Global
When a wonderful program like Democracy Now does a story on the White Helmets in Syria, the
This section shall not prevent any officer or agent of the United States Secret Service from providing armed protective services authorized under section 3056 or pursuant to a Presidential memorandum at any place where a general or special election is held. [emphasis added] – H.R. 2825, section 4012
he single sentence above, which amends current federal law, would give the president unprecedented authority to send armed Secret Service agents to any US polling place for any reason. The law allows the president to send armed Secret Service agents to every US polling place if he has enough agents.
Addressing the Parkland shootings last month, and the apparent emergence of a movement for tougher, saner gun laws that has followed, a USA Today article asked: “What has been so different from all the other mass shootings over the years?”
In one sense, this is a reasonable question. Why now? Why didn’t it happen after, you know . . . Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Orlando, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Aurora? And the list goes on.
But, come on. Doesn’t something stunningly horrifying resonate, however faintly, in these words? How can this phrase — “all the other mass shootings?” — be out there with such matter-of-fact, cheerful neutrality, such ordinariness?
It is a tragic measure of the depravity of human existence that genocide
is a continuing and prevalent manifestation of violence in the
international system, despite the effort following World War II to
abolish it through negotiation, and then adoption and ratification of
the 1948 'Genocide Convention'.
https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf
[NOTE: This review may contain plot spoilers.]
As the United Kingdom is embroiled in the Brexit imbroglio about Britain leaving the European Union, two Brits living on the Continent ponder returning to not-so-Merry-Olde-England. Alice (Miranda Wynne) and Fiona (Ashley Romans) are expats who have been living in the Dutch titular port city, Rotterdam, and as the rest of the U.K. struggles with the Brexit divorce from the EU (which goes completely unmentioned in Jon Brittain’s two act play - perhaps because the characters are too obsessed by their own personal problems to give a tinker’s damn about what’s happening in, like, you know, Earth?), they are contemplating the return of the “natives.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has just completed its annual summit in Washington. It claims that 18,000 supporters attended the event, which concluded with a day of lobbying Congress by the attendees. Numerous American politicians addressed the gathering and it is completely reasonable to observe that the meeting constituted the most powerful gathering of people dedicated to promoting the interests of a foreign nation ever witnessed in any country in the history of the world.
realize there is something I have known for some time but have never said, and, since I have just spent another 4 hours of my life in climate change academia, I have to get this out of my system.
Please understand that many you that are reading this won't live to an old age and likely will start scrolling after one or 2 more paragraphs.
The IPCC report and Paris accord are incredibly overly optimistic and that commits the world to a target that means the death of hundreds of millions if not more.
But it is worse than that.
Even the commitments made by countries in the Paris accord don't get us to a 2-degree world.
But it is worse than that.
Imagine being emotionally blackmailed by your doctor to have your baby vaccinated with a lethal cocktail of vaccines.
However, this is exactly what happened to Alisa Neathery when she took her six-month-old unvaccinated Baby boy to the doctor for the first time.
Alisa told this story to VacTruth:
“Prior to the shots being given, when the doctor was discussing the pros of getting vaccinated with me, he explained how he was from a village in Africa. That we were lucky in America to have the opportunity to receive vaccines because where he was from, the mothers had to have like 11 kids each, since most would die off from disease because they were not as fortunate to receive vaccines like we are here in America. He really pushed them on me hard. He spent a lot of time convincing me to give Bently the vaccines, but when it was done, we never saw the doctor again.”