Short Link News: November 2016

Rabu, 30 November 2016

Column One: The ADL's new bedfellows - Jerusalem Post Israel News

In an interview this week with the Australian media, Jordan’s King Abdullah became the latest Arab leader to express hope that President- elect Donald Trump and his team will lead the world’s to date failed fight against jihadist Islam.

Like his counterparts in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Abdullah effectively ruled out the possibility that President Barack Obama will take any constructive steps to defeat the forces of global jihad in his last months in power. Speaking of the humanitarian disaster in Aleppo for instance, Abdullah said, “I don’t think there’s much we can do until the new administration is in place and a strategy is formulated.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was among the first Arab leaders to welcome Trump’s victory.

Sisi has been largely shunned by the Obama administration.

President Barack Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood regime that Sisi and the Egyptian military overthrew in 2013.

Sisi was the first foreign leader to speak to Trump after his victory was announced. He released a statement to the media saying that he “looks forward to the presidency of president Donald Trump to inject a new spirit into the trajectory of Egyptian-American relations.”

The support that the incoming Trump administration is garnering in the Arab world stands in stark contrast to the near wall-to-wall opposition to Trump expressed by the American Muslim community.

According to a survey of Muslim American opinion taken in October by the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), 72% of American Muslims supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump was supported by a mere 4% of the Muslim community.

Muslim American activists played key roles in the Clinton campaign. They were particularly active in swing states like Ohio and Michigan where Trump won by narrow margins.

As The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday, since the election, Muslim American leaders have expressed concern and hostility toward the incoming Trump administration. Muslim Democrat activist James Zogby, who also heads the Arab American Institute, published an op-ed in The Jordan Times to this effect after the election. Zogby expressed concern that the Trump administration would harm the civil rights of Arab Americans.

The gap between the Arab world’s support for Trump and the Muslim American community’s opposition to him is particularly notable because it reverberates strongly the growing cleavage between the Israeli government and public and large swaths of the American Jewish community.

Led most prominently by the Anti-Defamation League and its executive director Jonathan Greenblatt, in the wake of the election, American Jews are at the forefront of efforts to delegitimize Trump and his senior advisers. Unlike their Muslim American counterparts, who are keeping their criticism of Arab regimes to themselves, Greenblatt, the ADL and their allies on the Left have linked their opposition to Trump to legitimizing opponents of Israel.

Before assuming his role at the ADL, Greenblatt worked in Valerie Jarrett’s political influence shop in the Obama White House. As ADL chief, Greenblatt has used his position as the head of a major Jewish organization to support the Obama administration’s policies. To this end, since the election, the ADL has worked to tar the incoming Trump administration as antisemitic, focusing its fire on Trump’s senior strategist, former Breitbart News CEO Stephen Bannon.

The ADL spearheaded the campaign to label Bannon an antisemite. When its claims were shown to be entirely spurious, this week the ADL quietly acknowledged that Bannon has actually never made any antisemitic statements. But its quiet admission of spreading lies didn’t stop the ADL from continuing to traffic in them. Even after it admitted that “we are not aware of any antisemitic statements from Bannon,” the ADL continued to insist that Breitbart has been a home for antisemites because some Jew-haters wrote antisemitic responses to Breitbart articles.

The ADL’s smear campaign against Bannon is a hard-sell because Breitbart is among the most pro-Israel websites in the US. But this brings us to the second aspect of the ADL-led campaign against President-elect Donald Trump and his team.

With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that the ADL and its allies are using the Trump victory as a means to draw a distinction between pro-Israel and Jew-friendly while arguing that antisemites support Israel and that people who hate Israel are not antisemites. This was the clear goal at the ADL’s summit on antisemitism last week.

As Daniel Greenfield reported Thursday in Front- Page Magazine, the ADL used the conference to legitimize the so-called BDS campaign to boycott Jewish Israeli products and divest from businesses that do business with Jewish-owned Israeli businesses.

It similarly normalized the general argument that there is nothing inherently antisemitic about opposing the Jewish state.

In a panel with the disturbing title, “Is Delegitimization of Israel Antisemitism?” the ADL featured anti-Israel activists Jill Jacobs and Jane Eisen. Both women argued that BDS is legitimate. At the same time, they denounced fervent supporters of Israel like Bannon and Center for Security President Frank Gaffney.

Greenfield reported that the ADL gave a prominent platform at the conference supposedly dedicated to fighting antisemitism to Ford Foundation CEO Darren Walker. The Ford Foundation is one of the leading contributors to anti-Israel organizations in the US and to anti-Zionist political front groups in Israel.

Other speakers explained that it isn’t that Israel’s foes are antisemitic. It is just that Israelis and their supporters have become “hypersensitive” to criticism.

All in all, Greenfield concluded, “Instead of tackling antisemitism, the ADL was tackling Israel and pro-Israel Jews” and “normalizing anti-Israel rhetoric and organizations.”

A few days after the conference, the ADL took the next step toward normalizing hatred for Israel in America when it announced its support for Rep.

Keith Ellison’s candidacy to serve as the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Ellison became the first Muslim American elected to the House of Representatives in 2006. In the decades that preceded his election, Ellison built a long and documented history of membership in and advocacy and employment for the antisemitic Nation of Islam. In his capacity as a Nation of Islam spokesman, Ellison made antisemitic statements and promoted anti-Jewish and anti-Israel positions and activists.

Since joining the House of Representatives, Ellison has been one of the leading anti-Israel voices in Congress. He has spearheaded multiple anti-Israel initiatives. He openly supports the boycott of Israeli Jewish products and has castigated Israel as an apartheid state.

Together with James Zogby, last August Ellison served as a member of the Democratic Party’s platform committee. The men attempted to purge the platform of language in support of Israel.

Yet Wednesday the ADL released a statement extolling Ellison as “a man of good character.” The ADL praised him as “an ally in the fight against antisemitism and for civil rights.”

It even said that Ellison “has been on record in support of Israel.”

ADL is supporting Ellison – and opposing Trump and his pro-Israel advisers – because Greenblatt and his backers support Obama’s policies in the Middle East and want to make it difficult for Trump to abandon them.

Ellison and the leading American Muslim groups oppose Trump for the same reason. The difference between the two groups is that the ADL and its Jewish backers are acting in this manner because they support the Left, which Obama leads. Ellison and his allies at CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Arab American Institute and other groups oppose Trump because they support the substance of Obama’s policies.

The chief characteristics of Obama’s Middle East policies have been support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran against Israel and the US’s Sunni allies.

Former FBI agent and counterterrorism expert John Guandolo estimates that upward of 80% of Islamic centers and mosques in the US are controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The major American Muslim groups, including CAIR, ISNA and the Islamic Circle of North America are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood in turn supports Iran.

During his year in power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi permitted Iranian warships to travel through the Suez Canal, hosted Iranian leaders and Hezbollah commanders in Cairo and took a series of additional steps to embrace Iran.

Trump’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares gave an interview to Egyptian television after Trump’s election stating that Trump will support a bill introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood in the US as well as its offshoots CAIR, ISNA and others due to their support for jihadist terrorist groups formed by Brotherhood members. Al-Qaida, Hamas and a host of other jihadist groups have all been formed by Muslim Brotherhood followers.

Trump’s national security adviser, Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Mike Flynn; Rep. Mike Pompeo, whom Trump has selected to serve as his CIA director; as well as Marine Gen. James Mattis, the leading contender to serve as Trump’s defense secretary are all outspoken opponents of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Given the stakes, then, it makes perfect sense that the Arab American groups oppose Trump.

It also makes sense that Arab regimes threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran support Trump and eagerly await his inauguration.

And it clearly makes sense for Israel to welcome Trump’s election.

The only thing that makes no sense is the American Jewish campaign to demonize Trump. The ADL’s leadership of the campaign to smear Trump and his advisers while legitimizing BDS and supporting Israel-bashers is antithetical to the interests of the American Jewish community.

In adopting these positions, Greenblatt and the ADL along with their allies in J Street, Jewish Voices for Peace, If Not Now, The Forward, other far-left groups and mainstream groups that have lost their way show through their actions that they have conflated their Judaism with their support for the Left.

To the extent that the interests of the Jews of America contradict the positions of the Left, the Jews of America are behaving in an “antisemitic” way.

It is the responsibility of the segment of the community that understands “Jewish” is not a synonym of “leftist” to oppose the ADL and its backers. If they fail to do so, they will contribute to the descent of the community into powerlessness and irrelevance, not only in the era of Trump, but into the future.

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The future of the A380 - The Economist

No More Business as Usual, Mr. Trump - Wall Street Journal

One Money Question to Rule Them All: How Much Is Enough? - New York Times

It is not a new question. We find some version of it in the liturgy of various world religions, on the covers of books by financial services professionals and economists, and in the title of an 82-second song by the punk band Bad Religion, that decries our “rapacity, tenacity, capacity for more.”

But addressing the question is an appropriate task right now, given an unpredictable president-elect and a Congress nominally behind him poised to make good on at least some promises to change our financial lives. Absent any certainty about what will happen in Washington, we can at least try to get ourselves square in our heads about what feels like enough for us.

ENOUGH AWARENESS How much do any of us really know about what our spending, saving and giving add up to? Could we draw an accurate pie chart that reflects a year of household outflows?

This is not another call to write down everything you spend in a notebook. But it is a reminder that if you don’t like what you see when you glance at the credit or debit card statement or the pile of receipts, then it’s time to reconsider a few things. My colleague Carl Richards has offered short courses here recently on spending awareness and aligning spending with values.

“Money’s value is, in part, as an observational tool, as something to meditate on,” said Vicki Robin, whose classic book “Your Money or Your Life” is an excellent longer course on defining enough. “Does spending money bring you pleasure in proportion to the hours that you spent earning it?”

She, too, is reluctant to order anyone to start new spreadsheets. She does note, however, that you probably won’t achieve Zen mastery with just two breaths or forgiveness and enlightenment by taking communion once in a while. “Rigor is the tiller on your boat,” she said.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH Once you have a baseline on spending and quantity, the qualitative work begins.

Manisha Thakor, director of wealth strategies for women at the financial advisory firm Buckingham, speaks often on the topic of defining enough and laments all the noise that gets in the way of getting it right. First, there is nonreality television, where every policewoman, nurse and paralegal live much larger than their professional station in life would suggest is possible. “All these humid East Coast cities, and they’re clearly getting a $40 blowout before every shift,” she said.

Switch from television to a smaller screen, and you are confronted with curated social media profiles, where everyone is editing themselves. Combine that with the ever-present pressure to maintain a prominent personal brand, and it’s no wonder that so many people think that the right definition of enough is just a little bit more. “It just creates this feeling of lack,” Ms. Thakor said.

She said that one good place to start is the most elementary of benchmarks. She is often surprised, for instance, by how few people have heard of the basic one that Elizabeth Warren suggested years ago when she was still a professor: Spend 50 percent on needs, 30 percent on wants and 20 percent on savings.

Not everyone will be able to meet those targets, especially if they live in a high-cost area, if their income is irregular or if temporary job loss or illness interrupts their earning. But at least those percentages give people something to shoot for or revise from when attempting to define enough savings and discretionary spending in their own lives.

ENOUGH FOR CHILDREN Embedded in now-Senator Warren’s definition is the concept of wants and needs, something that is well worth defining and discussing with any children in your life from their earliest possible age.

John Bogle, Vanguard’s founder, learned this early, and by necessity, when his family fell on hard times, an experience he describes in his book “Enough.” In an interview this week, he described the advantage of having to stand up for yourself financially and help your family get along. “I worked from the age of 10, 11, 12 when my friends were out playing tennis, and it never bothered me one damn bit,” he said.

His own children worked, too, even though it was no longer financially necessary. “They were all trying to get high sales of the day at the County Seat,” he recalled.

In his book, he laments that so many children growing up in an affluent world don’t get enough opportunities to build character — to fail and contemplate and pick themselves up again.

Giving children an allowance to budget and practice with can help get them started. How much is enough pocket money? Just enough so that they have the things they need and some of what they want, but not so much that they do not have to make hard choices. Tradeoffs are what we adults do each day, after all, and all parents are ultimately in the adult-making business.

ENOUGH MONEY Ms. Robin, when I pressed her for a universal definition, seized on the discernment necessary to arrive at an answer. “Enough is the quality of having everything you need and want but nothing in excess, nothing that burdens you,” she said.

Hers is an ecological sensibility. She indulges, she said, in thrift-store clothing and investments in local businesses on the island she lives on outside Seattle.

Her notion of excess happens to be an essential concept at a time when many people of above-average means may end 2017 or 2018 with extra money, if the tax laws change. Giving that money away to people who need it more than you do is a worthy reflex, but Ms. Thakor isn’t sure that is the right answer for everyone.

“What would bring you one step closer to feeling more joy?” she asked. For many people, it may be paying off debt. Others may want to do something nice for themselves after years of frugality. Perhaps there is a family member who needs help, or you want to spend money in a way that will contribute to economic growth while also helping you save in the long run, by, say, putting money toward energy-efficient home improvements or other similar investments.

Whatever it is, talk about it with your spouse, friends or family. How much is enough is as good a Thanksgiving conversation starter as any and probably better than most at a time when politics may be a touchy subject.

You will be richer for having had the conversation, but just don’t expect an easy answer or one that won’t change over time as your goals do. Ms. Thakor has an M.B.A. and is a certified financial planner, so she is surprised by the lack of a clear solution to the challenge that the question poses. “But as I travel around the country, it’s clear to me that there is not a numerical answer.”

Rescue Goat With Anxiety Only Calms Down In Her Duck Costume - The Dodo

It all started when Leanne Lauricella went shopping at Marshalls before Halloween. She was browsing the aisles when something caught her eye — a child's duck costume, complete with a big orange bill and two webbed feet.

Lauricella runs a goat rescue group called Goats of Anarchy in New Jersey. She thought the duck costume would look cute on her baby goats, especially the newest rescue goat named Polly. So she bought the costume and took it home, not thinking too much of it. Little did Lauricella know just how much Polly would love that duck costume.

Goats of Anarchy

Polly is a baby goat with serious medical issues. She's blind, has neurological problems that affect her eating ability and is severely underweight for her age. She also suffers from anxiety.

Goats of Anarchy

When Polly can't find Lauricella, she frantically runs around the house, crying her heart out. Polly also has some weird habits, which Lauricella thinks are linked to her anxiety issues. "She'll find a corner of a wall in the house, and she'll just start sucking on the wall," Lauricella told The Dodo. "So all the corners in our house have these little suck marks from her mouth."

Goats of Anarchy

When Lauricella put the duck costume on Polly for a photo, something amazing happened. "As soon as I put it on her, she just instantly got calm," Lauricella said.

Goats of Anarchy

The duck suit seemed to have the same calming effect as a ThunderShirt, or being swaddled in a blanket. But for Polly, the duck costume worked better than anything. "I tried a ThunderShirt — it didn't work," Lauricella said. "There's something about that duck costume that calms her. She goes into a little trance. She just closes her eyes and she's out."

Goats of Anarchy

Now, whenever Polly has an anxiety attack, Lauricella puts her into the duck costume, and voila — instant calm. "She just calms down and goes to sleep," Lauricella said. "Instantly. It's become a thing that she's known for."

The duck costume is also useful when Lauricella has to run errands, but can't leave Polly alone at home. When Lauricella once stopped at a local store, she put Polly into her duck suit, and the little goat snoozed in the shopping cart.

Goats of Anarchy

Other costumes seem to have the same calming effect on Polly, including a pig costume and a fox costume. But the duck costume remains Polly's favorite.

Goats of Anarchy

Polly might be small now, but Lauricella expects her to get a little bigger … and eventually outgrow her duck costume. "I've started regretting that I didn't buy the next size up," she said.

Goats of Anarchy

But Lauricella might have found a solution — another rescue goat named Pocket who arrived a few days ago and is handicapped. "When Pocket came home, I laid him on [Polly's] back … and it just calmed her right down and she went to sleep," Lauricella said. "It was almost like that duck costume. I've noticed that anytime he's lying next to her, she just gets calm. I've never seen her do that with another goat here."

Goats of Anarchy

When Polly eventually moves outside, Lauricella hopes Polly and Pocket will continue to be best friends. "I'm hoping she won't need [her duck suit]," Lauricella said. "I hope that Pocket becomes her duck suit."

Goats of Anarchy

To help pay for Polly's future needs, you can make a donation to Goats of Anarchy here.

Why are people giving Jill Stein millions of dollars for an election recount? - Washington Post

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 21. (Christopher Dolan/Citizens' Voice via AP)

On Wednesday afternoon, near the start of one of the year's final news droughts, former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein announced a new campaign: to pay for recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The news went first to the journalist Greg Palast, then on Stein's Facebook page, then in an interview with the Russian propaganda channel RT.

“This has been a hack-riddled election,” Stein explained. “We have voting machines that are extremely hack-friendly in an election that's been very contentious.”

Stein's fundraising goal was $2.5 million — and donors blew right past it. At that point, as New York magazine first reported, the goal spiked to $4.5 million, and new language on the donation page admitted that costs could rise higher. “The costs associated with recounts are a function of state law,” wrote the Stein campaign. “Attorney's fees are likely to be another $2-3 million, then there are the costs of the statewide recount observers in all three states. The total cost is likely to be $6-7 million.”

It's a lot of money, especially for the Green Party. Stein's 2016 campaign, the party's most electorally potent since 2000, took in $3,509,477 from donors. As of Thursday afternoon, the recount effort had raised $3,875,502. It's the largest donation drive for a third party in history — so what's actually going on?

George Martin, a Green Party official, said on Nov. 25 in Milwaukee that his party is seeking a vote recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania "for the benefit of the American public." (Reuters)

The Green Party has done this before, to little result. In 2004, when many Democrats asked whether Ohio had been lost to voter suppression, the Green Party teamed up with the Libertarian Party to pay for a recount. David Cobb, the then-presidential candidate for the Green Party, had not even appeared on Ohio's ballot, but he helped raise $150,000 to start the recount process. “Due to widespread reports of irregularities in the Ohio voting process,” said Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the then-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, “we are compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote. Voting is the heart of the democratic process in which we as a nation put our faith.”

The result: Democrat John F. Kerry gained a bit less than 300 votes on George W. Bush, making virtually no difference in the margin.

The inspiration for the recount: Theories ranging from sketchy to debunked. In 2004, Greg Palast was the most prominent of several analysts arguing that more Ohio voters intended to elect Kerry than Bush, but enough ballots were rejected and spoiled to stop them. He did similar work in the run-up to 2016, warning that voter suppression was going to “steal the vote” in key states.

“Being right never felt so horrid,” Palast wrote after the election.

Palast has celebrated and promoted the new effort, which could turn up additional votes as ballots are re-scanned. But the recount won attention because of an unrelated theory: That electronic voting machines might have been attacked by hackers. The Twitter hashtag #AuditTheVote was trending days before the Stein campaign began, and stories of how machines could be hacked have begun being shared again.

But voting machines can't be hacked from afar, and the people with the most to lose — Democrats, who literally lost — haven't been convinced that machines were hacked. They closely monitored Election Day, with volunteers at every swing state polling place, as is customary.

The Greens themselves have not endorsed any theory of what went wrong. The closest they've come was in Stein's RT interview, where she said “reports have come in from cyber experts, from security experts and others.” There you go.

If the election were hacked, a recount couldn't prove it. Most of Pennsylvania voters use DRE (direct record electronic) machines, with no paper ballot whatsoever. In other races where those machines have been probed — like Virginia's 2005 attorney general contest — the recount has consisted of the machine results simply being scanned again. The lost/spoiled votes Palast has talked about are not part of that system. (Meanwhile, nearly every Michigan vote has a paper record.)

The cost keeps increasing. In a Facebook video announcing the campaign, Cobb — now Stein's campaign manager, rattled off $2.1 million in potential costs. “In order to file, we need to raise $1 million just to send to the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “Pennsylvania's is another $500,000. After that, we're looking to file in Michigan, where it's $600,000.” The pleas for attorney fees is above and beyond what the party did 12 years ago. One reason? Pennsylvania's actual recount deadline has passed — the Greens are raising money to go to court.

But (most of) the money is headed for the recount effort. According to local reporters, the targeted states are already preparing to carry out the recounts. Stein's campaign is telling the truth about the recount costs. The campaign does offer a separate way to support local Green parties (for ringing alarms about the vote), but this reads less like a way to fund the party than a way to promote it as an alternative, as in 2004.

Stein doesn't claim that the recount will elect Hillary Clinton. That desire has motivated many donors, but Stein spent much of 2016 telling interviewers that the Democratic nominee was more dangerous than Donald Trump. In her own comments since the recount effort began, she described the election as “hacked,” but doesn't say that the wrong result came out of it.

“We need a voting system that allows us to bring our values to the vote,” Stein told RT, spending much of the interview to plug ranked-choice voting and open debates.

Stein has also used the fact that Democrats won't push for recounts as evidence that the party is corrupt. On RT, she scoffed that “you'd think that the Democratic candidate, who has more skin in the game here, would be more involved.” According to Palast, Stein told him that “Democrats do not act to protect the vote even when there is dramatic evidence of tampering.”

Some Clinton fans are on board. That's obvious from the speed of the money drive, but it's been accentuated on Twitter. Adam Parkhomenko, the co-founder of the “Ready for Hillary” group that organized supporters ahead of her run, has praised Stein for “leading” on the recount.

I don't support Jill Stein. Never will. But I support democracy and the right to count every vote. And kudos to her for leading on this. https://t.co/cSmhQKRxkB

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) November 24, 2016

Other dabblers in the election story have promoted the recount as a fair-enough answer to Republican election challenges in places like North Carolina.

The GOP can't applaud McCrory for demanding a recount in NC while condemning Jill Stein's recount efforts in WI, MI and PA. #AuditTheVote

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) November 24, 2016

More Clinton fans see this as a waste of time — at best. Someone was going to tap into mounting liberal anger that — for the second time this century — a Democrat has lost the presidency while winning the popular vote. But Democrats can't believe that the someone was Stein. In all three of the contested states, Stein campaigned for votes; in Michigan and Wisconsin, her total was greater than the gap between Clinton and Trump.

For Democrats, Stein's role in the campaign resurrects some of the worst aspects of the campaign. It directs liberal anger toward a hopeless goal. It feeds into a Russian story line promoted on RT — that American democracy is awfully flimsy, considering that the country claims to lead the world. And it helps a third party that can split Democratic votes. On Thursday afternoon, a few Democrats suggested that people reaching for their credit cards in anger were ignoring an actual, achievable cause.

The amount of Democratic energy and money being wasted on recounts instead of trying to win the Louisiana Senate Race is mind boggling

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) November 24, 2016

Louisiana's low-profile Senate runoff, in which Democrat-turned-Republican John Kennedy is heavily favored, takes place on Dec. 10. Foster Campbell, the populist Democrat who made the runoff, has raised just $1,461,752 — or less than half as much as the recount campaign raised in a day.

Poll: 65 percent of Democrats want party to ‘stand up’ to Trump

The Department of Justice is not going to conduct a vote audit based on your phoned-in outrage

Trump's team of gazillionaires - Politico

The hydrogen-powered generator that was almost a home-shopping hit - Engadget

That spirit of invention is what drove the American Dreams invention competition, a partnership between HSN and Good Housekeeping magazine. Hundreds of teams sent in details about their inventions, and about 100 were chosen to pitch to a panel of judges from HSN and Good Housekeeping. Out of that group, nine just-announced finalists will show their products on-air for HSN in December, and one winner will be granted the coveted Good Housekeeping Seal.

While HSN sells plenty of technology-focused products and has partnerships with major companies like Microsoft and Amazon, the contest mostly stayed in HSN's traditionally popular categories. The finalists included home, kitchen and beauty products, with a smattering of home-improvement and travel accessories mixed in. That's not to downplay the work being done by these inventors -- but my hopes for seeing someone pitching some unknown, possibly experimental new technology appeared to be dashed. That is, until Marc Collins and Leah Lastre, the creators of iHOD, made their presentation.

Putting aside the unfortunate name for a moment, the iHOD Energypod is a product that's unlike anything I've really seen before. At its most basic, the deceptively heavy sphere is a portable power generator -- but instead of running on diesel, it uses small hydrogen pods that it can convert into energy on the fly. It's silent and produces very little in the way of emissions, so it's safe to use inside.

It includes a few standard 110v power sockets as well as USB connectors to keep your phone going. The obvious use case is in the home as a backup power supply in case of emergency, but iHOD also sees it as a way for people to stay connected wherever they are. Its capabilities are impressive, but they come with a few caveats.

Most notable is safety: You're probably thinking, "Isn't hydrogen highly combustible?" Fair point. It's something judges asked iHOD about when the company showed its creation, and it's obviously something it's considered. The fuel pods, little hockey pucks that power the Energypod, contain two inert powders. Once water is added to the mix, hydrogen is created and pumped into the reactor to create electricity.

Collins said the iHOD team had been working on ways to use hydrogen safely for about four years before coming up with the current formula; he also noted there were two key safety points that allow the Energypod to do what it does. "The first one is to keep things, so we run it at a very low temperature," Collins said. "The next one is keeping the pressure low through the method within the pod itself. We run that around 7psi -- if you kiss someone, you've got about that kind of pressure."

Between the low temperature and pressure, as well as the fact the fuel pods are inert, iHOD believes its method is totally safe. But it's still powerful -- in the demo I saw, the Energypod was powering a small flat-screen TV, a Samsung tablet, a USB fan and a lamp. Collins says it outputs between 105 and 110 watts, and iHOD is working on making more powerful versions as well.

All this power comes at a cost, though -- iHOD set pricing for the Energypod at $899, and fuel pods cost $20 each. Collins declined to say exactly how long a pod would last; it certainly will vary depending on what's plugged in and how hard you're pushing it. While that price feels high in a vacuum, there's really nothing to compare the Energypod to, and it's not so crazy that people wouldn't consider having it around for emergencies as well as the odd camping trip.

The panel of judges from HSN and Good Housekeeping

IHOD didn't fit in with the rest of the products pitched at the HSN American Dreams competition. But that didn't keep the judges from showing a lot of interest in it -- in fact, the Energypod was picked to be one of the finalists to pitch its product directly on the air for HSN. It was set to show up competing for the top spot alongside items like the self-explanatory Travel Head Pillow, the surprisingly cool Re-Grip (which adds a strong and sturdy plastic grip to any handle), and the Original Wall Stamp (which lets you add patterns and art to your walls). IHOD's ambitious and somewhat experimental product was truly an outlier in the field; you can find more details on all the finalists here and judge for yourself how well it fits in.

The Re-Grip in action.

But unfortunately for iHOD, the company wasn't able to meet the manufacturing timeline dictated by the contest, and it was dropped from the event. For its part, iHOD's Leah Lustre told me over email that the completion of iHOD preproduction units didn't fit with the Good Housekeeping magazine deadline, but the current plan is to have the Energypod ready to deliver to customers by the end of Q1 2017.

This delay doesn't stop the Energypod from being a standout, in large part because the company has plans that go far beyond offering portable power for people in the US. It's starting here as a retail product, but Collins spoke at length about his desire to help get people on the grid in countries without a developed electrical infrastructure.

"We set the business up originally to try and get sufficient personal power to Africa, to the billions of people that don't have energy or electricity,' he said. "That's a big market, and you can't put a grid together and start pushing out electricity the same as we have in the US or Europe." In some ways, iHOD's US launch is a test case for getting out to other markets that will rely on the Energypod as a sole power source rather than a backup generator.

"This is a steppingstone, a way of getting power out to the people that need it in the US for various purposes," Collins said. "But then we want to push the humanitarian side of things and start others connect to the rest of the world." It's a bold mission, but iHOD will need to get its manufacturing processes sorted out to achieve that goal -- and it'll have to do so without the boost in popularity that HSN and Good Housekeeping's contest would have provided. But an HSN spokesperson says the retailer will likely work with iHOD down the line. Still, it's too bad iHOD wasn't able to get to the finals -- a product so far outside HSN's comfort zone could have inspired some other tech inventors to try and get on cable's biggest retailer in the future.

Trump's Parade of Retired Generals Raises Questions - Military.com

Retired Army general Michael Flynn has been tapped by the president-elect as his national security adviser. Other retired military officers are being considered for top Trump administration positions. (DoD photo/Kristyn Ulanday)

The military parade for Donald Trump has come early. Two months before Inauguration Day festivities, an extraordinary number of recently retired generals, including some who clashed with President Barack Obama's administration, are marching to the president-elect's doorstep for job interviews.

It's not unusual for an incoming administration to consider a retired general for a top position like CIA director. But Trump has turned to retired officers so publicly, and in such large numbers, that it raises questions about the proper balance of military and civilian advice in a White House led by a commander-in-chief with no defense or foreign policy experience.

The tilt toward retired military officers may reflect a limited pool of civilian options. Many officials from previous Republican administrations politically disowned Trump during the campaign, calling him unqualified. And Trump suggested he wouldn't want many of them, as he vowed to "drain the swamp" by running establishment figures out of town.

Robert Goldich, a retired government defense analyst who has watched administrations for 44 years, says Trump's focus on retired generals might be unprecedented.

The only one announced for a top job thus far is Michael Flynn, a retired three-star Army general. Trump appointed Flynn as his national security adviser, a post that does not require Senate confirmation but is central to a president's decision-making process. Flynn was forced out as Defense Intelligence Agency director in 2014. Afterward, he strongly criticized the Obama administration's approach to fighting the Islamic State group and threw his support to Trump.

Among others under consideration are two retired four-star Marine generals -- James Mattis for defense secretary and John Kelly for homeland security secretary. Other names surfacing include retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and David Petraeus, the retired four-star general who was Obama's CIA director in 2011-12 before resigning amid disclosure that he had an affair with his biographer and shared highly classified information with her.

In remarks to the New York Times on Tuesday, Trump spoke about the Pentagon post in ways that offer insight into why he is attracted to former generals like Mattis.

"I think it's time maybe, it's time for a general," Trump said, suggesting he favors a military mindset. "Look what's going on. We don't win, we can't beat anybody."

Kelly retired this year after a storied career capped by commanding the U.S. Southern Command, where he differed with the White House over closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and expressed doubts about the administration's moves to open all combat jobs to women.

Bing West, a Vietnam War veteran and former assistant secretary of defense, said Trump's outreach to retired generals is wise.

"Our country is fighting a long war. It's common sense to seek the experience of those who have proven they know how to fight," he said in an email exchange.

The concern about undue military influence derives from a long U.S. tradition of civilian control of the military, which is the basis for a ban on active-duty officers running the Pentagon. The Constitution affirms civilian control by making the president the commander-in-chief and giving Congress the authority to declare war and fund the military.

The appointment of too many generals to high civilian positions could prompt fears that Trump is on a path to militarizing U.S. foreign policy, or giving the military too much sway in decisions about war and peace.

But that view was rejected by Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. In an interview, he noted that it was President George W. Bush's civilian advisers who pushed hardest to launch the 2003 Iraq invasion.

"In my experience, veterans have been less likely than the civilians to advocate for military intervention abroad," said Fontaine, who was among dozens of Republican national security figures who signed a letter during the campaign warning that Trump would be a dangerous president.

Still, some retired generals are leery of Trump stacking his national security team with warriors.

"The biggest fear is too many generals in politics. That's not a good thing," said Mark Hertling, a retired three-star Army general who opposed Trump. "But given the lack of knowledge of a president who knows nothing about diplomacy or the military, they might provide some very good advice."

Hertling credits Mattis with an unusual knack for leadership and strategic thinking. Trump met with Mattis last weekend but has not said if he will nominate him. If he does, Trump would need Congress to provide an exception to a law requiring a military officer to have been out of uniform for at least seven years before becoming defense secretary.

That exception has been sought only once since the position of defense secretary was created in 1947. George C. Marshall, who retired as a five-star Army general and then served as secretary of state after World War II, was tapped to be defense secretary in 1950 by President Harry Truman.

The law Congress passed allowing Marshall to lead the Pentagon was meant to be a one-time exception. It said it was "not to be construed as approval by Congress of continuing appointments of military men to the office of Secretary of Defense in the future." It said that after Marshall's term ended, "no additional appointments of military men to that office shall be approved."

Selasa, 29 November 2016

Thanksgiving and the Myth of Native American "Savages" - Scientific American (blog)

The approach of Thanksgiving, that quintessential American holiday, has me brooding once again over scientists’ slanderous portrayals of Native Americans as bellicose brutes.

When I was in grade school, my classmates and I wore paper Indian headdresses and Pilgrim hats and reenacted the “first Thanksgiving,” in which supposedly friendly Native Americans joined Pilgrims for a fall feast of turkey, venison, squash and corn. This episode seemed to support the view—often (apparently erroneously) attributed to the 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau—of Native Americans and other pre-state people as peaceful, “noble savages.”

Prominent scientists now deride depictions of pre-state people as peaceful. “Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage,” psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in 2007, “quantitative body counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with ax marks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.” According to Pinker, the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes “got it right” when he called pre-state life a “war of all against all.”

Pinker expanded on this claim in his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature. The Hobbesian thesis has been advanced in other influential books, notably War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, by anthropologist Lawrence Keeley; Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, by archaeologist Steven LeBlanc; War in Human Civilization, by political scientist Azar Gat; The Social Conquest of Earth, by biologist Edward Wilson; and The World Until Yesterday, by geographer Jared Diamond.

Referring specifically to the pre-Colombian New World, Keeley asserted, “The dogs of war were seldom on a leash.” Popular culture has amplified these scientific claims. In the 2007 HBO docudrama Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Chief Sitting Bull complains to a U.S. Army colonel about whites’ violent treatment of the Indians. The colonel retorts, “You were killing each other for hundreds of moons before the first white stepped foot on this continent.”

Yes, Native Americans waged war before Europeans showed up. The evidence is especially strong in the American Southwest, where archaeologists have found numerous skeletons with projectile points embedded in them and other marks of violence; war seems to have surged during periods of drought. But as I have asserted in my book The End of War and on this site, Pinker and other Hobbesians have exaggerated warfare among early humans. These scientists have replaced the myth of the noble savage with the myth of the savage savage.

In two momentous early encounters, Native Americans greeted Europeans with kindness. Here is how Christopher Columbus described the Arawak, tribal people living in the Bahamas when he landed there in 1492: “They…brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance…. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

How that passage—which I found in historian Howard Zinn's 1980 classic A People’s History of the United States—captures the whole sordid history of colonialism! Columbus was as good as his word. Within decades the Spaniards had slaughtered almost all the Arawaks and other natives of the New Indies and enslaved the few survivors. “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide,” wrote the historian Samuel Morison (who admired Columbus).

A similar pattern unfolded in New England in the early 17th century. After the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in 1620 on the Mayflower, they almost starved to death. Members of a local tribe, the Wampanoag, helped the newcomers, showing them how to plant corn and other local foods. In the fall of 1621 the Pilgrims celebrated their first successful harvest with a three-day feast with the Wampanoag. The event my classmates and I reenacted in grade school really happened!

The friendliness of the Wampanoag was extraordinary, because they had recently been ravaged by diseases caught from previous European explorers. Europeans had also killed, kidnapped and enslaved Native Americans in the region. The Plymouth settlers, during their desperate first year, had even stolen grain and other goods from the Wampanoag, according to Wikipedia’s entry on Plymouth Colony.

The good vibes of that 1621 feast soon dissipated. As more English settlers arrived in New England, they seized more and more land from the Wampanoag and other tribes, who eventually resisted with violence—in vain. We all know how this story ended. “The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million,” Zinn wrote.

In “Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History,” a recent essay in The New York Review of Books, anthropologist Peter Nabokov notes that colonizers reduced California’s native population from 350,000 at first contact to under 17,000 by 1900. State laws allowed and even encouraged the slaughter of Native Americans. “Extermination,” Nabokov comments, was “considered no great tragedy for an entire people who were uniformly and irredeemably defined as savage and inhuman.”

Centuries earlier, the Arawak and Wampanoag were kind to us—and by us I mean white people of European descent. We showed our thanks by sickening, subjugating and slaughtering them and other indigenous people. And we have the gall to call them more savage than us.

Please ponder this dark irony as you celebrate Thanksgiving.

Addendum: U.S. government maltreatment of Native Americans continues. A United Nations human-rights official accuses “law enforcement officials, private security firms and the North Dakota National Guard” of using “excessive force” against Native Americans and others protesting an oil pipeline that “runs through land sacred to indigenous people.”

Further Reading:

Was Civilization the Cure for Primordial Human Violence?

10,000-Year-Old Massacre Does Not Bolster Claim That War Is Innate.

Quitting the hominid fight club: The evidence is flimsy for innate chimpanzee–let alone human–warfare.

New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots.

New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim that War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots.

Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots.

Chimp Violence Fails to Support Deep-Roots Theory of War.

Margaret Mead’s War Theory Kicks Butt of Neo-Darwinian and Malthusian Models.

RIP Military Historian John Keegan, Who Saw War As Product of Culture Rather than Biology.

War Scholar Critiques New Study of Roots of Violence

War Is Our Most Urgent Problem; Let's Solve It.

*Self-plagiarism alert: This is an updated version of a column posted on previous Thanksgivings.

Senin, 28 November 2016

Thanksgiving and the Myth of Native American "Savages" - Scientific American (blog)

The approach of Thanksgiving, that quintessential American holiday, has me brooding once again over scientists’ slanderous portrayals of Native Americans as bellicose brutes.

Please ponder this dark irony as you celebrate Thanksgiving.

Further Reading:

Was Civilization the Cure for Primordial Human Violence?

10,000-Year-Old Massacre Does Not Bolster Claim That War Is Innate.

Quitting the hominid fight club: The evidence is flimsy for innate chimpanzee–let alone human–warfare.

New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots.

New Study of Prehistoric Skeletons Undermines Claim that War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots.

Survey of Earliest Human Settlements Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots.

Chimp Violence Fails to Support Deep-Roots Theory of War.

Margaret Mead’s War Theory Kicks Butt of Neo-Darwinian and Malthusian Models.

RIP Military Historian John Keegan, Who Saw War As Product of Culture Rather than Biology.

War Scholar Critiques New Study of Roots of Violence

War Is Our Most Urgent Problem; Let's Solve It.

*Self-plagiarism alert: This is an updated version of a column posted on previous Thanksgivings.

DoD Releases Plan to Allow Personnel to Carry Firearms on Base - Military.com

Fort Huachuca Main Post Exchange gun sales supervisor Dawn Deslatte shows Sgt. 1st Class Atthaporm Khaek-on, 309th Military Intelligence Battalion, an American Classic handgun at the PX gun counter (Photo: Gabrielle Kuholski)

The Pentagon recently released detailed guidance that allows U.S. military personnel to carry privately owned, concealed firearms on base, a move that the Army's service chief argued against publicly.

"Arming and the Use of Force," a Nov. 18 Defense Department directive approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, lays out the policy and standards that allow DoD personnel to carry firearms and employ deadly force while performing official duties.

But the lengthy document also provides detailed guidance to the services for permitting soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard personnel to carry privately owned firearms on DoD property, according to the document.

Commanders, O-5 and above, "may grant permission to DoD personnel requesting to carry a privately owned firearm (concealed or open carry) on DoD property for a personal protection purpose not related to performance of an official duty or status," the document states.

Applicants must be 21 years of age or older, the age many states require an individual to be to own a firearm, according to the document. Proof of compliance may include a concealed handgun license that is valid under federal, state, local or host-nation law where the DoD property is located.

"Written permission will be valid for 90 days or as long as the DoD Component deems appropriate and will include information necessary to facilitate the carrying of the firearm on DoD property consistent with safety and security, such as the individual's name, duration of the permission to carry, type of firearm, etc.," according to the document.

Until now, DoD personnel have not been authorized to carry personal firearms on military installations, a policy that has come under scrutiny in the wake of "active-shooter" attacks at U.S. military bases resulting in the deaths of service members.

Lawmakers have questioned military leaders about the policy, arguing that allowing service members to be armed might have prevented attacks such as the July 16, 2015, shootings at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in which four Marines and a sailor were shot and killed. The gunman, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, was killed by police in a gunfight.

But Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has argued against reversing the DoD policy that prohibits service members from carrying concealed weapons on post.

Testifying at an April 14 congressional hearing, Milley cited the Nov. 5, 2009, mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed and 42 others were injured. The day of the shooting, Nidal Hasan, then an Army major and psychiatrist, entered the Fort Hood deployment center carrying two pistols, jumped on a desk and shouted "Allahu Akbar!" -- Arabic for "God is great" -- then opened fire.

Milley defended the short time it took for law enforcement to secure the scene and said he is not convinced that allowing soldiers to carry privately owned weapons would have stopped Hasan.

The directive states that personnel authorized to carry privately owned firearms must "acknowledge they may be personally liable for the injuries, death, and property damage proximately caused by negligence in connection with the possession or use of privately owned firearms that are not within the scope of their federal employment."

The eligibility requirements also state that applicants should not be subject to past or pending disciplinary action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or in any civilian criminal cases.

Personnel carrying firearms "will not be under the influence of alcohol or another intoxicating or hallucinatory drug or substance that would cause drowsiness or impair their judgment while carrying a firearm," the document states.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

10 Things You Need to Know About Netflix's 'Gilmore Girls' Revival - RollingStone.com

Mom's Thank-You Note To Ex's New Girlfriend Goes Viral - Scary Mommy

You don’t have to look far to hear endless stories of drama between ex-wives and new girlfriends. Blending families is not easy, neither is being a stepmother to a child you did not have. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see one mother step up and write about what is really important when people who have kids move on from each other: supporting their children at all costs.

Audrey Loving and Corey Henry had a daughter together when they were both 18 years old. TODAY reports that after four years of enduring a long distance relationship, they realized their relationship was not going to work out. They live in different states and Loving has full custody, but Henry remains very involved in his daughter’s life.

Loving is from a blended family, so when Henry began dating other women she was determined to make sure it would all work out.“I come from a blended family — I have stepsisters, half-sisters,” she told TODAY. “Growing up, I heard the negative talk about the ‘other woman,’ and I didn’t want my kid to hear the same thing … It’s not fair. Kids are smart.”

This is my daughters fathers gf. The sweetest thing ever! I’m super thankful for her because when she visits her dad she…

Posted by Audrey Nicole on Wednesday, November 2, 2016

“This is my daughter’s father’s gf. The sweetest thing ever! I’m super thankful for her because when she visits her dad she feeds her, takes care of her, buys her gifts, and basically takes care of her like her own,” Loving wrote in a post that has gone hugely viral. “Why do all these moms act so spiteful and jealous towards the other women?”

Good question. If a relationship is over, it’s over. If someone is willing to reach out and love your child, it’s best for everyone to fully accept that.

“NO ONE said it was easy trying to be a mother to a kid you didn’t have. So when there is someone trying, don’t push them away!” Sometimes it’s hard to take the high road, but this is such great advice. It’s so much better for everyone involved — especially children.

My partner had a six-year-old daughter when we began dating, 10 years ago. I’ve loved her like my own ever since. It was a little awkward in the beginning, navigating the space her mom may need to deal with the idea of another woman in her daughter’s life. But we’ve never had anything but respect for each other and it’s never been negative in any way. Can’t imagine a child having to navigate that kind of negativity.

Posted by Audrey Nicole on Sunday, September 25, 2016

“A kid can have two moms because in my eyes the more people that love her I’m happy!!! I would never make her feel like an outsider I’m extremely thankful for this girl ❤️❤️,” she continues. “Love more hate less!!!”

That’s great advice for all of us. Good job, mama.

Dorothy Kilgallen tried to expose truth of JFK assassination - New York Daily News

A very wise man once wrote, "The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie— deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

This "wise man" was none other than John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. And though he wasn't talking about his own death, he could have been, based on the mythical dialogue that was perpetuated to the American public within a few short days after he died on Nov. 22, 1963.

Distortions of what truly happened permeated instantly after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover first advocated the "Oswald Alone" theory when he called White House aide Walter Jenkins and told him, "The thing I am most concerned about and so is (Assistant Attorney General) Mr. Katzenbach is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."

Hoover then instructed aide Clyde Tolson to "prepare a memorandum to the attorney general setting out the evidence that Oswald was responsible for the shooting that killed the president."

President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1963

Soon Hoover's edict was conveyed to the American people and the myth spread far and wide despite the presence of a viable motive: Lee Harvey Oswald had singlehandedly shot and killed JFK.

And, yes, the American people bought that garble and thus began decades of belief/denial that any other potential existed for not one man, but many, to have killed the president.

Portrait of American President John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963) in the White House as he laughs during the filming a televised interview entitled 'After Two Years: A Conversation with the President,' Washington DC, December 16, 1962.

27 photos view gallery

John F. Kennedy assassination

Months later, Hoover's proclamation was rubber stamped by the infamous Warren Commission, and that was that until the 1970s House Select Committee on Assassinations was conveyed and raised questions about the "Oswald Alone" theory while pointing to possible mob motive for JFK's death.

Picking up the baton, various authors through the years led by Gerald Posner (“Case Closed”) and Vincent Bugliosi (“Reclaiming History”) severely bashed anyone who believed a conspiracy of those with logical motives could have murdered JFK.

Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for killing JFK in 1963

But along with Posner and Bugliosi, these authors who fought to puncture the "Oswald Alone" myth forgot, or purposely ignored, an essential element in any real search for the truth: The duty to research, discover and probe an 18-month JFK assassination investigation by the most famous and credible reporter in the 1950s and ’60s, Dorothy Mae Kilgallen.

Who was Kilgallen, and why did Hoover, the Warren Commission, the HSCA, and every author to date including James Douglass (“JFK and the Unspeakable”) neglect to learn from her investigation, one that began on the day her close friend JFK died?

Because in each case, conclusions were reached, and then the facts cherry-picked to fit these conclusions, instead of the other way around.

Dorothy Kilgallen died — or was murdered — in 1965 with what some say was inside knowledge about the JFK assassination.

Working under this standard, Kilgallen, a Pulitzer-Prize nominated reporter called by Ernest Hemingway "the greatest female writer in the world," one whose newspaper column was syndicated to 200 papers across the country, one who had covered such high-profile trials as Dr. Sam Sheppard ("The Fugitive") and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case — not to mention her being the star of the long-running CBS show, “What's My Line?” — had to be ignored since the facts she uncovered did not fit with any of the various theories including “Oswald Alone."

Texas family wants $10M for lost JFK assassination film

When Kilgallen mysteriously died on Nov. 8, 1965 just as she was to complete a book about the assassination for Random House — or was murdered based on new evidence presented in my upcoming book, “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much,” (Post Hill Press/Simon&Schuster), her JFK assassination investigation file disappeared, and worse, all of the columns and article she wrote about the assassination, including "Oswald File Must Not Close," and "DA to Link Ruby and Oswald," died with her, never to surface until now. In the former column of Nov. 29, 1963, she wrote:

"The case is closed, is it? Well, I'd like to know how, in a big, smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby — owner of a strip tease honky tonk — can stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it was at a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers is keeping a "tight security guard" on Oswald. Justice is a big rug. When you pull it out from under one man, a lot of others fall, too."

Sadly, authors such as Bugliosi also distorted the truth by ignoring a critical fact; Kilgallen covered the Jack Ruby trial and was the only reporter to interview him twice with her column the next day reading:

"I went out into the almost empty lunchroom corridor wondering what I really believed about this man."'

Mark Lane, JFK assassination conspiracy advocate, dead at 89

/ RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / RR AUCTION / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

Lee Harvey Oswald's Dallas Police mugshot after he was arrested for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

(HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images)

Furthermore, these authors refused to acknowledge that Kilgallen had the biggest exclusive of the day when she exposed Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission BEFORE its release date, even before President Johnson read it.

Bugliosi, in fact, spent three and a half pages out of more than a thousand discounting the Ruby interviews and the WC exclusive, since confirmed by this author through videotaped interviews with Joe Tonahill, Ruby's co-counsel, that may be watched at http://ift.tt/2gaCrEp.

Fortunately, after 50-plus years, it is now Dorothy Kilgallen to the rescue with her significant columns and articles, and videotaped interviews with friends who discuss her JFK investigation as well as threats on her life weeks before she was found dead of an alleged drug overdose in her New York City townhouse bedroom, where the death scene had been staged.

No investigation happened, and Kilgallen was denied the justice she deserved. That is, until now, since her voice will be heard, her fresh evidence about JFK's death exposed for the world to see.

Hopefully, myths such as JFK described, ones like the "Oswald Alone" theory, will be banished forever so that the truth may shine through. In this case, thanks to a remarkable, courageous journalist, one called "the most powerful voice in America."

Mark Shaw is a former criminal defense lawyer, legal analyst for USA Today, ESPN, and CNN, and the author of 25 books including “The Poison Patriarch,” “Miscarriage of Justice,” and “Beneath the Mask of Holiness.” More about Mr. Shaw, a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors who has written for Huffington Post, the New York Daily News, USA Today and the Aspen Daily News, may be learned at http://ift.tt/2fWJRYS and http://ift.tt/2gaCrEp

For more DAILY VIEWS, The News' contributor network, click here.

Tags:: daily views; media; john f. kennedy; fbi; lee harvey oswald

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Minggu, 27 November 2016

DoD Releases Plan to Allow Personnel to Carry Firearms on Base - Military.com

But Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has argued against reversing the DoD policy that prohibits service members from carrying concealed weapons on post.

Milley defended the short time it took for law enforcement to secure the scene and said he is not convinced that allowing soldiers to carry privately owned weapons would have stopped Hasan.

The eligibility requirements also state that applicants should not be subject to past or pending disciplinary action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or in any civilian criminal cases.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

How to handle holidays with a narcissist - CNN

Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria Home to Child Abuse Ring Led by Hillary Clinton - snopes.com

Claim: The 'Podesta e-mails' revealed the existence of a secret society of pedophiles operating through a pizza place loosely connected to Clinton associate David Brock.

FALSE

Example: [Collected via e-mail, November 2016]

Hi, this is something I've been reading about a lot lately on Reddit and it's really starting to annoy the crap out of me:

Have you heard about the "pizzagate" conspiracy theory?

It seems to be the easiest way to get pretty caught up is through this Reddit post:
http://ift.tt/2fjusSp

Now, there is obviously some weird stuff in there, but I really think these people are starting to go crazy!! One of the supposedly inappropriate pictures they pull from James Alefantis' instagram is of a smiling girl with her hands taped down to a table. Yeah that's weird but, can that not just be a really innocent game? Like just picking on a little kid?

I have many questions like that about most of the evidence they have. They have even stated the name "James Alefantis" is similar to the french saying for "I love children," they say that Comet Pizza's menu contains a pedophile symbol (it's a set of ping pong paddles?!?), they say there are obvious pedophilic references in instagram posts made by Alefantis of literal pizza memes. Am I the only person who thinks pizza is just pizza? It's like people who love bacon are obsessed with bacon. This guy owns a pizza place, the act of stuffing your face with pizza is like a trendy meme right now, he's the owner of a pizza place, why wouldn't he post pics of pizza?

It's pretty crazy, but getting traction in the past few days, as some of the "suspects" involved are posting responses to social media, obviously denying everything.

What do you think? Have you heard of it? I'm sure there's some kind of international pedophile ring, but I don't know if these people are pointing fingers at the right people.

Origin:On 4 November 2016, Reddit user u/DumbScribblyUnctious published a thread titled "Comet Ping Pong - Pizzagate Summary" to subreddit r/The_Donald (a community of Donald Trump supporters), which appears to have touched off a complex and detailed conspiracy theory involving WikiLeaks' release of e-mails from former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chair John Podesta, child exploitation, and a Washington, D.C., pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong.

None of this elaborate conspiracy theory was true, as the New York Times noted:

None of it was true. While [Comet Ping Pong pizzeria owner James] Alefantis has some prominent Democratic friends in Washington and was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton, he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims. He and his 40 employees had unwittingly become real people caught in the middle of a storm of fake news.

“From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we’ve come under constant assault,” said Mr. Alefantis, 42, who was once in a relationship with David Brock, a provocative former right-wing journalist who became an outspoken advocate for Mrs. Clinton.

Although the original "Pizzagate" post was deleted at some point between 4 and 21 November 2016, archived versions of it contained what appeared to be the original post in its entirety. (A subreddit dedicated to the controversy, r/pizzagate, was created in the interim.) A brief and incomplete summary of the theory espoused in the original post goes as follows:

Comet Pizza is a pizza place owned by James Alefantis, who is the former gay boyfriend of David Brock, the CEO of Correct The Record. It has been the venue for dozens of events for the Hillary campaign staff. John Podesta has had campaign fundraisers there for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. John's brother and business partner Tony Podesta has his birthday party there every year. [http://ift.tt/2eOCC48]

It's also a dive that according to reviews and photos has hidden bathroom doors and creepy murals. The bathrooms in particular have murals exclusively of nude women, as well as a great deal of graffiti relating to sex. Reviews of the restaurant are bizarrely polarized. Websites describing it positively note that there are regularly "unsupervised children running around". Their menu include a pedophilic symbol, as do the signs and decorations of other neighboring businesses.

The music acts and the posters promoting same acts are bizarre in their presentation, content, and lyrical focus, but are still promoted as being "for all ages". The overtly sexual content would suggest otherwise.

The same has taken place in reference to videos recorded inside Comet Ping Pong by people that frequent their establishment as well as video referencing Comet Ping Pong positively from the exterior.

While initially not the central focus of the investigation at the onset, Comet Ping Pong is a much more overt and much more disturbing hub of coincidences. Everyone associated with the business is making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors. The artists that work for and with the business also generate nothing but cultish imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex, and of course pizza.

Several pages were linked to support the details of the claim (an e-mail in which David Brock was described as "batshit crazy" by Clinton associate Neera Tanden was among them) and the post primarily focused on Alefantis and his loose ties to the Clinton campaign via a former romantic relationship with David Brock of Media Matters for America.

Users tracked down Alefantis' purported Instagram account (since deleted or restricted), which they said hosted images of children, gay clubs, drugs, and generally "bizarre" or unsettling imagery:

James Alefantis' instagram late 11/5/16. by morning of 11/7/16 it was set to private.

We recently found the instagram account of James Alefantis. The contents of it are indescribably bizarre and the contexts of the posts and comment chains are weird. Alefantis does not have any children nor do his closest associates, but the photos seem to be a near constant assortment of different children of a variety of ages, intermingled between posts about gay bars, clubs, photos of common rape drugs, and piles of foreign currency. After it being trawled through for 24 hours it has been set to private. A large set of archived copies can be seen here in the next section. Similarly the instagram and twitter accounts of Comet Ping Pong are being edited selectively. The accounts of the people favoriting and commenting on these posts are equally bizarre in both content, context, and demeanor.

However, the photographs that the Instagram account purportedly hosted were instead, apparently, taken from the pages of various people who "liked" the restaurant's page on Facebook:

In a statement, the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department said it was monitoring the situation and is “aware of general threats being made against this establishment.” The F.B.I. said it “does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.”

Most troubling for Mr. Alefantis and staff has been the use of children’s images, pilfered from the restaurant’s social media pages and the personal accounts of friends who had “liked” Comet Ping Pong online. Those photos have been used across dozens of websites. Parents, who declined to talk publicly for fear of retribution, have hired lawyers to get the photos removed.

Some of the photographs were apparently taken from random web sites:

@HagmannPI Why did you lie? You showed a supposedly authentic picture, but it's from a website. So was everything a lie?? http://pic.twitter.com/YwqoXWYGKr

— Marla Craig (@marla_mulder) November 5, 2016

Alefantis also said many of the photographs were of children of family and friends, not patrons of Comet Ping Pong:

"The most sickening part of this vicious attack has been the stealing of Instagram images, Facebook images of children, minors, aged 5, 7, and 8 years old that are then slapped across their chat boards as nothing but pawns," Alefantis says. "Yes, it’s scary to be attacked, it’s dangerous for business, but it's disgusting and filthy of these people to be posting photos on these websites. ... Someone should be prosecuting these people."

Alefantis says the photos have been lifted from his personal social media accounts, and those of his friends and employees—not from the restaurant. "Kids in the restaurant are completely safe, none of these people are going there, they're cowards," he says, emphasizing that this scandal only exists on the internet. Inside the restaurant it's business as usual ... While Alefantis says he can weather the storm, he's concerned about others who may not have as much community backing as he does. "I personally worry for the individuals who are being attacked and smeared and slandered and maligned and for other independent businesses or restaurants who are less established than Comet."

Scattered evidence from previously leaked Podesta communications was included, such as an e-mail about children orphaned after 2010's catastrophic earthquake in Haiti (along with information about adoption agencies and trafficking), or another thread claiming Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and his brother Tony Podesta were purportedly in Portugal at the time Madeleine McCann disappeared.

Additional evidence was presented in collage format, visually "linking" unrelated Instagram screengrabs, a number of individuals supposedly involved, purported coded signaling for pedophiles (such as a butterfly or a "play, eat, drink" insignia which could be abbreviated "PED"), and assertions that underground tunnels linked adjacent business (which themselves also use pedophilia code in their materials):

Imagery widely believed to be code for pedophiles to signal one another was a common theme in the myriad Pizzagate theories. Purported symbols such as butterflies and spirals were increasingly spotted in unrelated places, creating the impression that conspiracy was as vast as it was nebulous.

(As we have noted in the past, fear of "pedophile code" imagery is occasionally the basis for panic, but law enforcement officials believed that the symbols themselves are used among adults to signal preferences, not as labels for children, not as markers placing them in any danger.)

On 6 November 2016, Washington City Paper summarized the claims, noting that the rumors originated with long-circulating claims about Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, and confirming Alefantis' link to Brock:

Trump supporters on sites like Reddit and 4chan have long been looking for a stronger connection between Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, a financial tycoon and sex offender whose plane Bill Clinton sometimes used. The Wikileaks release of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's hacked emails inspired a feverish, and mostly hapless, search for salacious scandal evidence, while PolitiFact calls the evidence for a Clinton sex network "ridiculously thin."

Late this week, Trump supporters on 4chan and Reddit began to focus on "Pizzagate"— innocuous connections between Podesta and emails mentioning pizza that they claimed were far more sinister than they initially appeared.

Why, they wondered, did Podesta have a handkerchief with a "pizza-related" map on it? And why did Podesta get so many emails about eating pizza?

The answer to any reasonable person would be that Podesta eats pizza sometimes. Indeed, Alefantis says, "pizza's always a big thing in politics." ... To the alt right, though, "pizza" became a suspected code word for illegal sex trafficking. ... In one 2008 email released by Wikileaks, Alefantis thanked Podesta for attending a fundraiser at the restaurant but regretted not making him a pizza. That drew amateur theorists' attention to the restaurant's murals, which they declared "creepy," and the sliding doors in front of the restaurant's bathrooms, dubbed "hidden rooms."

In the period between 6 November 2016 and 21 November 2016, social media users continued to examine purported links to the pizzeria. Not long after Comet Ping Pong became the center of myriad ambiguous child abuse theories, the business' Yelp page was locked down by the site's operators, along with the following note:

This business recently made waves in the news, which often means that people come to this page to post their views on the news ... While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to these news events, we do work to remove both positive and negative posts that appear to be motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer’s personal consumer experience with the business.

By 15 November 2016, Alefantis told Washington City Paper the rumors showed no sign of abating, and had begun to affect adjacent venues (who were, according to the conspiracy theory, connected to the pizza restaurant by underground tunnels, apparently including a non-governmental organization across the street that works with Haitian orphans).

The Pizzagate/Comet Ping Pong social media investigation bore striking similarity to a similar Reddit-based panic concerning a "creepy day care" in January 2015. The Fun Time Kidz Day Care conspiracy quickly spiraled into offline harassment and in-person surveillance, but nothing came of the deeply scrutinized claims.

Although the Pizzagate controversy remains a high-interest conspiracy, we are unable to locate any substantive aspect of the claims that could be fact-checked or otherwise held up to the light to determine their veracity. And while rumors about pedophilia and child trafficking remain standard in urban folklore, roughly 90 percent [PDF] of assaults on children in the U.S. are committed by a friend or family member, a number reiterated by the United States Department of Justice. Most [PDF] abuse of the nature alleged is committed by family members, family friends, or other trusted adults — without the use of coded toys or pizzeria sex rings.

Originally published: 21 November 2016

sources:

Hayes, Laura. "The Consequences Of 'Pizza Gate' Are Real At Comet Ping Pong."
Washington City Paper. 15 November 2016.

Peterson, Eric. "This Salt Lake City Day Care Has Become a Magnet for Conspiracy Theories."
Vice. 23 February 2016.

Sommer, Will. "Alt Right Conspiracy Theorists Obsess Over Comet Ping Pong."
Washington City Paper. 6 November 2016.