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Editor's Note: Maurizio Albahari is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, specializes in social-cultural anthropology and teaches on international migration, pluralism, and European societies. His forthcoming book is titled "Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean Migrations of Sovereignty and Salvation," and he is the author of several publications on migration and religion in Italy and Europe.
Story highlights
Smugglers are not why people are on these vessels, writes Maurizio Albahari
Quotas inadequate both to refugees and European economies, he says
Albahari: EU nations must establish safe, legal channels for displaced people
No single solution to the Mediterranean chronicle of death, he says
On Friday Italy held a national day of mourning. For this is not simply an accident. Accidents and emergencies cannot last two decades. As a field researcher who has dedicated years of work to maritime migration, and as an Italian citizen, I am grateful to the Italian Council of Ministers for taking such an unprecedented decision to make this declaration.
Today we honor the memory and the families of more than 100 refugees, young adults, women, and children from Eritrea, retrieved off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa; and of the many dozens who are still trapped at the bottom of the sea. We also honor the selfless work of the island's residents, tourists, armed forces, medical personnel, and fishermen who have now rescued thousands on their way to Europe.
But I have listened uncomfortably to national and EU politicians who, as usual, have pointed their finger at smugglers, purporting that redoubling efforts to fight them will prevent further loss of life at sea. People at the helm of unseaworthy vessels are menial laborers executing the last and risky part of trips organized by transnational criminal networks.
Smugglers are not the reason why people are on those vessels. Italian and EU institutions are asking what can be done to prevent further tragedies. To answer, they have to ask also whether they did anything to enable them in the first place, including failing to consider implications and alternatives of their specific actions and inactions.
I need to raise a seemingly simple question. What brings thousands of people to trust criminals, pay them 10 times more than they would pay a comfortable seat on a ferry or airplane, and risk their lives? The overarching answer, in its brutal obviousness, is that they may not legally get on those planes and ferries.
They come from countries, such as Eritrea, that methodically oppress their own citizens and will not grant passports and exit visas. They are refugees, forced to leave home without the time and resources to secure legal passage. They have survived the Sahara, and returning from Libya or Egypt is not a feasible and rational option. They are poor. They fail to offer the financial guarantees requested by European consulates, and will not be granted a visa.
Quotas and legal channels for employment are inadequate both to their needs and to the needs of European economies and aging populations. They are prepared to die as they leave with hope, but do not wish to survive in despair. They fall through the immense cracks of a system that needs them for a job or might grant them asylum, but only if they first make it through miles of peril and years of exploitation.
It is evident then, that the Mediterranean chronicle of death cannot end merely as a result of tougher penalties on smugglers, additional resources for search-and-rescue operations, and heightened military surveillance and dissuasion. Prisons, radars, and helicopters are not solutions. Every institution, at every level of governance, needs radical action.
Fishermen and shipmasters should not have to fear that rescuing people will result in criminal charges for aiding and abetting undocumented immigrants. Or are they to engage in racial profiling and evaluate in hectic moments whether somebody in distress is a refugee or an undocumented economic immigrant? Should they rescue the former, but abandon the latter and perhaps face prosecution for failure to rescue? Can these decisions, and people's life, be left to discretion, chance, and the elements?
EU intergovernmental border patrols (FRONTEX) and national armed forces need to clarify, to themselves and to citizens, whether they patrol the Mediterranean to deter migration, to rescue people, or to intercept and deport them to countries of origin and transit.
'Safe, legal channel needed'
Citizens need to remember that in liberal democracies it is on their behalf and in their name that laws are written and implemented. They need to demonstrate to lawmakers that they are not "afraid" of their Eritrean, Syrian, Somali, Egyptian, Afghani, Iraqi, Ghanaian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani employees, fiancés, neighbors, schoolmates, and coworkers, to mention the nationalities increasingly resorting to maritime journeys.
What happens with boundaries of socio-economic inclusion and integration is related to what happens at the border. National and EU policymakers need to envision a common family reunification and asylum policy, and establish more homogenous parameters for asylum adjudication. This could help curb the equally perilous journeys of hope of many Afghanis across the Strait of Otranto, from Greece to Italy and then to northern Europe.
Most urgently, national and EU policymakers need to establish accessible, safe, and legal channels for internally and internationally displaced people to apply for asylum or to be granted temporary protection.
These are not problems only concerning smugglers, immigrants, and refugees. This national day of mourning is a call for the EU and its member states to start refashioning what sovereignty and humanitarianism mean in the 21st century. It is an invitation to fellow Italian and European citizens, including migrants and their children, to practise democracy in its representative and participatory dimensions. And it serves as yet another reminder of north-south disparities in wealth and power, signaled by the fact that the Mediterranean is a frontier in the first place.
There is no single solution to the Mediterranean chronicle of death. There are certainly alternatives to this state of affairs. They are more rational, and more just, than inaction and methodic negligence.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Maurizio Albahari


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A prenatal paternity test can identify whether a man is a baby's father before the baby is born (during pregnancy).
A prenatal paternity test can identify whether a man is a baby's father before the baby is born (during pregnancy).
Prenatal paternity testing is a sensitive subject because of the ethical and moral issues involved, including the risks of an invasive test (see below). Many doctors are unwilling to carry out a prenatal paternity test, especially if confirming the baby's father's identity is the only reason for the test.
For example, if a prenatal paternity test is carried out and the test result is unexpected, the woman may not want to continue with the pregnancy. An unwanted paternity test result is, however, unlikely to be considered adequate grounds for terminating a pregnancy
If you're pregnant and thinking about a prenatal paternity test, talk to your GP or midwife. They can help you consider the issues involved, as well as advise you about the risks for you and your unborn baby. They can also arrange counselling.
Paternity tests can also be carried out after a baby is born. If you're considering any paternity test, it's important to consider the issues involved carefully. Prenatal and other paternity tests are not available on the NHS.
A baby inherits DNA from both its parents. Prenatal paternity tests can identify if a man is the father of a baby by looking at samples containing:
The man and the pregnant woman each provide a sample containing their DNA so it can be analysed. For example, a sample of cheek cells from inside the mouth or a blood sample.
If a paternity test is required for legal reasons, the samples must be taken under strict conditions, as required by the court.
So that the unborn baby's DNA can be analysed, the pregnant woman will also need to provide a sample of:
A sample of fluid from the womb is collected by inserting a needle through the abdomen. This procedure is called
A sample of tissue from the placenta is collected by passing a needle through the wall of the abdomen, or passing a small tube through the vagina and the neck of the womb (cervix). This procedure is called chorionic villus sampling (CVS).
Amniocentesis and CVS have a small risk of miscarriage.
As with any medical treatment or test, the woman must consent to the samples being taken and tested.
Under the Human Tissue Act 2004, prenatal paternity tests done in the UK must also have the consent of the man or men involved.
Important: Our website provides useful information but is not a substitute for medical advice. You should always seek the advice of your doctor when making decisions about your health.

subset: commoncrawl


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Smartphone technology acceptable for remote stroke diagnosis
October 3, 2012
A new Mayo Clinic study confirms the use of smartphones medical images to evaluate stroke patients in remote locations through telemedicine.
"Essentially what this means is that telemedicine can fit in our pockets," says Bart Demaerschalk, M.D., professor of Neurology, and medical director of Mayo Clinic Telestroke.
"For patients this means access to expertise in a timely fashion when they need it most, no matter what emergency room they may find themselves."
Mayo Clinic was the first medical center in Arizona to do pioneering clinical research to study telemedicine to serve patients with stroke in non-urban settings. Today, Mayo Clinic is the hub in a network of 12 other spoke centers, all but one in Arizona.
In telestroke care, the use of telemedicine platforms or robots located in a rural hospital lets a stroke patient be seen in real time by a neurology specialist who typically is working from a desktop or laptop computer in Phoenix. The Mayo Clinic stroke neurologist, whose face appears on a computer screen, consults with emergency room physicians at the rural sites and evaluates the patient.
Patients showing signs of stroke can be examined by the neurologist who can also view scans of the patient's brain to detect possible damage from a hemorrhage or blocked artery. If necessary, patients can be administered clot-busting medications within the narrow window of time necessary to minimize permanent injury to the brain.
How does it compare to desktop computer images?
The study compared the quality of medical images using a particular smartphone application to the same types of information and images typically viewed via desktop computers. Mayo Clinic neurologists worked with emergency physicians and radiologists at Yuma Regional Medical Center to compare brain scan images from 53 patients who came to that medical center with stroke.
The scans were reviewed by radiologists in Yuma and a separate adjudication panel of stroke neurologists to determine the level of agreement between these traditional interpretation routes and new images and scans on smartphones interpreted by telestroke doctors. The study shows there was a high level of agreement (92 to 100 percent) among all the reviewers over the most important radiological features.
"Smartphones are ubiquitous, they are everywhere," Dr. Demaerschalk says. "If we can transmit health information securely and simultaneously use the video conferencing capabilities for clinical assessments, we can have telemedicine anywhere, which is essential in a state like Arizona where more than 40 percent of the population doesn't have access to immediate neurologic care."
The study was funded by the Arizona Department of Health Services and the technology and technical assistance was provided by Calgary Scientific, the maker of ResolutionMD.
The Mayo Clinic Telestroke Network includes hospitals in Kingman, Flagstaff, Parker, Cottonwood, Show Low, Globe, Yuma, Bisbee, Casa Grande, Tuba City and Phoenix, all in Arizona; and a hospital in St. Joseph, Mo. To date, more than 1,000 emergency consultations have taken place for stroke between Mayo Clinic stroke neurologists and physicians at the spoke centers. Such comprehensive evaluation techniques lead to appropriate life-saving treatment for stroke, and have resulted in significant cost reductions by not requiring ground or air ambulance transfer of the patient to another medical center.


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From SELinux Wiki
The SELinux Reference Policy (refpolicy) is a complete SELinux policy that can be used as the system policy for a variety of systems and used as the basis for many Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo. It is rigorously structured using computer science concepts, making it simpler to maintain and use. The goal is to allow greater adaptation and adoption of SELinux while maintaining the knowledge gained through the years of policy evolution, while increasing the ability to validate the security properties of a given SELinux policy.
The following pages describe concepts in Reference Policy and guides for using it.
Writing a reference policy module
Building a reference policy module


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A new document in a year-old patent lawsuit filed by Oracle against Google over Android intellectual property suggests Oracle could be seeking huge damages from Google.
The damages owed to Oracle, if granted by federal Judge William Alsup for the U.S. District Court for Northern California, would "far exceed any money Google has ever earned with Android" and could lead to a rewrite of Android's Dalvik virtual machine, considered integral to Android and used by Android device manufacturers and potentially thousands of Android app developers, wrote one blogger, Florian Mueller, who writes about intellectual property issues involving the software industry.
The actual damages Oracle is demanding are unclear, since many portions of the latest five-page document are blacked out of view in the publicly available version filed Monday in federal court.
Oracle sued Google last August, claiming the Android operating system violates Java patents and copyrights that Oracle inherited when it bought Sun Microsystems. Google denies the charges and claims the case is an attack on open source.
Google's attorney, Scott Weingaertner, of the law firm King & Spaulding in New York, filed the document in response to an expert's opinion on damages in the case entered earlier by Iain Cockburn on behalf of Oracle. Cockburn, a professor of economics at the Boston University School of Management, has provided expert testimony in other patent cases where the valuation of intellectual property is at issue. His damages report has not been made public, and Google's response is the first indication of what it says.
Experts who testify in lawsuits are usually discredited by the opposing counsel, and Cockburn is no exception. Google's attorney said Cockburn made legal errors that are "fundamental and disqualifying," adding that allowing him to testify to a jury would "prejudice Google."
Weingaertner also said that Cockburn is at fault for seeming to contend that advertising revenue Google receives from mobile searches on Android devices should be subject to royalties owed to Oracle for its patents on Java technology that Oracle argues are being used in Android.
Google notes that it does not receive any payment or fee for Android, which is widely considered open source software.
Google's attorney further states that Cockburn found that an "unprecedented" 50% royalty rate was owed to Oracle, and that Cockburn failed to tie that rate to the patented technology at issue in the case.
Weingaertner also states that Cockburn calculated Oracle's loss due to Google's alleged patent infringement based on all Java software, "even though the patented features are only a small part of Java."
Neither Google nor Oracle responded to a request for comment on the case.
Mueller, who calls himself an "activist" blogger, blasted Google for separating Android as an operating system from Google's revenues for Android-based advertising. "On this item, I agree 100% with Oracle and 0% with Google," Mueller wrote. "No matter how much I dislike Oracle's software patents I can't support Google's position on this royalty base issue." He added that Google's representations "defy logic and deny reality."
Mueller said Google chose to make Android available to developers and others without a royality "but doesn't do this for charity. There's a clear business model, and its most essential part [is] advertising revenues related to search and other online services."
Mueller also noted that Cockburn's valuation of a 50% royalty rate could be tripled under the U.S. legal code if Google's alleged patent infringement is found to be willful.
Taking those factors into consideration and the 44 current Android-related patent infringement lawsuits already filed in U.S. courts, Mueller noted that the "Android ecosystem stands on allegedly thin ice."
Mueller noted that Oracle must be holding out for generous damages from Google because that case hasn't settled out of court, as do 95% of such cases. A trial could be held in five months.
"The two companies are not just miles but light years apart, and it could very well be that a defeat in court would require Google to make fundamental changes to its Dalvik virtual machine -- changes that would likely affect many if not all existing Dalvik-based (.DEX) applications," Mueller concluded. "But even in purely financial terms, there's serious doubt as to whether Google would be able to meet Oracle's requirements while continuing to make Android available without charge a per-copy license fee. This lawsuit has the potential to bring about a restructuring of Google's Android business in economic as well as technical terms."
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His e-mail address is email@example.com.


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According to the iPhone dev team blog, the 3.0 OS firmware is jailbreakable on all devices. They have not yet issued a 3.0 jailbreak, but signs are promising for a release sooner than later. A jailbreak would open up the iPhone's Unix chroot jail, allowing read-write access to the entire file system. Doing so on the iPhone lets users install BSD Unix tools, the Debian APT package management system, and OpenSSH.
Together, these tools provide a powerful suite for any iPhone developer, as they offer access to the same Unix tools as you'd find on a Mac. You can monitor your processes, look directly at the files in your sandbox (and edit them if necessary), and interact directly with the iPhone system. Many developers have built scripts and command line utilities that further enhance the iPhone-end of development.
The iPhone runs a cut-down version of OS X, but most of the Unix system tools have been removed. Jailbreaking allows developers to restore those tools and run the iPhone as a near-standard Unix release. As you might expect, development on an open Unix platform is far more powerful and flexible than programming and testing remotely from another computer.
Jailbreaking enhances the App Store development process rather than necessarily replacing it. iPhone developer and author Jonathan Zdziarski told Ars, "Jailbreaking allows you to run tools like top, lsof, netstat, tcpdump and others so you can get a very low-level view of what's happening in your application on the phone." These standard Unix tools are not shipped with the iPhone firmware.
"Sophisticated applications have a lot of moving parts," Zdziarski added. "And sometimes adding a bunch of
NSLog(@"Here!") statements aren't the best way to debug your code. By seeing what ports are open, what traffic is flowing through, how many threads your application is spinning, and what your application is doing to the rest of the iPhone's environment, you can build better and more efficient apps."
Unfortunately jailbreaking is perceived by many developers to be a means to an end for bypassing App Store or supporting pirating. In reality, it offers powerful development tools that should not be overlooked.


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About Ergoneers
Ergoneers GmbH was founded in 2005 as a spin-off from the faculty of Ergonomics at the Technical University of Munich. Today the company has a worldwide presence through three offices in Manching (Germany), Geretsried (Germany) and Portland (USA) and through global sales partners; serving the Transportation / Automotive, Market Research & Usability, Science and Sports / Biomechanics application areas.Lire la suite
D-Lab3 is your powerful, all-purpose and adaptable software for synchronous data capture and analysis for user and behavioral studies. The great flexibility of the measurement and analysis modules enable you to tailor D-Lab to your exact requirements. It supports you throughout your whole study cycle – from planning to synchronous data capturing and analysis with a whole set of visualization options.Lire la suite
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Regardless of the environment in which you perform your case studies – whether it be in front of a screen, in a simulation, a real or virtual environment – Ergoneers has the right eye tracking system and compatible hardware components to achieve your study objectives.Lire la suite
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One of the core reasons to support Romney in the primary, for those who did, was that he was the only Republican running with an organization sophisticated enough to match O's. Here's the payoff from Pew:
The Pew Research Center survey found that the race is even among all likely voters nationwide (47% Obama, 47% Romney). Unlike the last campaign, the race also is close among voters who say they have already voted.
In the poll, conducted Oct. 24-28, 19% of likely voters say they have already voted; that is unchanged from the same week in the 2008 campaign (Oct. 23-26, 2008). Currently, Romney holds a seven-point edge among early voters (50% to 43%); because of the small sample, this lead is not statistically significant. At this point four years ago, Obama led John McCain by 19 points (53% to 34%) among early voters.
Two different approaches here, obviously dictated in part by differences in their respective bases. O's team is using social media more heavily because they're trying to turn out younger voters; Team Mitt is focusing on older adults and seniors, so they're emphasizing direct mail. Not sure what explains the gap in home visits, though, unless it's a simple question of greater manpower on O's side:
The obligatory caveat here, in keeping with all the agonizing from analysts lately about the disparity between national polls and state polls, is that not all early votes are equal. If hundreds of thousands of Texans vote early, that's super, but Romney's winning that state going away regardless. We're more interested in early votes in the battleground states. O has the advantage there right now, but Romney's outperforming McCain again — most notably in Colorado:
* The one state where Republicans have a clear lead is Colorado, where 38 percent of early votes have come from Republicans and 36 percent have come from Democrats. That said, Democrats had just a two-point early vote advantage in 2008 and still won the state by nine points overall…
* In Virginia, early voting isn't as big a piece of the puzzle, given that it requires a valid excuse to cast an early ballot. But analysts have pointed out that turnout in heavily Democratic areas like Arlington County, Alexandria, Charlottesville, Richmond, Norfolk and Portsmouth is lower than elsewhere in the state. All were among Obama's top 10 best cities and counties.
Remember, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado are, realistically, all necessary predicates to Romney having two paths to the presidency. If he hits that trifecta, he's at 257 votes and can get to 270 by winning either Ohio or Wisconsin + New Hampshire/Iowa. So the caveat to the caveat is that not all battleground states are equal either. We don't care overly much about Nevada or Iowa if early voting in those other four looks good. Although, since we're on the subject, WaPo says O's early-voting lead in both NV and IA is shrinking as we speak and bound to finish lower than it was four years ago. Which I guess is why Team Mitt is starting to look more closely at Iowa as a potential upset.
Then there's the caveat to the caveat to the caveat: How many of these early voters are people who wouldn't have voted on election day? They're the important ones, since they're actually adding to the candidate's total rather than merely banking votes for him that he would have received next week anyway. It's hard to gauge, but Henry Olsen at AEI gave it a shot — and says he thinks it bodes well for Romney in Ohio:
I hypothesized that if the Romney campaign's effort is working, the share of the total 2008 early vote that has already been cast should be higher in strong Romney counties than in strong Obama counties. That's because if the Romney effort works, total turnout in those counties should be up in 2012, the bulk of that coming from the low-voting-propensity supporters who the campaign is asking to cast early ballots.
Through last Friday, that hypothesis is clearly correct…
Follow the link above for the data. More from Byron York:
"The Gallup numbers nationally confirm what we think is happening here in Ohio," says one Romney official. "It's two things. One, their margin of victory in early voting is greatly diminished — drastically diminished. And two, they are having a very difficult time generating enthusiasm among young people."
Asked for evidence to support those claims, the official cited a Romney tally showing absentee and early voting is ten percent higher in counties McCain won in 2008 than in counties Obama won. He also pointed to sluggish early voting in the Toledo area, which Obama won in '08, and particularly energetic early voting in the Cincinnati area, which McCain won. In addition, the official argues that Republicans are "outperforming our share of voter registration in absentee requests and early votes" and that the GOP has "closed the gap on Democrats' historical absentee and early vote advantage for 20 of the past 21 days."
Read Jay Cost's post too about the oddity of Ohio polling generally. If pollsters were all making similar assumptions about the electorate there, you'd expect to see them converging around a number at this point. Instead, you see two separate convergences, with one group pegging the race as even or led narrowly by one of the candidates and a separate group pegging it as a four-point or so Obama lead. Awfully hard to believe that the latter group is correct when Romney is now out to his biggest national lead yet in the "likeability gap," but that's the polling weirdness we're staring at right now. Simultaneously, we're supposed to believe that Barack Obama's going to win narrowly in virtually every major swing state except Florida, and yet Romney's going to take the popular vote by a point or more. Ain't happening. Someone's wrong.
Oh, one last note about that gruesome Marquette poll of Wisconsin that you may have stumbled across earlier. Charlie Sykes argues that the sample is dubious, essentially expecting Democratic turnout at 2008 levels. That also ain't happening, and if it was, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and Joe Biden and Paul Ryan and Bill Clinton would all find something better to do with their time.
And with that, my friends, I've now reached this point.


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Monday, March 13, 2017
Obama's Third Term is Here
It was always going to come down to this.
One is the elected President of the United States. The other is the Anti-President who commands a vast network that encompasses the organizers of OFA, the official infrastructure of the DNC and Obama Anonymous, a shadow government of loyalists embedded in key positions across the government.
A few weeks after the election, I warned that Obama was planning to run the country from outside the White House. And that the "Obama Anonymous" network of staffers embedded in the government was the real threat. Since then Obama's Kalorama mansion has become a shadow White House. And the Obama Anonymous network is doing everything it can to bring down an elected government.
Valerie Jarrett has moved into the shadow White House to plot operations against Trump. Meanwhile Tom Perez has given him control of the corpse of the DNC after fending off a Sandernista bid from Keith Ellison. Obama had hollowed out the Democrat Party by diverting money to his own Organizing for America. Then Hillary Clinton had cannibalized it for her presidential bid through Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Donna Brazile. Now Obama owns the activist, OFA, and organizational, DNC, infrastructure.
But that's just half the picture.
Obama controls the opposition. He will have a great deal of power to choose future members of Congress and the 2020 candidate. But he could have done much of that from Chicago or New York. The reason he didn't decide to move on from D.C. is that the nation's capital contains the infrastructure of the national government. He doesn't just want to run the Democrats. He wants to run America.
The other half of the picture is the Obama Deep State. This network of political appointees, bureaucrats and personnel scattered across numerous government agencies is known only as Obama Anonymous.
Obama Inc. had targeted Trump from the very beginning when it was clear he would be the nominee.
Trump had locked down the GOP nomination in May. Next month there was a FISA request targeting him. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court denied the request, and it is still unknown whether the request targeted Trump, or only his associates, but it's silly to pretend that the submission of such a request a month after he became the presumptive GOP nominee was apolitical.
The second, narrower, FISA request came through in October. This one was approved. The reason for getting a FISA request in October was even more obvious than June. October is the crucial month in presidential elections. It's the month of the "October Surprise" when the worst hit pieces based on the keenest opposition research is unleashed. Obama's opposition research on Trump involved eavesdropping on a server in Trump Tower. Nixon would have been very jealous.
After the election, Obama Inc. began to spread out its bets. Some of his people migrated into his network of political organizations. Others remained embedded in the government. While the former would organize the opposition, the latter would sabotage, undermine and try to bring down Trump.
An unprecedented campaign for full spectrum dominance was being waged in domestic politics.
Political opposition wasn't a new phenomenon; even if a past president centralizing control of the organizational and activist arms of his party to wage war on his successor was unprecedented. But weaponizing unelected government officials to wage war on an elected government was a coup.
Obama Anonymous conducted its coup in layers. The first layer partnered congressional Democrats with OA personnel to retain control of as much of the government as possible by the Obama Deep State. They did it by blocking Trump's nominees with endless hearings and protests. The second layer partnered congressional Democrats with the deeper layer of Obama operatives embedded in law enforcement and intelligence agencies who were continuing the Obama investigations of Trump.
This second layer sought to use the investigation to force out Trump people who threatened their control over national security, law enforcement and intelligence. It is no coincidence that their targets, Flynn and Sessions, were in that arena. Or that their views on Islamic terror and immigration are outside the consensus making them easy targets for Obama Anonymous and its darker allies.
These darker allies predate Obama. The tactics being deployed against Trump were last used by them in a previous coup during President Bush's second term. The targets back then had included Bush officials, an Iran skeptic, pro-Israel activists and a Democrat congresswoman. The tactics, eavesdropping, leaks, false investigations, dubious charges and smear campaigns against officials, were exactly the same.
Anyone who remembers the cases of Larry Franklin, Jane Harman and some others will recognize them. Before that they were used to protect the CIA underestimates of Soviet capabilities that were broken through by Rumsfeld's Halloween Massacre and Team B which helped clear the way for Reagan's defeat of the Soviet Union.
Under Bush, the Deep State was fighting against any effort to stop Iran's nuclear program. It did so by eliminating and silencing opposition within the national security establishment and Congress through investigations of supposed foreign agents. That left the field clear for it to force a false National Intelligence Estimate on President Bush which claimed that Iran had halted its nuclear program.
Obama broke out the same tactics when he went after Iran Deal opponents. Once again members of Congress were spied on and the results were leaked to friendly media outlets. Before the wiretapping of Trump's people, the NSA was passing along conversations of Iran Deal opponents to the White House which were used to coordinate strategy in defense of the illegal arrangement with Islamic terrorists.
The same wall between government and factional political agendas that Nixon's "White House Plumbers" had broken through on the way to Watergate had been torn down. NSA eavesdropping was just another way to win domestic political battles. All it took was accusing the other side of treason.
And worse was to come.
During the Iran Deal battle, the NSA was supposedly filtering the eavesdropped data it passed along.
In its last days, Obama Inc. made it easier to pass along unfiltered personal information to the other agencies where Obama loyalists were working on their investigation targeting Trump. The NSA pipeline now makes it possible for the shadow White House to still gain intelligence on its domestic enemies.
And the target of the shadow White House is the President of the United States.
There is now a President and an Anti-President. A government and a shadow government. The anti-President controls more of the government through his shadow government than the real President.
The Obama network is an illegal shadow government. Even its "light side" as an opposition group is very legally dubious. Its "shadow side" is not only illegal, but a criminal attack on our democracy.
When he was in power, Obama hacked reporters like FOX News' James Rosen and CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson. He eavesdropped on members of Congress opposed to the Iran Deal. Two men who made movies he disliked ended up in jail. But what he is doing now is even more deeply disturbing.
Obama no longer legally holds power. His Deep State network is attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election using government employees whose allegiance is to a shadow White House. Tactics that were illegal when he was in office are no longer just unconstitutional, they are treasonous.
Obama Inc. has become a state within a state. It is a compartmentalized network of organizations, inside and outside the government, that claim that they are doing nothing illegal as individual groups because they are technically following the rules within each compartment, but the sheer scope of the illegality lies in the covert coordination between these "revolutionary cells" infecting our country.
It is a criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope. Above all else, it is the most direct attack yet on a country in which governments are elected by the people, not by powerful forces within the government.
"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain," President Lincoln declared at Gettysburg. "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Obama's shadow government is not just a war on President Trump. It is a war on that government of the people, by the people and for the people. If he succeeds, then at his touch, it will perish from the earth.
Obama's third term has begun. Our Republic is in danger.
30 comments:
Good god. And they say liberals are "snow flakes". Lose the foil hat, you'll get stared at less.ReplyDelete
The biggest mistake was calling him a "lame duck". After that he went berserk :)ReplyDelete
Brilliant article. Should be required reading within the Trump administration.ReplyDelete
- D.D.Mao13/3/17
I usually not only agree with your logic and perception on a topic but marvel at it......NOT this time however !ReplyDelete
As I have written in the past the president has a continuing habit of stomping on his own nuts. He will no sooner get done with a S.O.T.U. speech that everyone praises as "Presidential" then turns around with his comment about Obama wiretapping him and is unable to give any supporting evidence. His long habit of "Stray Voltage Theory" where his half baked tweets throws accusations out such as Obama was born in Kenya, Ted Cruz father was mixed up in the Kennedy assassination, thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey after 9/11, the election is rigged and climate change is a Chinese hoax are sloppy needless errors in judgment. He then lets them gain credence with his flying monkey brigade on blogs, chat rooms, websites and message boards by them shouting down any opposing views much like the progressives at college campuses. The presidents preferred social media venue is one that gives instant gratification and emotive preening. It caters to his conspiracy nature of being addictive to drama and the center of attraction. He must learn words from the White House have foreign, financial and political consequences.
He admitted he doesn't read daily intel briefings, he attempted to pass an immigration bill and health care bill that wasn't fully prepared and has hundreds of cabinet positions empty. Breitbart and American Thinker who were both conservative at one time are now obsessed and blame every misstep by the administration on a hidden "Deep State' or "#NeverTrumpers" not being on board. They hang on every word their "Chauncy Gardner" utters and run articles daily on how many "elites", Establishment, or neo-Cons can dance on the head of a pin. After all losing your political views sounds nihilist while Trump working for what you want doesn't. As Kevin Williamson of National Review pointed out "It isn't the "Deep State" making Trump look like an amateur. It's the amateurism." "He believes he can run the government like "The Apprentice"." Trump would rather blame "Fake
News" or the "Deep State" while Obama attempted to blame Bush to sway incompetence away from themselves.
Yeah no doubt I'll hear from many Trump supporters defending him from the posture of he's the lesser of two evils rather than any enthusiasm. Politics today is drowning in mediocrities and charlatans inducing laxity in it's citizenry. We warned you if you support him you will eventually have to defend him 24/7. So don't expect us who didn't vote for him to defend him..............nor blame us.
Interesting reading the comments. While the case can't yet be proven in court, the article seems to be as accurate as inference from what is known, and study of history, can make it. Look at what happened during Stalin's period, for example, if you don't feel paranoid. Or Cuba.ReplyDelete
On a minor point, this scenario is why I preferred Keith X to the other.
Obama is a radical Gay Muslim Communist trained by radicals like pedophile communist Frank Marshal Davis and Communist Bill Ayers of the weather underground who both sought the overthrow of America and Obama is trying to for fill their wishes funded by Soros and the globalists. Trump should use Obama's own executive order and arrest Obama and friends and lock them up indefinitely like Obama's executive order gives him the power to do so and that would be poetic justice.ReplyDelete
DD Mao is spewing out a whole stream of bias.ReplyDelete
DDM is unwilling to see the the real state of our nation, and the incredible accomplishments of President Trump despite the Obama-led/Soros paid violence, and the obstruction and childish-anti-American interest behaviors of the Obama and Crooked Clinton sycophants.
Soros has the money - Obama has the machine. The Clinton machine will soon be bogged down in legal wrangling if there is any justice in the world.ReplyDelete
Hopefully Soros and Obama/Jarrett will be exposed and ousted and their power structures destroyed.
Thank you, Mr. Greenfield, for all you do to shine the light of truth into the dark places and expose the vermin and pestilence that lurk there.
When the money runs out, so will Mr.O. The back and forth are only an act, this president will take us to war, just like Mr. O released hate out of it's cage. Both of them are not qualified to be president, but that's the whole point, isn't it...ReplyDelete
A clear and accurate analysis of what is going on.ReplyDelete
Woe to anyone, who does not heed Daniel's warning.
In other words, a national Islamic no go zone ... just doing what moslems do. Make no mistake, the push for the caliphate continues full force.ReplyDelete
We live in Interesting Times. I was saddened, but hardly surprised by the first few mocking and demeaning comments. I think we are experiencing two enormous phenomena:ReplyDelete
1. Obama and Trump are stereotypical foes in an epic battle. Obama is the perfect Machiavellian evil gamesman. His project is to destroy Western Civilization by all means he can. Trump arose because enough Americans recognized the gravity of our slide toward extinction. Republicans have cowered for decades. Just in time, we picked a fighter.
2. The issue of secret information is coming to a head. Using it in a military context convinced me and peers of its importance and safeguarding. In a political context, it is often misused and compromised. Embarrassing and illegal acts are classified. Thus cheapened, it is seen cynically as a partisan gimmick.
At some level, all politicians know Socialism is Theft. Therefore, Democrats are better liars than Republicans. The artful, charming lie will win over the sincere Economics lesson every time. Now is not the time to roll our eyes and titter because Trump used his salad fork on his steak.
I'm 100 % anti-Obama but this has the ring of the kind of lefty conspira-fantasy that isn't helpful. More likely than this scenario is that Obama is goofing off, playing golf, relaxing in the sun, and taking a few phone calls now and then from people who WISH he would stay more plugged in than he is.ReplyDelete
There is NO DOUBT whatsoever that Soros, OFA, and other groups and individuals are plotting, planning and scheming. The way to battle against that completely legal but annoying situation is to pass good legislation, make good policy, win public support, and drive the agenda. There is NOTHING those leftist radical rabid dogs can do if the public is not behind them.
There is clearly a problem with Obama holdovers in the government. They need to be routed out and fired, but that process seems to be underway. Trump won't be able to get rid of all of them, because they make up huge percentages of whole federal agencies after 8 years of Obama. And the judges are untouchable. But that is just a fact of life; Obama faced the same situation after 8 years of Bush.
I see no grand conspiracy on the level being discussed in this article. I think it's important in this time of serious change for everyone to keep their heads bolted on properly and not conjure demons and ghouls where there are only policy advocates and partisans backed by donor money.
The way you get your way in politics is by succeeding and giving the public what it wants and then leveraging that support for political power. That's what Trump needs to do, and all he needs to do. The rest will sort itself out.
Maybe this is why Trump has asked to expand powers for drone strikes, lol.ReplyDelete
- D.D.Mao14/3/17
Ms. Sibyl Smith:ReplyDelete
You are mistaken I do see the state the country is in and I'm appalled. I however don't believe we have had a president adequate to handle the problems in quite a while and we seem to be continuously lowering the "Overton Window" in as far as our expectations go. It would seem that a commenter named Warren on the "Ace of Spades" web site sums up the expectations of the Trump followers when he said he doesn't care what Trump does he wants retribution and to do to the left what they did to us over the past 8 years". If that is your idea of what to anticipate in regard to the best interest of the country then I give you the Republican party and the circus of incompetents associated with it. As far as Mr. Trump I grew up in NYC and have had experience reading of his ego and narcissistic personality on " Page Six" of the New York Post daily. In fact the quote that immediately comes to my mind is from a Koch administration Deputy Mayor by the name of Alair Townsend who said she "Wouldn't believe Trump if his tongue was notarized".
Yes the left is waging a campaign against Trump but his childish tweeting and his thumbless grasp of attempting to pass undigested bills makes it extremely easy for them.
"These darker allies predate Obama. The tactics being deployed against Trump were last used by them in a previous coup during President Bush's second term. The targets back then had included Bush officials, an Iran skeptic, pro-Israel activists and a Democrat congresswoman. The tactics, eavesdropping, leaks, false investigations, dubious charges and smear campaigns against officials, were exactly the same."ReplyDelete
No American should be subjected to such tactics. While I am not a huge Trump fan I respect him and feel he's trying his best to do what is best for the country.
The French word for taupe or beiges' origin is 'Mole'. He is declaring himself to be a spy in the U.S. in the service of the country of his true affiliation and which carries his loyalties.ReplyDelete
No, not France, but rather Islam itself.
- Anonymous15/3/17
This is good conjecture and is pretty much right on with my observations,readings and listening of to more knowledgable folks than i.ReplyDelete
Because I used to live under communist regime, I totally agree with you, Daniel. I'm surprised of your knowledge, and how well-read you are. Unfortunately it's no conspiracy theory, and if enough people won't realize this is very accurate description of the situation, we are doomed for very long times. And it would happen in just in time frame of a year or two.ReplyDelete
- Anonymous15/3/17
The name Barack (also spelled Barak, Barac, and Baraq) ... is the horse that purportedly carried Muhammad from Mecca to JerusalemReplyDelete
I have long said Barack was a trojan horse for the islamic caliphate and he is the grand mufti of the west. The iphone has left(literally and figuratively) people deaf to all the information available only to be superseded by txt's & twerks
- Anonymous16/3/17
I live in South Africa and in Jan 2016 I emailed Trump to tell him he will be president - God had chosen him. Under Trump I pray that as your country heals that rain will fall where needed and Divine Protection over the country. Economy recover and favour from Elohim. I beleive Obamas ring that he wears has pillars of islam on it. May each one of you to feel His Peace and joy.ReplyDelete
How about a 'Shadow Civil War' to counter the Obama 'Shadow Government'?ReplyDelete
Hey! If they could do it the secret war among Immortals through all those seasons of Highlander and the secret war against the Goa'uld on ten seasons of Stargate...
of course that was fiction.
Kind of like the "Smartest President Ever" was the fiction in front of the reality of the "Puppet President".
I kind of believe that Chiun exists though. I hope.
I simply cannot understand how ignorant some people can be. The facts have come out about the two FISA warrants sought by the Obama administration and the court approving the second warrant after denying the first. So to those who say Trump's claim that he was electronically surveilled ("tapped") I say "drop your ridiculous bias against the man and grow up. Denying plain facts only makes you look stupid and/or a shill for the Left."ReplyDelete
Obama by himself is too much of a light-weight to accomplish much. However, our current government is loaded with bureaucrats and deeply placed employees of the intelligence community who are all - literally - "fellow travelers" of this muslim-loving communist-touting 44th (it gags me to say) President. They will work like rented mules for him, while he is directed by Jarrett (muslim brotherhood), Soros, and who knows who else.
Obama and his cronies appointed and implanted far too many people for Trump to be able to weed them all out. The Left has worked hard for many years to place their people into the very bedrock of our governing agencies, along with our schools and universities. He appointed (IIRC) over 300 progressives to federal judge positions, and we are already seeing how they are ignoring actual written, legislated laws to force their agenda or at least delay the implementation of Trump's attempt to correct some of the many destructive EOs and regulations Obama put in place, especially in the last days before he was forced to move out of the White House.
Trump is going to have to start ignoring these federal judges, just as Obama ignored the SCOTUS when it suited him. Then he is going to have to strip a bunch of federal three-letter agencies down to their shorts in order to restructure and slim down the bloated Leviathan we suffer under as the Federal Government.
- Anonymous19/3/17
Daniel, the narrative rings true, but documentation is critical here. It has to be shoved in the faces of the smug Liberals who view themselves as untouchable. IF you have something solid on these criminals, PLEASE get it to those who can help deliver justice to the Revolutionary-Wannabes.ReplyDelete
This story does sound paranoid, but as they say, if you are not paranoid, you must not be paying attention.ReplyDelete
If they do bring Trump down, I don't think they're prepared for the 2nd Civil War they will unleash. It will be so bad as to make Syria look like two spoiled children arguing in a sand box...million will die and all of our cities will be devastated. Its that simple.ReplyDelete


text:
Well, this is certainly embarrassing. According to an online report by U.S. News and World Reports, employees at the U.S. House of Representatives have been illegally downloading copyrighted material including television episodes and movies at work for some time, despite the representatives themselves pushing anti-piracy legislations such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
The report tracks information from October and November of last year, showing that IP addresses related to Congressional offices downloaded such movies as The Cabin In The Woods, The Queen of Versailles, Life of Pi, and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as episodes of multiple television series including Boss, Downton Abbey, Supernatural and Glee (One of the more surprising things from the report is the number of times Home and Away, an Australian soap opera, appears on the list of downloaded shows; someone, somewhere, apparently really liked that show).
Moreover, the U.S. News piece suggests that the shows and movies listed may not even be a complete list of all pirated material downloaded during that period by Congressional workers. "The report does not include IP addresses associated with every congressional office, so the number of illegal downloads may be higher," it says.
There are multiple reasons why we shouldn't be surprised about this – "Congressional workers are people too, after all, why shouldn't they torrent stuff just like everyone else?" you may find yourself thinking. But one of the biggest reasons you might have expected this was that the TorrentFreak blog already outed the U.S. House of Representatives as a hotbed of torrenting in December 2011, noting that such books as How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want and Do Not Open – An Encyclopedia of The Worlds Best-Kept Secrets were apparently proving popular at the time (the jokes write themselves, don't they?), along with pornographic videos with explicit titles like Gangland Cream Pie 21.
The hypocrisy of working to support legislation that would tighten control over copyrighted material online while simultaneously helping yourself to the latest episode of your favorite teen soap opera is the most obvious thing to come from the publication of this report, and also the most damning thing. But what fascinates me about this more is the idea that these congressional workers are torrenting movies and shows on their work computers. Perhaps I'm simply particularly naive or innocent, but couldn't they just want to do that at home and risk a more private embarrassment? Are they actually going to watch this bootlegged material at work? Shouldn't they be, I don't know, working instead? Maybe this is too much to expect.
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Modumetal co-founder Christina Lomasney gets plenty of inspiration by just walking out the front doors of her offices. With the Modumetal headquarters located in an old industrial shipyard in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, Lomasney frequently sees the rusted hulls of old shipping vessels, the type of corrosion that her company's technology is designed to prevent.
"There's lots of rust around here, so it is really inspiring," she says.
A maker of non-corrosive nanolaminated materials, Modumetal is one of the more exciting startup companies to emerge in Seattle. Yet, its story is relatively unknown, in part because of its low-profile in recent years but also because it is not quite as sexy as some of the emerging Internet, mobile and software upstarts in town.
However, the opportunity behind Modumetal is immense, perhaps transforming the way everything from buildings to oil platforms to automobiles are constructed. And the 20-person company's profile is about to go up.
Modumetal has received commitments for more than $10 million in funding from the likes of Second Avenue Partners; Catamount Ventures; Chevron Technology Ventures and others, with more cash on the way, GeekWire has learned. It also recently named Steve Singh, the CEO of publicly-traded Concur Technologies, to the board.
Lomasney declined to name all of the investors in the most recent round, noting that additional announcements are slated for later this month. But she did note that the business is doing well, with excitement among the customer base.
"You will see, as we disclose who we've raised from funds from, that we are getting really good traction," said Lomasney. "It's at a very exciting point."
Modumetal is still in the pre-specification phase, meaning that it must prove that the technology can meet industry consensus-based standards for new materials. But Lomasney said they are starting to scale up production and continue to host trials.
"We have some very large customers that are engaged with us and are excited about the application," she said. "I think we will see a huge turning point, probably in the next year to 18 months."
A University of Washington trained physicist who previously worked at Boeing, Lomasney believes that her company's nanolaminated coatings are stronger, lighter and more durable than steel. Obviously, that's a bold claim. But the technology, which sprung from Lomasney's work at another company she co-founded, Isotron, has the potential to transform manufacturing as we know it.
Modumetal's partners include businesses in the transportation and energy sectors. She said one example of a potential use of the coating is in making more durable equipment for oil platforms or pipelines, one of the reasons why Chevron invested and remains a customer.
"There are a lot of components that get used in that environment. It's the pipes, the pumps, the valves. It is all of the things that are degrading at a very rapid rate because of the environment that they are operating in," she said. "There's a great opportunity for applying coating … materials in that environment and it is a unique combination of characteristics that Modumetal offers."
Lomasney said that Modumetal plans to compete head-to-head on pricing with other makers of coatings or nanomaterials. But she said the performance advantage with Modumetal is significant.
"Where most of our competitors are coming in saying they are 20 percent better or 30 percent better, we can actually come in and say we are 200 to 300 times better than the next best alternative," she said. "It's an easy sales process."
Here's an older video of Lomasney discussing the company.


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Fighting Perception of Weakness, Obama Puts Onus on Lawmakers
"Leading from behind" has left the president with low approval ratings, and the White House is now shifting its strategy
"Leading from behind" has left the president with low approval ratings, and the White House is now shifting its strategy
The White House, burned by failed efforts to work with Republicans and dismayed by a growing perception that President Obama is a weak leader, has made the decision to put more pressure -- and blame -- on Congress when Obama returns to Washington after his family vacation.
That represents a strategic shift for a president who burst onto the national scene in 2004 with a call for national unity and a condemnation of "those who are preparing to divide us." But it reflects a growing concern among the president's senior advisers that the battles over the past six months about Libya and Egypt and the debt ceiling have done serious damage to his leadership image.
WH Warning: Perry Should Watch His Words
Video: Obama Sounds Like Bush on Bus Tour While Blaming Congress
Compromise, or We'll Shoot the Pentagon
They do not want to risk letting that damage become permanent, according to two senior White House officials who asked not to be identified so they could speak frankly.
(RELATED: 15 Things You Didn't Know About Members of Congress)
The first sign of the new strategy emerged on Monday night at the president's town-hall meeting in Decorah, Iowa. The very first question was a surprisingly pointed one from a woman who was there with her daughter. After noting that Obama had built "a tremendous amount of trust" during the campaign, she pressed him on why he had surrendered to Republicans on so many key points in negotiations over health care, taxes, and the national debt.
The president answered by acknowledging, "I've been getting a lot of this in the press lately." He then launched into a long reply that previewed what is to come after Labor Day. It is then, he said, that he will propose a "very specific plan" on the economy. And if Congress does not adopt it, "then we'll be running against a Congress that's not doing anything for the American people, and the choice will be very stark and will be very clear." He concluded his answer stating that "the other side is unreasonable. And you ... don't want to reward unreasonableness. Look, I get that."
If the president follows through on this new "get-tough" approach, it will be only after the pleadings of many outside Democratic strategists who have worried that repeated GOP attacks have combined with failed attempts at compromise to wound Obama politically. Even early in the debt-ceiling debate, it was clear that the president was sensitive about attacks on his leadership. "I've got to say, I'm very amused when I start hearing comments about, well, the president needs to show more leadership on this," he said at his June 29 press conference. He listed all the meetings he had convened, concluding, "Let's get it done."
(RELATED: President Obama's Bus Tour of the Heartland)
But no one in the White House is amused at the further deterioration of Obama's standing -- nor at the National Republican Senatorial Committee that turned that remark into a TV commercial mocking his leadership skills. The ad shows him playing ping-pong and drinking Guinness in an Irish pub while the screen scrolls "76 rounds of golf, 48 days of vacation, 149 fundraisers."
The decline in what one White House aide called "the leadership brand" is clear from the polling. In April 2009, Gallup found 73 percent of Americans who said that Obama was a "strong leader." In May 2010, that had declined to 60 percent. In March 2011, Gallup had it down to 52 percent. There has been no more recent polling on that issue, but aides fear that after Libya and the debt-ceiling debate, the number almost certainly has dropped again.
According to the two senior officials, the plan to arrest that decline is for Obama to no longer be seen as above the fray. While they believe Republicans were both wrong and unfair to claim the president had no plan to bring down the deficit, they know it hurt him. So they will try to show the president as having specific plans and then show him fighting for them. No more will the president be focusing primarily on issues that can attract bipartisan support and appeal to a Republican House. And no longer will he be so willing to let Congress work out the details on its own.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), is one who was particularly frustrated with the president's approach to Congress. In an interview this week with National Review Online, Simpson said, "One thing that's puzzled me from the beginning of this administration is that, on every major piece of legislation, he's said, 'Let Congress decide.' " Simpson said all other recent presidents understood that Congress wants to know what a president wants. "They always had a plan to show us."
To an important degree, this change in strategy is made easier by the deterioration of the president's trust in House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Three White House officials said the debt debate left that relationship in tatters, with the president deeply disappointed in Boehner's refusal to try to deliver Republican votes for a "grand bargain." The president saw himself as willing to challenge his party's activists and was dismayed when Boehner wouldn't, in the words of one official, "man-up" and take on his.
The biggest obstacle to this new strategy is that the president does not want to give up on the promise he first offered in that 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, the vision of coming "together as a single American family" uniting red America and blue America. The two senior officials said they still would like to cast the president as "the only adult in the room."
Another obstacle is that so much of the spotlight in the coming months will be on the super committee of 12 lawmakers who must come up with a debt solution. That committee intentionally omits the White House from its deliberations. The president could find himself with no influence on the cuts agreed to by the panel. "You can call the 12 people in and talk to them till you're blue in the face, but you have nothing to influence them," one official said.
Overshadowing all talk of strategy and tactics, of course, is the reality that the president's image is inextricably linked to the economy. If the economy improves, Obama's economic leadership will look stronger. If the recovery continues to stall, no tactical move can make him look stronger.
One veteran Democratic strategist said the White House can take some solace from history. "This is a not a permanent status in any way, shape or form," said pollster Mark Mellman. "It ebbs and flows with whatever the overall image of the president is. When things are going well, a president looks like a leader. And when they are not, he doesn't. People remember Ronald Reagan as a leader, but look at the numbers from 1982. Nobody thought he was much of a leader in 1982."
Image credit: Jason Reed/Reuters


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News Categories » Occasions » Islamic Months » Ramadan » International Quds Day
The Islamic revolution of Iran has set a long-term pragmatic strategy in a bid to launch a justice-based peace in the region and reclaim the rights of the oppressed Palestinian nation. The strategy aims at countering almost a century-long Zionist plot that has shattered the lives of Palestinians. The proposed peace strategic plan predicts the delivery of justice to the Palestinians and maintains peace in their predecessors land. This would apparently uphold a balance of power in the Middle East region and its habitants would benefit from significant stability. As a result, the people in the region would undertake serious efforts in implementing the ideals of Imam Khomeini led greater revolution that intended a truthful liberated life by snubbing any eastern or western pressure.
Given that fact, an announcement by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, to mark the International "Quds Day" could be viewed as his comprehensive strategy aimed at confronting the Zionism' conspiracies which had sought the destruction of the Palestinians and eradication of the Islamic symbols form the holy land.
The Zionists' unjust schemes are not restricted to this land but they have also been pursuing an expansion policy to other Muslim lands as well. The Zionists greed policies have posed serious challenges to the regional and global security. The declaration of the last Friday from holy month of Ramadan as an "International Qods Day" served greater interest of the Muslim community and Palestinians instead of serving limited national or ethnic visions.
Victory of the Islamic Revolution and the Palestine Cause
The revolution victory in Iran made evident that acknowledgment of the Palestinians' rights and return of land to its real inhabitants was sole solution to these historical crises. As a result, the people belonging to various lifestyles, including women, children, clergymen and intellectuals kick started a coordinated movement against Zionists' bullying and bullet policy after being inspired by the experience of the mobilized struggle of the Iranian masses against the Shah-led tyrant monarch system.
The Palestinians boosted their combat against the Zionism to a significant level by benefiting from Friday congregations and using mosques as bases. The involvement of above-mentioned decisive factors and people's contribution to the resistance movement highlighted the issue on the international arena.
The very first resistance movement known as the 'Great Intifada' was launched in 1987 that continued until 1991. The second resistance movement, which began in 2000, became popular as 'Aqsa Intifada'. The latter movement emerged following the fruitless so-called peace negotiation between Arabs and Israel. The struggle reflected the frustration and disappointment of the Palestinians who became disappointed of any backing by the Arab regimes that were passive to the Palestinian issue. The negligence could easily be viewed among the Arabs head of states during the summit in Jordanian capital, Oman, in 1987. There, for the first time, the Palestinian issue became of its secondary nature, instead of that they threw their weight behind Iraq in its imposed war against the Islamic republic, and opposition to Iran was placed at top of the agenda. Meanwhile, the people of Palestine who had become frustrated of the Palestinian Liberation Front (P.L.O) performance since it had abandoned the resistance against the Zionist regime, and restricted itself to engaging in unproductive political games in order to settle the issue. Another decisive factor involved in formation of second 'Intifada' was the Islam and growing hope among the people that the resistance can deliver desirable results. It was obvious that without relying on people the occurrence of the revolution would be impossible. It happened after previous political games were not able to bring about a miraculous outcome. Therefore, Imam Khomeini guidance and leadership influenced the occupied Palestine like many other countries. The influence of the Islamic revolution became evident than any other place since the Palestinian Muslims under the Zionists' savage rule had been turned more oppressed and downtrodden than other Muslim nations. Imam's support made them learnt that the Muslim community can rise up inspiring by Islam and can gain victory again. However, according to Imam, liberation of Quds from clutches of the Zionist regime would only require some span of time.
'Intifada' resistance movement did not remain restricted to the urban areas and refugees' camps, but spread to remote villages as well. In the past, the Palestinians struggle was limited to sole social reform and has had never characteristics of a revolution.
The freedom activists belonging to 'Intifada' movement believed that the rulers and power retainers could not be representatives of the young generation's inspirations. The frustration among wandering Palestinian youth reached to such an extent, as they were forced to concluding that they had nothing to loose. This was the starting point for the launch of the resistance movement. As a result, the outcome of the Imam's practical politics and its influence on Palestinian nation's movement could be seen as in following events.1
Mobilization of the public and clergymen: Widespread mobilizations of traditional and non-governmental urban movements across Iran are considered a potential power effective in bringing about great social changes in the society. Moreover, by relying on people power, Imam did not pursue the existing norms such as formation of political groupings or guerilla movements with intention of pressing his agenda ahead. However, by benefiting ordinary existing entities of society, he made the common people aware of the struggle's objectives. In fact, the ties among the Iranian masses were not cemented through organized combative institutions, but it happened through Imam's unprecedented courageous way of perceptive communication, which was understandable for all walks of society including illiterate people. On the same pattern, the Palestinian resistance was formed at the juncture of history when decades long, non-indigenous political and diplomatic efforts had
reached to a dead end in reviving the Palestinians rights, and non-religious ideologies had suffered serious blow in organizing the masses and resources of the land.
For instance, by relying on masses generated movements, the Islamic Revolution proved the ever-emerging weak points and contradictions among the bullying powers. This issue became more evident when the US threw its weight behind Shah-led regime against people-oriented and the most independent revolution of the century. In the same way, 'Intifada' has played the same role in highlighting the existing theoretical and practical contradictions among the pro-Israeli systems. Such contradictions become more obvious when so-called democratic systems throw their support behind the Zionists' crimes against the people who are willing to take destiny in their own hands.
The method of combat: the awakening process in Palestinians' resistance, as an initial step, resembles to the Islamic revolution in Iran. However, some of its motives were different from the Iranian revolution. This is while the generation of young Palestinians has stepped in the political and social arena after experiencing a humiliating life under the Zionists tyrant rule.
By means of military might, and spreading propaganda among the Palestinians, Zionist regime gave impression that any change in the current state of affairs was impossible.
In such circumstances when Israel campaigned hard to earn acknowledgement of its existence, and undertook serious efforts to demonstrate the occupied land as a stable on domestic and regional level, in the meantime, the Muslim combatants in Iran toppled Mohammad Rida Pahlavi-led regime that was treacherous to the Palestine's ideals. The Shah oust in Iran tuned into an important event that helped Palestinians in setting their future strategy for struggle in the occupied land. The new generation had nothing except legacy of pains and sufferings, but they were gifted with particular talent, which helped in drawing new bright horizons for the nation.
Muslims' growing senility toward Quds issue, wakefulness of regional nations and Imam and revolution's support for Palestine were positive signs for the struggle.
Moreover, most significant was picking up of patterns from the people struggle in Iran, which was previously considered a stable island under the US and western dominance. On the other hand, since this generation in the occupied land had suffered more pains, accordingly, they were also gifted with high-level of awareness, and were able to present a rational assessment of the circumstances by comparing the present Palestinian movements with the past. The frustrated and annoyed people in the occupied land that had been mobilized in mosques and religious centers resisted with pieces of stones against the advanced weapons, and embraced death while smile on their face. This norm of struggle played an important role in advancement of the movement despite the great losses. Even, the specialists of physiological war do not have potential to counter such type of struggle, since it transforms signals of fear and disappointment from its own court to the enemy's ground, and brings destruction to enemy with its own hand.2
The declaration of the International 'Quds Day' by Imam Khomeini was a good tiding for reviving the Palestine struggle. A brief look at Imam's message will highlight the importance of issue regarding the topic.
In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful
I call the world Muslims and the Islamic governments to join the Palestinians in order to segregate the Zionist regime and its supporters. I declare the last Friday from the holy month of Ramadan as International Quds day, and invite the Muslims around the globe to hold rallies in solidarity with the Palestine and in favor of their legal rights on that day. I hope that the holy day, which is religiously, coincided with the "decree days" could determine the destiny of Palestinians as well.3
Importance of 'Quds Day' From Viewpoint of Imam Khomeini
In fact, the struggle against the Zionism, a movement based on racial discrimination, is considered an essential pillar of Imam's thoughts. One of the significance points in this regard is that Imam insisted on paying attention to the International intellectuals from all lifestyles that hold common views on the issue. This aspect places the issue beyond the national and religious bindings, which would provide a suitable seedbed for the all-human contemplation on the Palestine issue and prompt unity in the Islamic society and peace among the international community. Imam emphasized that the 'Quds Day' was "an international day and would not specifically be limited to only the Qods issue."4
If we have a look at the political and cultural issues of the Middle East region, particularly the Palestine issue, we find out that the Islamic revolution found its real place among the Muslims and revival movements across the world by setting an example of civilized and people-oriented struggle. Therefore, the importance of Palestine issue in Imam Words especially delivered on declaring an International Quds Day, is of worth to be contemplated.
The ever-lasting initiative by Imam in regard with declaring an International Quds Day would emphasize on an all-out opposition of the Muslim World against the existence of Israel.
This day became a source of compassion and integration among the Muslim World. In this way, a significant step toward the Islamic unity was taken which leveled the grounds for a united Muslim community excluding the ethnic and national connections.
Quds Day launched a great physiological war against the Zionist regime and played a role of the most effective people-oriented pressure tool against the Zionist regime, and forced them to hold back their greed plans. The Quds Day is a big event that undermines the legitimacy of Israel. The each year mark would grab the Muslims attention toward the strategic thoughts of Imam, and would voice concerns about illegitimate nature of Israel to the world. This day also brings a relief to the believers' heart. On the other hand, the video footage of hundreds of thousands of protesters across the world would spread a physiological insecurity against the Zionist regime.
'Quds Day' has underlined the Palestine issue beyond its national aspect and has granted it with an international status. The Zionist regime has long campaigned to degrade the issue as a national conflict between Israel and Arabs. Nevertheless, a clear stance by Imam as a prominent religious and academic personality injected a fresh spirit to forgotten Islamic perspectives in struggle against Israel. Imam's guidance produced positive results, and accordingly Palestinian fighters heeded to the Islamic option instead of nationalistic or western inclinations.
Source: alalam-news.com
1- Manouchehr Mohammadi, A comparative study between the Islamic revolution and the French and Russian revolutions, Tehran, P.163
2- Ali Akbar Velayati, "Islamic Republic of Iran and the Palestine developments" from 1979-2006
3- Sahifeh Imam, Vol.9, P.267
4- Sahifeh Imam, Vol.9, PP. 276-279
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26-08-2011 | 03:15


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Dr. Conrad Murray -- Medical License Suspended in Texas
Dr. Conrad Murray Medical License Suspended in Texas
The Texas Medical Board suspended the license of Dr. Conrad Murray on Friday ... almost three years after the death of Michael Jackson.
Murray is currently serving a 4 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. The board in Texas did not need to seek an emergency suspension of Murray's license after his conviction, a board spokesperson said, since he was behind bars and not a threat to patients in Texas.
The board spokesperson told the Houston Chronicle, "This achieves the same effect as license revocation."
Murray is seeking an appeal of his conviction.


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ARCA Education Class – Metal Roofing Part I
Dates: September 9, 2022
Time: 7:00 AM - 1:00 PM (includes lunch)
Cost: $5 ARCA Members | $150 Non-Member
Location: ARCA Training Room, 4745 N. 7th St., Ste. 103 Phoenix
Facilitated by: Jerry Brown, WRECORP
ARCA was challenged to institute an education curriculum that would benefit all members. The idea behind the program is to provide education that will benefit the new person just entering the industry along with anyone already in the industry no matter the experience.
This program will allow each participant to achieve accreditation in his or her field and allow them to grow with the industry learning other aspects of the roofing trade. These accreditations will allow the workers and the contractors to market themselves showing the rest of the community and industry that they have the education, skill, experience and knowledge to install roofs that comply with rules and regulations. With this in mind we have created a program that will meet the industry standards and code requirements.
If you are a student, code officer, municipal investigator or inspector that wishes to learn our trade please contact the ARCA office, via email firstname.lastname@example.com or call 602-335-0133, for preferred pricing.
Details of our educational class on Metal Roofing Part I:
- Details Coming Soon!
~Space is limited~
Register today - registration is on a first come, first serve basis. Cancellation notifications are required and substitutions are allowed.
Phoenix, Phoenix
|ARCA Member - Food/Beverage per day
|$ 5.00
|ARCA Non-Member
|$ 150.00


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On December 11, Mali's Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra resigned under pressure from junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo. A new interim Prime Minister, Diango Cissoko, took office. On Saturday he announced the names in his new cabinet. Maliweb has the full list here (French). The government is meant to represent the country politically, regionally, and socially.
Most press outlets are stressing that the new cabinet contains many of the same faces as the previous cabinet, which was formed in August and itself partly overlapped with the cabinet that preceded it. RFI (French) calls the newest cabinet a "government of continuity." Key ministers – Tienan Coulibaly at Economy, Tiemam Coulibaly at Foreign Affairs, Malick Coulibaly at Justice, General Yamoussa Camara at Defense, General Tiefing Konaté at Interior Security, and Colonel Moussa Sinko Coulibaly at Territorial Administration – remain unchanged. The last three (all military men) are "seen as close to the former junta," AFP reported in August. Dr. Yacouba Traoré (bio in French here), head of the recently created Ministry of Religious Affairs, also retains his position.
The biggest changes, RFI suggests, are (1) the departure of people close to ex-PM Diarra and (2) the addition of "three new Songhai, Arab, and Tamashek (Tuareg) ministers," i.e. representatives of northern Malian communities. RFI goes on to list reactions by Malian political actors. AFP (French) suggests that the addition of northern ministers could boost the government's efforts at dialogue with Ansar al Din, part of the Islamist coalition that controls territory in northern Mali.
The shake-up in Bamako has left many people wondering about the prospects for political stability there as well as for a planned armed intervention in the north. Bruce Whitehouse takes on those issues in this piece, which I highly recommend you read.


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THP plans 'no refusal' DUI checks
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Tennessee Highway Patrol plans a "no refusal" enforcement campaign in several counties across the state during the New Year's Eve holiday period. Tennessee's "no refusal" law allows officers to seek search warrants for blood samples when they suspect a driver to be impaired.
The special enforcement includes saturation patrols; bar and tavern checks; and checkpoints for seat belts, sobriety and driver's licenses. It begins at 6 p.m. Monday and ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.
The aim is to deter impaired driving and fatal crashes. According to the Highway Patrol, nine people were killed in fatal crashes on Tennessee roadways during last year's 78-hour New Year's Eve holiday period. That's an increase from the six vehicular fatalities during the 2011-12 New Year's holiday.


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Blog Archives
Or, I've been sick for a week and a half and swamped with holiday work for even longer, so I haven't been writing or in class…
I may be performing a lyra routine in February – a basic one – which would be both cool and a real challenge, since I definitely have been wanting to strengthen the dance in my work (I feel like it is all very trick-pose-trick right now). I may also be doing the showcase for PPC 2013 – waiting to find out if there is a spot for me or not. Considering using the same song for both routines, because I love it and have ideas for both dances. We'll see.
Once I am back to full health, I will be back in pole class – I am going to be trying out some new classes, in addition to my usual class, to see if it will help me jump start what I have been working on. But, in honor of the new year, I am going to jump on the Pole Goal bandwagon: twisted grip handspring from the floor, by my birthday (March). 🙂


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Final warnings about Obamacare
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PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland — Each visit to the U.K. brings new horror stories about the National Health Service (NHS).
Last month, Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, issued a forensic report, commissioned by the government, which found that 14 underperforming hospitals in England had substandard care, contributing to the needless deaths of nearly 13,000 people since 2005. Earlier this year, it was reported that a single hospital in Staffordshire recorded 1,400 "excess" deaths.
Following the July report, letters from patients and relatives of those who died flooded in to newspapers, Sky News and the BBC. Many confirmed poor treatment, if in fact they or their loved ones were able to receive timely care at all. The lack of adequate nursing staff, cuts to elder care budgets and a rise in immigrant populations are a few of the factors that have exacerbated the problem.
One letter from Grace Nutt to the Sky News web page is typical: "I am not surprised at the report at all. In fact the scandal has been going on for longer than the (period from) 2005 the report covers. My daughter was stillborn at Basildon Hospital in 1986. I was ten days overdue and very, very big, and in a lot of distress but was told go home and come back tomorrow; we don't have enough beds. During the night my daughter died. The nurse even told me she could hear the heartbeat the following day. I told her she couldn't and it was confirmed by the doctor. The lack of care has been going on for much longer than stated. I am distressed that I did not at the time take the case further and sue, but it's too late now. I hope everyone in similar circumstances makes them pay. D–n you Basildon Hospital."
Waiting times for many surgeries in the U.K. are notoriously long, but recently have grown longer. The Huffington Post UK reports that, according to the NHS's own data, close to 3 million people "were waiting to begin NHS treatment at the end of June, following a referral by their GP." That represents an increase of 240,000 people from the same month last year. The NHS target for treatment following a referral is 18 weeks. The data show 91.7 percent of patients are "seen" within 18 weeks, but being seen and getting surgery or treatment are not the same. After the first appointment, patients often get in another line. Some wait additional weeks or months until a surgeon becomes available. Some die while waiting.
The Daily Telegraph reports the entire system "could collapse within a year without major changes and extra money. Senior doctors likened A-and-E units (accident and emergency) to 'warzones' in May, with medics fighting a losing battle to cope with an increasing tide of patients, while the head of the NHS watchdog said the system had become 'out of control.'"
This is what happens when big, lumbering, inefficient government seeks to provide health care. Why should the U.K.'s horrid experience with NHS matter to Americans? Because if, in a much smaller country, these and other horror stories abound, how much worse could it be when our big, lumbering, inefficient government launches Obamacare? What impact will it have on U.S. hospitals and health care providers? Instead of merely mandating insurance coverage to the uninsured, will our government eventually begin dictating what surgeries and treatments it will pay for based on what a bureaucrat deems cost-effective? It's only a short step from overseeing health insurance to more intrusive oversight of medical care in general.
Everyone in the U.K. might have access to health care, but they are often forced to accept inferior health care. Will Obamacare result in Americans patiently waiting 4 1/2 months between a referral and an appointment with a specialist or surgeon? Will Americans have to wait weeks, or months, for treatment or surgery, in some cases, risking death?
With Obamacare scheduled to begin phasing-in on Oct. 1, in order to avoid what Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has called a "train wreck," these questions need answers.
Also see,
A constitutional cure for what ails us
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Political correctness is alive in the Pentagon. Witness "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood," a Department of Defense report released last week on the Nov. 5 shootings that left 13 people dead.
Granted, drafters of the report had to be careful not to say anything that would help the defense of accused shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who has pleaded not guilty. Even so, if the report's purpose was to craft lessons to prevent future attacks, how could they leave out radical Islam?
"Our concern is with actions and effects, not necessarily with motivations," former Army Secretary Togo West explained to Time magazine.
In that turn-a-blind-eye spirit, the report essentially whited out the many warning signs left by the Army psychiatrist. On the Internet, Hasan compared Islamist suicide bombers with an American soldier who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq to protect fellow troops. As reported in the Times of London, Hasan explained, "Scholars have paralleled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard, that would be considered a strategic victory." The Washington Post reported that Hasan gave public talks to his colleagues in which he equated the war on terror with a war on Islam.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, which challenges radicalized Islam, also is an internist and former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. As one who went through the same system that trained Hasan, Jasser believes the biggest lesson from Fort Hood should be that a "culture of political correctness" kept concerned officers from reporting Hasan. Yet the report papers over the elephant in the room.
To Pentagon report writers, the shootings have an air of mystery. As in: "Detecting a trusted insider's intention to commit a violent act requires observation of behavioral cues/anomalies." It helps if you can believe that Hasan's cues were observable only to the trained eye.
Ignoring Hasan's pro-terrorist Web postings, the report instead focuses on workplace violence, programs to prevent workplace violence -- such as the Post Office's "Going Postal Program" -- and the stress imposed on military health care providers.
The report does refer to "radicalization," which is good. But it overuses the term "self-radicalization," despite Hasan' contact with Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki before the shootings. Said Jasser: "They are simply trying to exaggerate the fact that these are lone actors. I do not believe they are."
Jasser is especially offended at the notion that Hasan's actions were the fruit of psychological problems -- or, as per the report, "cumulative psychological effects of persistent conflict." (To me, the report read like the first draft of a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity plea.) To Jasser, the more obvious finding could be that the shooter, like Osama bin Laden, simply decided that the ends justify the means.