appear more interested in being entertained during a trip to the mall than they are in buying clothes and electronics. The new tenants will pay higher rents than struggling chains such as Macy’s and Sears, and hopefully attract more traffic for retailers at the property, according to Haendel St. Juste, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA LLC.
“The math is pretty obvious, pretty compelling, but there are risks,” St. Juste said in an interview. “This hasn’t been done before on a broad scale.”
Malls expanded square-footage rapidly during the 2000s, creating a bubble of retail space. Thanks to Amazon and the rise of e-commerce, that bubble has now burt. And for many malls, time is quickly running out. One Credit Suisse analyst estimates that a quarter of American malls will close over the next five years.
Already this year, more than 49 million square feet of retail space has closed. Should this pace persist by the end of the year, total square footage reductions could reach 147M square feet, another all-time high, and surpassing the historical peak of 115M in 2001.
According to Bloomberg, more than a dozen retailers have gone bankrupt this year as the shift toward online shopping accelerates. Even healthy retailers are shuttering hundreds of locations. As many as 13,000 stores are forecast to close next year, compared with 4,000 in 2016, according to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
Some of these closings are the result of landlords preemptively kicking out weak retail tenents and filling those spaces with more-profitable businesses like gyms and the restaurant-arcade hybrid Dave & Buster's.“Many landlords have been proactive in reclaiming space from weaker tenants to fill with more profitable ones. Chicago-based GGP, the No. 2 U.S. mall owner, has bought back 115 department stores over the last six years and redeveloped them, Chief Executive Officer Sandeep Mathrani said last month during the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trust’s annual conference in New York.
The new tenant roster at those malls includes Best Buy and Nordstrom stores, restaurant-arcade chain Dave & Buster’s and health club Life Time Fitness, he said.”
Department stores, which have performed particularly poorly in the age of Amazon, are a popular target for reclamation, even though they once were the centerpiece of many US malls.
“We’ve actually made a very, very big statement by saying that over the next five years, we hope to recapture another 100 department stores,” Mathrani said.
Ultimately, the wave of renovations is a shot in the dark. Data from landlords is sketchy, and retail analysts have trouble differentiating between maintenance, and improvements meant to help boost sales.
“It can be difficult to calculate capital expenditures for malls because of poor landlord disclosures, Green Street analysts said in the January report. It’s a challenge to distinguish between deferred maintenance — for example, fixing a roof — and projects that will actually generate additional revenue at a property, the analysts wrote.”
They could also lead to a wave of consolidation in the space, as only the largest landlords have the capital cushion to pay for these upgrades. These landlords also tend to own malls in more profitable markets, helping them recoup costs associated with upgrades through sales.
“Giants such as GGP and Simon Property Group Inc., the largest mall owner in the U.S., are better positioned to absorb the increased costs than their peers that own less-desirable real estate, according to Green Street. The two companies have some of the most profitable malls in the country, and their high sales volumes make it easier to recover expenses.
For Simon, redevelopment costs as a percentage of net operating income climbed from 3.5 percent in 2010 to 16.6 percent in 2015, before dropping to 7.6 percent last year, according to data Mizuho pulled from the company’s filings. A representative for Indianapolis-based Simon declined to comment. However, on a conference call in April, CEO David Simon responded to a question from an analyst about the potential for rising capital expenditures.
‘We spent a lot of capital in the portfolio to upgrade the look and feel. We’re going to continue to do that,’ Simon said. ‘I think the returns will be there, and I don’t think the dynamics of today’s current environment have changed that.’”
Still, whether these efforts will succeed in increasing sales and foot traffic and sales remains to be seen. For now, at least, investors aren’t buying it: Shares of the biggest mall REITs like Santa Monica, Calif.-based Macerich Co. are still in the red for the year.
- Are You A Domestic Terrorist? That Depends On Who Is In Power
Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,
Over the past year, Antifa and other similar anti-fascist groups have been caught threatening, intimidating, and inflicting violence against peaceful people on numerous occasions. And in each case, this has been done with the goal of effecting political change in this country. And that has left many of their critics wondering why groups like Antifa haven’t been labeled as terrorist organizations.
What these people are doing, literally fits the dictionary definition of terrorism, which is “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.”
Well if you can believe it, Homeland Security has finally done what they should have done months ago.
The Department of Homeland Security in New Jersey has officially listed Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization after a rash of violent attacks by the group targeting supporters of Donald Trump.
Under the heading ‘Anarchist Extremists: Antifa’, the njhomelandsecurity.gov website characterizes Antifa under the designation of “domestic terrorism”.
“In the past year, Antifa groups have become active across the United States, employing a variety of methods to disrupt demonstrations,” states the advisory, before going on to list a number of violent disruptions, including Milo Yiannopoulos’ speaking event at the University of California Berkeley on February 1st, which was cancelled after members of Antifa violently attacked free speech advocates.
The advisory also lists how Antifa has engaged in doxxing of individuals to expose them to abuse and violent harassment.
But that brings up an important question. Why did it take so long for Homeland Security to call Antifa a terrorist organization?
In the post 9/11 world, it seems shockingly easy to be labelled a terrorist by our government. In the past, Homeland Security has deemed conservatives, libertarians, and Christians as potential terror threats. The government has kept a watchful eye on veterans, for fear that they will turn their lethal skills against the feds. A wide variety of people have been added to the terror watch list, despite having no known affiliations with any terrorist organizations.
People who are merely preppers, conspiracy theorists, or who make purchases with cash are suspect. Americans who wish to encrypt their phones are viewed as potential terrorists. Even making your own gold and silver coins is viewed as a form of domestic terrorism.
In short, if you make the government even slightly nervous, there’s a good chance that you will be seen as a potential terror threat, and the government doesn’t necessarily need any solid evidence to place you on a terror watch list. So again, why is it that in a society where any slight transgression can land you on the government’s shit list, did it take so long to label Antifa a terrorist organization?
The truth is that as far as our government is concerned, “terrorist” is a catch all term for anyone who is a threat to the government. Sometimes that includes people who are genuine terrorists, but more often than not, it includes peaceful people who simply don’t want to go along with the government’s agenda. And because of that, the government’s definition of terrorism changes depending on who is in power.
The most likely reason Antifa is being called a domestic terror organization, is because Donald Trump is president. If Homeland Security was under Obama, I seriously doubt that they would have received that label. In this case, that label is totally justified, but that could change in the future. We live under a government that can totally disregard the rights of anyone they say is a terrorist, but the definition of that word is fluid as far as the government is concerned.
It is applied to whoever is a threat to the system at any given moment. It changes whenever it is convenient to whoever is in power. You can go from being a relatively free citizen to a terrorist who is stripped of all his rights, depending on who is running the country. What is considered totally normal behavior one day, can be deemed a terrorist threat the next. So until the government adheres to a strict definition of terrorism, all of our lives are in danger.
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...