TBR News December 10, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., December 10, 2017: “Former Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore has been the victim of an outrageous lie.

He said one of the little girls he has been accused of molesting, lied to him.

She lied about her age, Moore said to Trump in a Twitter message.

She told Moore she was ten.

The press has not reported a sad story about Moore, probably out of sympathy with his activities, but it seems a small girl was heard weeping by her mother.

When asked the reasons for this, the little girl said that Moore had invited her into his house, asked her to pat his bald-headed mouse which promptly jump up and spit at her.

On the positive side, however, as a judge, Moore did rule that if an Arkansas couple got a divorce, they could still be called brother and sister.

If Moore loses his election, there is no doubt Trump will make him Ambassador to Canada.”

 

Table of Contents

• Former Military Leaders Want to Expand and Improve Child Care — to Increase Future Recruitment
• America Can’t Win the Drug War in Afghanistan
• Kansas’s ravaged economy a cautionary tale as Trump plans huge tax cuts for rich
• Trump Gives Roy Moore Strongest Endorsement Yet
• Thousands protest Netanyahu in Tel Aviv
• Number of Islamist radicals ‘at an all-time high’, warns German intelligence chief
• California fires: largest blaze threatens Santa Barbara and prompts evacuation
• Erdogan slams Israel as ‘terrorist state’ that ‘kills children’
• Causes and Consequences of Air Pollution in Beijing, China
• Suffering for Fun and Profit
• Bangladesh minister says wants to ‘wipe out’ Manila bank for heist role

 

Former Military Leaders Want to Expand and Improve Child Care — to Increase Future Recruitment

December 9 2017

by Rachel M. Cohen

The Intercept

The U.S. military’s areas of expertise: bombs, guns … day care?

You wouldn’t think it, but when it comes to child care — one of the biggest expenses families face — the Armed Forces have a lot to offer. That’s because the Department of Defense sponsors the nation’s only federally run universal child care program – serving roughly 200,000 children. What’s more, the care is considered both high-quality and affordable. While the average civilian family spends a quarter of its income on child care, the average military family spends about 9 percent.

Millions of American families would benefit if the Armed Forces’ demonstrably successful federal model were expanded. But while some Republicans and military leaders have been thinking a lot about child care and military service lately, that’s not what they have in mind. Instead, they’re wondering if different state pre-K and early childhood programs could be used to bolster military recruitment. The American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., organized an event this week with the provocative title, “Military readiness and early childhood: What is the link?”

The link, it turns out, is that the Department of Defense estimates that 71 percent of the 34 million 17- to 24-year-olds in the United States — the military’s target recruitment population — are ineligible to enlist in the Armed Forces. And Mission: Readiness, a group of retired military leaders, has endorsed a novel solution to bring those numbers up: more high-quality child care.

According to the Pentagon, a third of 17- to 24-year-olds couldn’t join the Armed Forces because they lack a high school diploma or would fail the military’s entrance exam. The hope is that better preschool and child care could help improve graduation rates. Other leading factors that preclude enlistment include obesity, criminal records, and history of drug abuse. In 2014, the commanding general of U.S. Army Recruiting Command told the Wall Street Journal that only about 1 percent of people in that age range are both “eligible and inclined to have a conversation with us” about joining the military.

The AEI panel featured three retired military leaders – Craig McKinley, a former U.S. Air Force general; Gregory Johnson, a former U.S. Navy admiral; and Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., a former U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant general.

Johnson said the lack of available recruits presents a “profoundly strategic problem.”

“It’s ultimately a national security issue,” added McKinley. Because of the end of the draft in 1973, he added, “it’s not easy to be a recruiter in today’s day and age.”

Bergman noted that 1 percent or less of Americans are active military personnel, with less than 10 percent of Americans having ever served at all. “We’re dealing with the edge of the bell curve, but that edge has a tremendous amount of responsibility,” he stressed.

The panelists discussed the importance of brain development from birth to age 5, a topic of growing consensus among education researchers, scientists, and policymakers. And yet, after laying out what they described as a serious problem for national security and civil society, the panelists made clear that expanding early childhood efforts was a job best left for the states, not the federal government. The federal government, though, has a positive track record in this area, running both the military’s early child care program and Head Start, which has provided more than 33 million low-income children early childhood education since 1965.

“If you’re a state and you consider the federal government a source of funding, you’ve already limited your success,” said Bergman. In a hallway interview after the event, he told The Intercept that Head Start, a distinctly successful program, should not be expanded.

During the event, an audience member asked the panelists about the lessons to be learned from the military’s child development centers.

McKinley credited the “advocacy of military families” for the Armed Forces’ high-quality child care, and Johnson added that it also helps that military families tend to be married, two-parent households. The rise of single-parent households was a common theme throughout the event, with panelists suggesting that the decline of the nuclear family has destabilized child development, consequently hurting prospects for military recruitment, among other things.

Their answers about the child development centers, however, glossed over the military program’s most likely reasons for its success.

“In the civilian world, the amount and quality of childcare is directly dependent on how much parents can pay,” wrote journalist Bryce Covert in a comprehensive profile of the military’s child care program. “In the military, that link has been severed, and families receive consistent care regardless of how much they’re able to contribute.” In 2013, the federal government covered about two-thirds of the cost.

Military child care workers also receive higher pay and stronger benefits than their private sector counterparts, and almost 100 percent of the military’s child development centers are accredited, compared with only 11 percent of child care establishments nationally.

The military’s program wasn’t always considered exemplar. In 1982, the Government Accountability Office reported that the military’s child care offerings were in abysmal shape and that child care workers were paid paltry wages — less than garbage collectors. Congress then started paying attention to these issues and passed the Military Child Care Act of 1989, which closed down inadequate facilities and funded the creation of over 200 new ones. The law also set new health and safety standards, improved teacher pay, and bolstered curricula. Quality soared thereafter.

But as Covert noted, there’s nothing the government did to support children, families, and teachers in the military that it couldn’t do for the rest of the country. The federal government could increase child care subsidies to make the service more affordable, incentivize higher standards, fund upgrades, and increase pay and training for child care workers.

“People have referred to what happened with the military child care as a Cinderella story, because you had this system going from a system in crisis to a model for the nation in under five years,” said Deborah Phillips, a psychology professor at Georgetown University, in a PBS segment on the program.

The federal government currently spends about $15 billion per year supporting early childhood efforts, with most of that money going toward Head Start. The Intercept asked Katharine Stevens, AEI’s resident scholar focused on early childhood initiatives and the moderator of Tuesday’s event, whether she supports an expansion of the successful program.

“Education is fundamentally the responsibility of the states,” Stevens answered, emphasizing that “it would not be possible” for the federal government to provide early childhood education for all American children. Stevens added that states and localities spending so much on K-12 education may decide that those “human development dollars” would be better spent on child care in the early years of life. “A lot of K-12 dollars are spent on failure, remediation,” she said.

Congress is close to passing a tax reform bill that would increase the deficit by more than $1.4 trillion by cutting taxes for the rich. Still, Stevens said that “from a financial and a political point of view, it’s unlikely that the best bet” for funding early childhood is to count on the federal government.

Stevens, acknowledging that the military child care program was “an outstanding model” then admitted that she has not thoroughly researched the prospect of expanding it.

For countless American families, though, that could make all the difference.

 

America Can’t Win the Drug War in Afghanistan

December 5, 2017

by Ted Galen Carpenter

The National Interest

As if the United States needed more evidence that its sixteen-year mission in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility, a new United Nations report provides an additional reason for depression. The 2017 Afghanistan Opium Survey from the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, released on November 15, confirms that Washington’s effort to curb illicit narcotics trafficking in the country has failed.

Almost every aspect of the report contains bad news. Overall opium production reached nine thousand metric tons, compared to 4,800 tons in 2016. That was a record level since the UN began keeping statistics on the product in 1994. Some 328,000 hectares were used to grow poppy (the source of opium), an increase of nearly 50 percent from the previous record set in 2014. Poppy cultivation also spread to provinces that were previously free of such cultivation. That development means that twenty-four of the country’s thirty-four provinces now are directly involved in illicit drug production. Despite a 14 percent drop in price per unit, the overall value of the crop increased by 55 percent because of the sheer overall volume. An evaluation of the UN report from the Afghan Analysis Network aptly concluded that opium is “a low-risk crop in a high-risk environment.”

Indeed, the drug trade is a crucial part of Afghanistan’s economy, both in regions that the Afghan government controls and in Taliban-dominated regions. The Kabul government estimates that at least three million farmers make their living from that crop. In a desperately poor country, such income is often the difference between a decent lifestyle and destitution. U.S. leaders face a hopeless dilemma. If they press the government of President Ashraf Ghani to increase eradication efforts, then that move will alienate beleaguered farmers and drive them into the arms of the Taliban. Yet doing nothing risks intense condemnation from Russia and numerous other drug-consuming nations in Europe and elsewhere. Acceptance also leaves in place an important source of revenue for the Taliban.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the Taliban is the only financial beneficiary of the opium trade. Key officials in the Kabul regime, both under Ghani and his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, have profited handsomely from that commerce. Cynical Afghans have noted the opulent mansions that government officials and their cronies build in Kabul’s best neighborhoods, derisively calling them “poppy palaces.”

An especially disappointing example of President Trump’s multi-front retreat from the foreign-policy realism that he seemed to embrace during the 2016 presidential campaign was his decision to perpetuate the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan. The mission made sense in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The target of that intervention was Al Qaeda, the organization responsible for the 9-11 atrocity. George W. Bush’s administration made the Taliban an additional target of U.S. military wrath only when that government refused to turn over Al Qaeda leaders and no longer give the terrorist group sanctuary in Afghanistan.

The mission of disrupting and degrading Al Qaeda was accomplished long ago. Any lingering justification for staying in Afghanistan ended when U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden. Ousting the Taliban regime in late 2001 as part of the initial military offensive was sufficient punishment for its role in protecting and enabling Al Qaeda. Despite its odious, reactionary nature, the Taliban’s political agenda always has been confined to Afghanistan. It is not a terrorist organization with international reach.

But instead of proclaiming victory and withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, Washington has transformed the objective into an endless nation-building mission to keep the corrupt Kabul regime from losing power to the Taliban. In the process, the United States has expended more than $1 trillion and sacrificed more than 2,400 American lives. And now U.S. leaders face the prospect of intensifying an inherently unachievable war on drugs in Afghanistan.

The absurdity of the Afghan mission was highlighted in late November when B-52 bombers and an F-22 fighter launched attacks on opium labs. Both were weapons systems designed to protect core American security interests against dangerous adversaries. They were never intended to be part of a quixotic crusade to blast drug trafficking targets in rural Afghanistan. Misusing tax dollars and expensive military hardware for such purposes would be humorous if it were not so pathetic.

Escalating the drug war in Afghanistan is just one more indicator of the bankruptcy of Washington’s overall policy regarding that country. President Trump should return to the negative opinion that he expressed about the Afghan intervention during his bid for the presidency. He foolishly allowed Secretary of Defense James Mattis and other advocates of the existing policy to dissuade him from withdrawing U.S. troops and terminating the futile mission. The latest data on the drug trade and its lucrative financial benefits for both sides in the civil war gives Trump another chance to correct his error and end the folly of Washington’s Afghan crusade.

 

Kansas’s ravaged economy a cautionary tale as Trump plans huge tax cuts for rich

Kansas slashed taxes at the top to try to spur growth – but the plan crippled the state’s finances and proved disastrous for its Republican governor

December 10, 2017

by Dominic Rushe in Topeka, Kansas

The Guardian

Is Donald Trump about to turn America into Kansas? It’s a question some worried people who live in the state are asking as the Republican party pushes through the biggest tax overhaul in a generation – an overhaul that, they claim, bears an uncanny resemblance to a tax plan that left their midwestern home in disarray.

After a failed economic experiment meant to boost economic growth blew a hole in the Kansas budget as big as a prairie sky (a $350m deficit in the current fiscal year and nearly $600m in the next) state jobs and services have been slashed.

Prison guards are sharing stab vests at the El Dorado maximum security prison in southern Kansas. At the end of a shift, the sweat-soaked vests, worn all day in a facility without air conditioning, are passed to the next person by guards, many of whom are coming off 12- or 16-hour shifts.

Jail cells designed to hold one inmate are housing three or four at Ellsworth correctional facility. Riots have broken out at other prisons. The family of one guard who recently killed himself told union reps stress and over-work were to blame.

Next year, the state faces a school shutdown after the supreme court found its educational spending was unconstitutionally low. Some of those schools have already had to shorten the school year in order to save cash.

To make ends meet, money that was earmarked for roads has been diverted to the general fund. A state that used to maintain 1,200 miles of road a year is now repairing 200 miles a year. Even in the capital, Topeka, potholes are everywhere.

The crisis follows the 2012 passage of a tax plan by Kansas governor Sam Brownback that he dubbed “the march to zero”.

Individual state income tax rates dropped from 6.4% to 4.9% – with the intention of getting rid of them altogether eventually. Taxes were eliminated on so-called pass through entities – businesses where taxes are collected at the rate of the business owner and not at the corporate rate. The plan would provide a “shot of adrenaline” to the Kansas economy, Brownback claimed.

Instead, the state’s revenues collapsed. Rich people who had been paying high taxes became “pass-through entities”. The state’s coffers emptied and the promised economic miracle failed to materialize.

Lisa Ochs, president of the American Federation of Teachers-Kansas, said Brownback’s plan is a scale model of Trump’s plans. He, too, intends to cut taxes for businesses and give big breaks to the rich in a plan he says will provide “rocket fuel” for the American economy.

“There never was a shot of adrenaline. If anything, that shot put the state on life support,” she said. “It’s the same thing that Trump is saying: there’s going to be tremendous job growth. Well, that didn’t happen either. It’s going to take an entire generation to undo this damage.”

Ochs said: “I just hope the country can listen to us. Don’t do what we did.”

Job growth in the state lags behind neighboring Missouri. The cuts to pass-through businesses gave some small businesses a small tax break – but didn’t spark the promised hiring boom.

The backlash has become so fierce that state employers are taking notice. Staff at the woefully understaffed Larned State hospital were recently warned not to speak to the media or their own legislators.

Hospital executives have since attempted to “clarify” the memo and dropped the directive – arguing it was never meant to silence workers. Workers, however, say there is a clear intent to stop them for speaking out.

One local hospital worker said: “There is a climate of fear. There are only three major employers where I live: the state, Walmart and Lakemary Center [a facility for children with intellectual/developmental disabilities]. It’s hard to get a job here.” The employee gave their name but the Guardian decided to withhold it for fear of jeopardizing the person’s job.

Sarah LaFrenz Falk, president of the Kansas Organization of State Employees ,who recently spoke to Congress about her fears about the Republican tax plan, said she sees an agenda in the Brownback plan – one that is mirrored in Trump’s plan: give huge tax breaks to super-rich donors [the rightwing, union-bashing Koch brothers are Kansas’s richest residents], then hand them a second win by cutting services, waiting for those services to buckle under the strain and then argue the private sector can do it better.

“They did what their donors wanted,” LaFrenz Falk said. Seeing the same plan enacted on a national scale is “very frightening,” she said. “History is littered with examples of cultures that allowed the wealthy to take over and forgot about the rest. What happens next? It doesn’t end well. How does that look in a country with no gun control?”

Kansas has already had one horrific example of private enterprise failure. In October lawmakers were “flabbergasted” to learn that the companies that now run Kansan foster homes had “lost” more than 70 children. Revelations about the unaccounted children came after it was revealed children had been left to sleep in local contractors’ offices because their were no places for them.

The state is currently looking to privatise its largest prison, at Lansing, near Kansas City. CoreCivic, the company overseeing construction of the new prison, is subject to lawsuits in six states and was accused by state officials of grossly under-staffing facilities in Tennessee.

One prison guard who spoke to the Guardian said the prison system was in the worst state they had witnessed in a 30-year career. After the state struggled to hire guards, the minimum age for hiring was dropped from 21 to 18. Few of the guard’s colleagues at a local women’s prison are now over the age of 21. “They are looking after women who are old enough to be their mothers or grandmothers,” the guard said. “During the recession we had cutbacks, but it was never as bad as it is now,” he said.

The details of Trump’s tax plan are still being worked out, but it looks certain to pass, and the fixed positions are big corporate tax breaks and a massive reduction for pass-through entities.

According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the benefits clearly skew to the rich. And by 2027, when many of its short-term tax breaks will expired, every income group below $75,000 would face tax increases, on average. Corporate tax cuts and benefits to the rich, including the abolition of inheritance tax, would remain.

The bill looks set to add $1tn to the national debt. Republicans are already discussing paying for the plan by cutting social security and gutting Medicare and Medicaid, the two federally funded health insurance schemes.

But, worryingly for Trump, Brownback’s tax plan proved not just disastrous for the state but also for Brownback and his supporters.

Brad Pendergrast runs Kansas Speaks, a state-wide poll run out of Fort Hays University. Even in 2010, when Kansas’s tax plan was still just a twinkle in Brownback’s glassy eyes, he didn’t have a popular mandate, he said. “There was some support for decreasing income tax, but he didn’t have a mandate,” said Pendergrast. “More Kansans supported decreasing property taxes and sales taxes.”

Now the majority of people in Kansas – of whatever political persuasion – think taxes on top earners should be increased or at least stay the same, a view that has strengthened over time. Some 45% wanted income taxes of top earners to rise in 2010, by the time of the latest poll that had risen to 60%, this in a state where all but two counties voted for Trump. The majority think taxes on corporations should be increased or stay the same.

The longer the tax cuts were in place, the more informed the electorate became, said Pendergrast, and the more they decided it was not working. “Republicans in general don’t want to pay taxes,” said Pendergrast. “When a state can’t meet its obligations, people realize that there are things you have to do and things you can’t,” he said.

Trump’s tax plan too is polling badly even before it is finalised. Nearly half (49%) of people aware of the measure said they opposed it, up from 41% in October, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Local, Republican, commentators have also come out against it and pushed their senators to block it – to no avail. A Kansas City Star editorial called Trump’s plan the “evil twin” of the Brownback plan. “Newsflash from the Heartland: This won’t end well,” wrote the paper’s editorial board.

The paper’s columnist Steve Rose, who described himself as a “Bob Dole Republican” wrote: “To sell this massive tax cut for businesses and the wealthy as a boon to the middle class is an outright distortion. And to claim the bill is not a trillion-dollar-plus budget buster is either a bald-faced lie, or those who support it are living in the same fairytale as Kansas governor Sam Brownback.”

Brownback’s plan led to electoral defeat for his supporters in 2016, and the election of moderate Republicans he had fought with to pass his plan. His political career is now in limbo. Trump had tapped him to be his ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom but that appointment seems to have gone into a holding pattern – despite recent protestation that his plan worked.

“Sometimes things have to get really bad before they change,” said Ochs. “The lesson we should take from Kansas is that you can put reasonable people together to work together to find solutions. That is something Kansas needs right now. Frankly, it is something that the country needs.”

 

Trump Gives Roy Moore Strongest Endorsement Yet

President labels Democratic candidate Doug Jones ‘a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!’

December 4, 2017

by John T. Bennett

roll call

Donald Trump on Monday gave his strongest endorsement yet to Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, making clear that keeping the seat in Republican hands is more important to the president than the sexual misconduct charges against the former judge.

The president used a pair of tweets to urge Alabama voters to send Moore to the Senate in next Tuesday’s special election, writing that Democrats’ blanket opposition to the just-passed Senate Republican tax cut bill shows Moore’s vote is necessary.

But Trump did not stop there, stating that Moore will side with him and Republican on a slew of issues important to GOP voters, along with an attack on Democratic challenger Doug Jones.

“We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!” Trump wrote.

Trump’s Monday morning tweets were an even clearer and stronger endorsement than comments he made on Moore on Nov. 21, when he said: “We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat.”

A little later Monday morning, Moore fired off his own tweet letting his followers know he and Trump are united in the race. After Trump endorsed his candidacy, the GOP candidate tweeted he is “Thankful for President Trump’s support.”

Moore added: “The America First agenda will #MAGA. Can’t wait to help him #DrainTheSwamp.”

Several polls show Moore now leading the former prosecutor in the closely watched race, showing the GOP candidate’s strategy of firing up GOP voters by casting his sexual misconduct conduct charges as a coordinated operation by the Republican establishment and mainstream media has been highly effective.

Trump is expected to travel to Pensacola, Florida, on Friday for a campaign-style rally four days before the special election. White House aides have said he is not expected to step foot in Alabama on Moore’s behalf, but the Pensacola television market covers parts of the Yellowhammer State.

Many Senate Republicans have made their opposition to Moore joining their conference clear, but even moderate Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, believes they will have to seat him if he defeats Jones due to the chamber’s Constitutional obligations.

“But under the Constitution, the test on whether or not you seat someone is whether they satisfy the age and residency requirements,” she recently told CNN. “So, we would have to seat him, but I hope we don’t get there. I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. And I hope that the voters of Alabama choose not to elect him.”

Trump, who also has faced sexual misconduct charges, is trying to convince Alabama voters to do just that – and is no longer being subtle.

Jones has drastically outraised GOP nominee Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate race, new campaign finance documents show.

Jones raised nearly six times ($10.2 million to $1.8 million) Moore’s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent.

— Bridget Bowman contributed to this report.

Comment: Like always cleaves unto like.

 

Thousands protest Netanyahu in Tel Aviv

Some 10,000 people have staged a “March of Shame” prompted by police probes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into allegations of graft. His Likud party has said leftists preferred to “create division.”

December 10, 2017

DW

An anti-corruption protest Saturday in Tel Aviv drew half the turnout seen at a similar rally a week ago – before US President Donald Trump’s controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Protesters wore T-shirts with the slogan “Not right, not left, straight” in Hebrew, rejecting a claim by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party that his critics were left-wingers who preferred division to uniting “behind Jerusalem.”

Marchers held banners reading “We are fed up with corrupt (politicians)” and “sweep the corrupt away,” contrary to the four-term leader’s repeated denials of any wrongdoing.

Police estimated the turnout at 10,000 demonstrators, down from the 20,000 estimated at a similar anti-corruption rally last weekend.

Gifts, deal?

Netanyahu is suspected of having received luxury gifts from affluent individuals. He has also been questioned over a secret deal he allegedly sought for favorable newspaper coverage.

His close ally, David Bitan, the parliamentary chairman of Israel’s ruling coalition,  has also been questioned over separate allegations stemming from his time as deputy mayor of Bishon Lezion, near Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu’s popularity was boosted by what he called Trump’s “courageous” decision to recognize Jerusalem.

If eventually charged, Netanyahu would come under pressure to resign or call an election to test whether he still has a mandate to govern.

 

Number of Islamist radicals ‘at an all-time high’, warns German intelligence chief

December 10, 2017

RT

German intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen has said that the security services are facing a record numer of Islamists. The news comes as world leaders announce the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, potentially prompting an exodus of fighters.

The number of Islamist sympathizers is at an “an all-time high”, Maassen, the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), said on Sunday. The number has gone up from 9,700 to 10,800 over the past year, with the fundamentalists increasingly abandoning radicalization in mosques in favor of “small conspiratorial circles, primarily on the internet,” which is proving a “particular challenge” for the security services. The splitting up of Islamist groups into smaller factions has also made them more difficult to monitor, Maassen added.

Salafists follow an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, and Salafist organizations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir see Western-style democracy as incompatible with the rule of God, instead seeking to live under Sharia law. This might not necessarily make them prone to terrorism or violence, but their beliefs provide the spiritual basis for groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Maassen highlighted Salafists coming from Chechnya and the North Caucasus as a particular threat, due to their wide-ranging networks and combat experience both in the insurgency against Russia and their fighting on behalf of Islamic State in the Middle East.

The intelligence chief’s warnings come as world leaders announce the end of the IS uprising in Iraq and Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently declared that almost the entire territory of Syria has now been cleared from terrorists, while on Saturday Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also announced that IS had been cleared from all Iraqi territory. Similar statements had been made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in November.

Although its dreams of a caliphate have been shattered, IS continues to pose a threat through its remaining fighters, who may make their way back to their home countries. Moreover, it has affiliate groups in Egypt, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Around 950 Germans left to fight jihad on behalf on IS after its surge across Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014. Since then around a third of them have returned, although according to Maassen most of those are women and children.

“We haven’t seen any significant flows of male fighters returning home,” Maassen told the Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) news agency earlier in December. “We assume that Westerners still fighting with IS to this day intend to stay there until the very end, and will only then seek to settle in Europe once again.”

But the returnees still pose a threat, and Maassen warned about the dangers posed by women and children returning from IS-controlled areas, who may have been radicalized during their time in the self-proclaimed caliphate.

“There are children who have been brainwashed and highly radicalized at ‘schools’ in IS-held areas. It’s a problem for us because many of these kids and teenagers can sometimes be dangerous,” Maassen told DPA.

Massen added that women returning to Germany from Islamist strongholds “had become so radicalized and identify so deeply with IS-ideology that, by all accounts, they must also be identified as jihadis… we have to keep them in our sights.”

 

California fires: largest blaze threatens Santa Barbara and prompts evacuation

Residents of coastal towns ordered to evacuate early Sunday, as Thomas fire edges closer to Santa Barbara after blackening 155,000 acres

December 10, 2017

The Guardian

The largest California wildfire advanced on coastal towns near Santa Barbara on Sunday, stoked by the gusty winds and dry conditions that have fueled destructive blazes across the south of the state.

Authorities ordered residents in parts of Carpinteria and Montecito to evacuate early on Sunday as the Thomas fire edged closer to the city of Santa Barbara, about 100 miles west of Los Angeles. The blaze has already blackened 155,000 acres and consumed hundreds of structures.

Some half-dozen fires have raged across California since early this week. Governor Jerry Brown issued emergency proclamations for Santa Barbara, San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, freeing up additional resources to fight the infernos.

Brown visited Ventura County on Saturday and said deadly and destructive wildfires in winter were “the new normal”.

At a news conference, the governor said drought and climate change meant California faces a “new reality” where lives and property are continually threatened by fire, at a cost of billions of dollars. He added that there was a good chance of seeing “firefighting at Christmas” this year.

It will take “heroic” efforts in the US and abroad, Brown said, to stem climate change. The governor, who strongly criticised Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal in an interview with CBS due to be broadcast on Sunday evening, urged US lawmakers to pay more attention to dealing with natural disasters such as fires, floods and earthquakes.

This week, Trump issued a federal proclamation that enabled agencies to coordinate relief efforts in southern California.

At least one home in Carpinteria burned down on Sunday, the Santa Barbara County fire department said. The fire was only 15% contained as of Sunday morning, according to the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire).

Top wind speeds were forecast to increase to 55mph on Sunday from 40mph on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Such gusts, coupled with the rugged mountain terrain above Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, have hampered firefighting efforts, authorities said.

The fires have forced the evacuation of some 200,000 people and destroyed nearly 800 structures. A 70-year-old woman died on Wednesday in a car accident as she attempted to flee the flames in Ventura County.

The Thomas fire, the largest blaze, had left nearly 90,000 customers without power as of early Sunday morning, Southern California Edison said on its website.

The 8,5000 firefighters battling the fires that have burned over the past week gained some ground on Saturday. Both the Creek and Rye fires in Los Angeles County were 90% contained by Sunday morning, officials said, while the Skirball fire in Los Angeles was 75% contained. North of San Diego, the 4,100-acre Lilac fire was 60% contained.

A brush fire broke out on Saturday night in the city of Monrovia in Los Angeles County, prompting temporary evacuations, the US Forest Service said on Twitter. A group of Boy Scouts camping in the area were among those evacuated, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Crews knocked down the three-acre blaze and no structures were reported damaged, the city of Monrovia said on its website.

 

Erdogan slams Israel as ‘terrorist state’ that ‘kills children’

December 102017

RT

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out against Israel Sunday, calling it a ‘terrorist state’ that ‘kills children.’ Erdogan promised to fight to the bitter end against Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.

Palestine is an innocent victim… as for Israel, it is a terrorist state, yes, terrorist!” Erdogan said at a congress of his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) in the Turkish city of Sivas on Sunday. “We will not abandon Jerusalem to the mercy of a state that kills children,” he added.

As for the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, despite the Palestinians viewing the eastern part of the city as the capital of its future sovereign state, Erdogan promised to use “all means to fight” it, according to AFP.

Violent clashes have continued in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza for several days after Trump’s announcement on Wednesday. Two Palestinians were killed and over 1,000 people injured on Friday, with a further 230 wounded on Saturday, as Israeli security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon at the protesters.

Erdogan blasted Israel as an “oppressive, occupation state,” calling the response of the police and military to the protests “disproportionate,” Hurriyet reported.

“The US ignored a 1980 UN Security Council ruling regarding Jerusalem which the US itself signed at that time,” Erdogan said as cited by the Daily Sabah. “A system in which the stronger one is regarded as being right can’t constitute justice, peace and stability,” he said, adding that the American approach could lead to more tragedies.

In response to Erdogan’s remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retorted that that his Turkish counterpart was hardly one to talk.

“I’m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists” said Netanyahu, adding that Erdogan “helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people.”

“That is not the man who will lecture us.”

Trump’s announcement faced widespread international condemnation and was backed only by Israel, which has been pushing for Jerusalem to be recognized as its capital for decades. The leaders of France, Germany and other European nations have all agreed that the US move is dangerous and harmful to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, urging the US to abide by international agreements. The Arab League also rejected the American decision, saying on Saturday that it amounted to recognition of the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem by Israel, and ipso facto had no legal basis.

Causes and Consequences of Air Pollution in Beijing, China

by Mason F. Ye

osu

Beijing, China suffers from some of the worst air pollution worldwide. What is the source of this air pollution? How has the poor air quality affected the people and the surrounding environment?

China is notorious for being a major polluter. Its economic growth in the past three decades has been the fastest among major nations, which is the main factor in why China has extensive air pollution. Of the twenty cities with the worst air pollution worldwide, 16 are located in China, including Beijing.1,2,3 Due to this extensive air pollution, China’s Environmental Sustainability Index is ranked near the bottom among countries worldwide.2

The causes of Beijing’s widespread air pollution can be attributed to a number of factors: an enormous economic boom, a surge in the number of motorized vehicles, population growth, output from manufacturing, and natural reasons which include the city’s surrounding topography and seasonal weather. China has also experienced major economic growth with a drastic rise in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This increase in wealth can be correlated with an increase in pollution.

With this amplified wealth, individuals are more capable of affording motor vehicles.1,4,5,6 The number of motor vehicles on Beijing’s roads has doubled to 3.3 million with nearly 1200 added each day. Emissions from motorized vehicles contribute to nearly 70% of the city’s air pollution. The four most dangerous pollutants that are emitted include: sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter (e.g. PM10).3  Newly introduced vehicles have lower emission standards, and thereby emit more of these pollutants into the atmosphere than their older counterparts. Motorized vehicles are only one contributor to air pollution. Population growth in China and Beijing contributes to extensive pollution. Beijing’s population has swelled from 11 million to 16 million in just 7 years, and has doubled over the past century.1,3

Coal burning factories also contribute to the smog present in Beijing. These factories rely on outdated and inefficient technologies. The factories are located on the outskirts of Beijing and the nearby cities of Harbin and Hebei.1 Beijing is a victim of its own topography because it is surrounded by mountains, ensuring that pollution remains trapped within the city limits.5 Air quality worsens in spring and summer when temperature and humidity levels rise, and winds contribute to the smog by carrying pollutants from industrialized southern regions.3 There are a variety of consequences of air pollution in Beijing. Along with health consequences, high levels of harmful emissions have led to hundreds of flight cancellations and frequent road closures due to low visibility levels.7 Air pollution has increased substantially over the years, resulting in thick smog that often engulfs the entire city6

Air pollution is measured by the Air Quality Index (AQI), which scales pollution levels from 0 to 500 and assigns a color to different number levels to measure how hazardous the air quality is on any given day (Figure 4). Levels of 100 or below are known as “Blue Sky Days”, when smog is not easily visible.3,5,7 However, levels now reach up to 755, as measured by the United States Embassy in Beijing, which employs its own pollution reading device. This is the highest level of air pollution since recording began in 2008, and was appropriately deemed “Beyond Index”. The World Health Organization suggests that scores near 500 contain more than twenty times the safe level of particulate matter in the air.5

Emissions and contaminants may also be carried across the Pacific Ocean to the Western United States by powerful global winds called Westerlies. Though this pollution is created by Chinese manufacturing and export of goods, it is demand for these goods in the United that fuels production. The United States is ironically causing its own environmental degradation through trade with China.1,8

The shorter lifespans of Beijing’s citizens has been connected to high pollution levels.7,8 Compared to citizens living in southern China, the average life span for Beijing’s citizens is five to six years shorter. The air pollution in Beijing causes lower birth rates and higher adult mortality from respiratory related diseases. Lung cancer rates have risen over 60% in the past decade, although the smoking rate has not increased.1

In 2003, the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning determined that air pollution was responsible for 411,000 premature deaths across China.3 The 2008 Olympic Summer Games in Beijing was the catalyst leading to many new policies to address air pollution. Emergency measures were enacted depending on the pollution levels, but the most important factor in curbing air pollution is the implementation of new laws and reformation of old laws. The Olympics were crucial in raising awareness about reform of environmental regulations. Many factories, industries, and manufacturing plants were shut down for the duration of the games and driving restrictions were imposed on millions of vehicles.1,9 Although this was a temporary solution for the Olympics, city officials promised to spend over $12 billion dollars on improving the environment. City officials converted coal furnaces in tens of thousands of homes to natural gas and relocated factories to other provinces in China.3

Emergency measures have also been enacted in Beijing. Mandatory factory closures and bans on motor vehicles entering the city are implemented on days of heavy air pollution. In 2013, the Heavy Air Pollution Contingency Plan was passed.10 This plan consists of four warning levels based on air pollution levels. Depending on the warning level, different actions are executed, which include school closures, removing 80% of government vehicles from the road, allowing certain private cars on the roads based on registration plate numbers and day of the week, barring freight and construction vehicles from the roads, utilizing watering carts and sprinkler trucks, shutting factories down, halting construction sites, and even forbidding barbecues and fireworks.10 To most effectively address air pollution would require reform in government laws and behavior.

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) was established in 1998. The organization has the difficult task of reforming environmental laws that are often ignored by leaders. Another problem of environmental laws is the fines are so minuscule that offending corporations would rather pay the penalty, rather than change their business practices.1 Openness in reporting true pollution levels by municipal governments would also lend clarity to the condition of air quality.2 The government only reports AQI numbers up to 500. The Chinese government also prefers to release information only on PM10 particles and not larger PM particles. These larger PM particles may be more dangerous than PM10 particles. The United States Embassy did release such information, but was asked by the Chinese government to limit the release of information to Americans.7

Beijing’s air pollution affects the health of its citizens and threatens to limit the future success and expansion of the city. Though the contamination is extensive, there are possible solutions which can address the problem. By analyzing the sources of pollution, studying its consequences, and by reforming inadequate regulations and laws, Beijing can salvage its environment and create a healthier atmosphere for future generations.

 

 

References

1. Liu, J. & Diamond, J. (2005). China’s Environment in a Globalizing World. Nature, 435:1179-1186.
2. Liu. J., & Diamond, J. (2008). Revolutionizing China’s Environmental Protection. Science, 319:37-38.
3. Stone, R. (2008). Beijing’s Marathon Run to Clean Foul Air Nears Finish Line. Science, 321:636-637.
4. Betts, K. S. (2002). China’s Pollution Progress Slows. Environmental Science & Technology, 36,15:308A-309A.
5. Wong, E. (2013, January 13). On Scale of 0 to 500, Beijing’s Air Quality Tops ‘Crazy Bad’ at 755. The New York Times, pp. A16.
6. Wu, Y., et. al. (2010). On-Road Vehicle Emission Control in Beijing: Past, Present, and Future. Environmental Science & Technology, 45,1:147-153
7. Lim, L. (2011, December 07). Clean Air a ‘Luxury’ in Beijing’s Pollution Zone. National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/
8. Wong, E. (2014, January 21). China is Also an Exporter of Pollution to the Western U.S., Study Finds. The New York Times, pp. A6.
9. Lubick, N. (2008). Will the Dragon Stay Green? China After the Beijing Olympics. Environmental Science & Technology, 42,14:5037-5040.
10. Armstrong, P., & Ke, F. (2013, October 23). Beijing Announces Emergency Measure Amid Fog of Pollution. Cable News Network. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/
11. Lazzati, Nicolò. (2009). [Photograph of woman in China wearing a protective face mask]. Retrieved from FlickrCommons. CC BY 2.0.
12. Bishop, Bill. (2013). [Side by side photographs of Beijing, China on a clear day and with severe air pollution]. Retrieved from The Washington Post. CC BY-NC 2.0.
13. United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2015). Air Quality Index (AQI) Basics. Retrieved from http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi.

Suffering for Fun and Profit

December 10, 2017

by Christian Jüers

 

The “original” Anna Frank diary, that reposes in a Swiss bank, has been written with a ball point pen, something that did not exist at the time it was alleged  the diaries to have been written.

All in all, because of the additions, emendations and alterations to original notes, the ‘Anna Frank diary’, in the state it is presented today, is a fraud, in the same category as the “Wilkomerski” book, “Fragments” alleged to have been written by a young Jewish “Holocaust survivor.”

This disconnected work, initially eagerly accepted and greatly praised by the Jewish community, was written by a Protestant Swiss, Bruno Dossekker who was never in a concentration camp and is also a fraud.

“Holocaust” literature is studded with equally fraudulent works such as the “Painted Bird” and hundreds of other productions that, by rights ought to be in the fiction section of the libraries that carry them.

The sole purpose for the execution of these pathetic fictions is primarily to make money for their creators but secondarily to promote sympathy for the entire Jewish community based on pity.

Propaganda, as a weapon of psychological warfare is in even wider use today. Communists were masters of the art. Often they used the direct approach; just as often they employed diversion tactics to focus the eyes and ears of the world in directions other than where the real conflict was being waged.

For many years, through propaganda alone, the dead threat of Hitler and Nazism had been constantly held before the public in a diversion maneuver to keep attention from being directed against the live threat of Stalin, Khrushchev and Communism.

Such has been the effect, if not the deliberate intention of many who have promoted its distribution, of a book of popular appeal-‘The Diary Of Anna Frank.’ It has been sold to the public as the actual diary of a young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp after two years of abuse and horror.

Many Americans have read the book or seen the movie version, and have been deeply moved by the real life drama it claims to present. But have we been misled in the belief that Anna Frank actually wrote this diary? And if so, should an author be permitted to produce a work of fiction and sell it to the world as fact, particularly one of such tremendous emotional appeal?

These sort of pathetic refugees from the back wards seem to be drawn to the Holocausters…and they to them. There are now “Holocaust Survivors” as young as thirty, which is an interesting anomaly because the last concentration camp was closed in 1945. Perhaps they consider the last frenzied spring sale at Bloomingdale’s department store to be what they survived.

Next we can expect to see a book based on twenty-seven volumes of secret diaries prepared on a modern word processor within the current year by an alleged inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, describing the Nazi slaughter of tens of millions of weeping Jews by means that would shame a modern African state.

And, predictably, the publication of these howlers would be greeted with joy on the part of the fund raisers and fanatics, praised in the columns of the ‘New York Times’ and scripted by Steven Spielberg for a heart-wrenching and guaranteed Oscar-winning film.

Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies will be donated to American schools and the Jewish community will demand that subservient executive and legislative bodies in America create a Day of Atonement as a National Holiday to balance the terrible Christian Christmas and the wickedly Satanic Halloween.

Conservationists must hate these books because so many otherwise beautiful and useful trees are slaughtered for their preparation

In 1980, Otto Frank, Annie’s father, sued two Germans, Ernst Romer and Edgar Geiss, for distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery. The trial produced a study by official German handwriting experts that determined everything in the diary was written by the same person. The person that wrote the diaries had used a ballpoint pen throughout. Unfortunately for Herr Frank, the ballpoint pen was not available until 1951 whereas Anna was known to have died of typhus in 1944.

Because of the lawsuit in a German court, the German state forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt [BKA] forensically examined the manuscript, which at that point in time consisted of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound in a fourth notebook, with special forensic equipment.

The results of tests, performed at the BKA laboratories, showed that “significant” portions of the work, especially the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available before 1951, the BKA concluded those sections must have been added subsequently.

The BKA information, at the urgent request of the Jewish community, was redacted at the time for the German public but later inadvertently released to researchers in the United States.

In the end, BKA clearly determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anna’s handwriting. The German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an account of this report alleging that (a) some editing postdated

1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by

the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was a postwar fake.

 

Bangladesh minister says wants to ‘wipe out’ Manila bank for heist role

December 10, 2017

Reuters

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh’s finance minister said late on Saturday he wanted to “wipe out” a Philippines bank that was used to channel $81 million stolen from the Bangladeshi central bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last year.

Abul Maal A. Muhith was responding to questions from reporters about a Reuters story on Friday that said Bangladesh Bank had asked the New York Fed to join a lawsuit it was considering filing against Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) RCBS.PS seeking damages.

“The Bangladesh Bank has taken a decision (on filing a suit). They will let me know. We haven’t so far taken any steps as the Philippines government was taking care of it (investigating the heist),” Muhith said.

“But it seems Rizal bank has been playing delinquent. We want to wipe out Rizal bank from the world.”

Muhith did not elaborate. He did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Unidentified hackers stole the money using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system. The money was sent to accounts at RCBC and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines.

Nearly two years later, there is no word on who was responsible and Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million, mostly from a Manila junket operator.

The Philippine central bank fined RCBC a record one billion pesos ($20 million) last year for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it.

RCBC has said it would not pay any compensation to Bangladesh Bank and that Dhaka bank bore responsibility for the theft since it was negligent.

RCBC did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on a Sunday about Muhith’s comments.

Reporting by Serajul Quadir, Krishna N. Das, Ruma Paul and Karen Lema; Editing by Toby Chopra