Eroding Freedoms in America
2018/10/31
By Stephen Lendman
With bipartisan support, fundamental freedoms in America have been eroding for years, notably since the neoliberal 90s.
Things greatly accelerated post - 9/11 - the mother of all false flags used as a pretext for virtually anything goes at home and abroad.
Police state laws, presidential executive orders, national security and homeland security presidential directives, congressional authorization for endless wars, global war OF terror, not on it, US inner cities turned into virtual battlegrounds, along with governance serving privileged interests exclusively made America unsafe and unfit to live in.
It's a fantasy democracy, not the real thing, a one-party state with two extremist right wings running things - ordinary people with no say over how they're governed.
Elections when held are farcical - 2018 midterms next week to leave dirty business as usual unchanged, regardless of whether Republicans or undemocratic Dems control the House and/or Senate.
America's transformation toward tyrannical rule began in earnest post-9/11 - notably by enactment of the USA Patriot Act, trampling on Bill of Rights protections.
Legislation was written, on the shelf, ready to go long before 9/11 - awaiting a pretext to enact what no free societies tolerate.
Lawmakers capitalized on a window of hysteria to grant unchecked executive powers, signed into law by GW Bush 45 days after 9/11.
Things continued downhill from there, including establishment of the Homeland Security Department - the national Gestapo along with the FBI, CIA and NSA.
The Patriot Act created the crime of domestic terrorism for the first time. Henceforth, anti-war or global justice demonstrations, environmental or animal rights activism, justifiable civil disobedience, resisting growing tyranny, and dissent of any kind may be called "domestic terrorism."
The Patriot Act and other repressive laws had nothing to do with protecting national security, everything to do with pushing America toward tyrannical rule.
First Amendment speech, media and academic freedoms are fast eroding, along with assembly and association rights. Ordinary people have virtually no right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Fifth and 14th Amendments due process rights were compromised. Arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for alleged involvement in terrorism or association with an "undesirable group" leaves anyone vulnerable to state-sponsored abuse.
Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches and seizures were lost, along with privacy rights.
Big Brother watches everyone - with access to personal communications, financial and medical records, along with virtually everything else sought.
Trump escalated foreign wars he inherited, waging homeland war on unwanted immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from the wrong countries, along with war on workers and other ordinary Americans, notably the nation's most vulnerable he doesn't give a hoot about - breaking virtually every positive campaign promise made, others in his inaugural address.
America's deplorable state worsened on his watch, risking war with Russia, China, and Iran, heading the nation toward full-blown tyranny.
Abandoning the JCPOA and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty heightened global instability and tensions - increasing chances for greater wars instead of responsibly stepping back from the brink to end them and avoid new ones.
Deploying thousands of troops to America's southern border to confront desperate Central Americans fleeing violence and repression could result in mass bloodshed.
Ending birthright citizenship for everyone born in America flagrantly violates 14th Amendment rights, stating:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The 14th Amendment is constitutional law, not subject to abrogation by presidential executive order or any other action.
Past Supreme Court rulings affirmed 14th Amendment rights, including United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). It upheld the citizenship rights of a Chinese newborn, even though the child's parents were prohibited from becoming US citizens by the long ago outdated 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
The court stated that "(t)o hold that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution excludes from citizenship the children, born in the United States, of citizens or subjects of other countries would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States."
In Plyer v. Doe (1982), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, protecting legal and undocumented aliens alike.
In later rulings, the High Court upheld the citizenship rights of children of undocumented aliens born in America.
Trump wants their rights abolished by executive order - a flagrant constitutional violation. His action will surely be judicially challenged. According to ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project director Omar Jadwat:
"The president cannot erase the Constitution with an executive order, and the 14th Amendment's citizenship guarantee is clear," adding: "This is a transparent and blatantly unconstitutional attempt to sow division and fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms."
Putin and Trump will be looking for Xi Jinping in Paris
2018/10/31
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are going to meet in Paris on November 11? Is the meeting going to be incidental? Rumours about the imminent death of globalism, predicted during Valdai Club sessions, turned out to be half truth. Globalism will remain, but it will take a new shape. This is the main intrigue of the Paris summit.
What does November 11 mean for France, Russia and the USA?
The new full-fledged meeting between presidents of Russia and the United States will be held in Paris on November 11. The meeting will be held as part of celebrations of the centenary of World War One.
During WWI, France and Russia were allies against Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary. The war continued from 1914 to 1918 and claimed the lives of 18.6 million people, including soldiers from the Russian Expeditionary Corps, who defended the Champagne-Ardenne region together with the French troops. On November 11, 1918, an agreement was signed to put an end to hostilities. The papers were signed in the train carriage of French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, in the Forest of Compiegne 80 kilometres north of Paris. Since then, France annually celebrates this date as the day of the end of the First World War.
Yuri Rubinsky, the head of the Centre for French Studies at the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Pravda.Ru that the day of November 11 for the French is like May 9, or Victory Day, for the Russians. Macron is taking an initiative to improve his image by organising major celebrations in France. Macron's ratings in France have declined due to unpopular reforms.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump accepted Macron's invitation, but this is not just an opportunity for them to meet again. Trump wants to emphasise the role of the United States that had sent an expeditionary corps to help France, and Putin has long wanted to rid WWI of "imperialistic" labels. According to Putin, WWI was a patriotic war for Russia. "Despite the Brest peace, according to which Russia deserted from the camp of the allies, Russia had lost more people in that war than France - more than two million people," the expert told Pravda.Ru.
Macron convenes globalisation forum
The event, which Putin and Trump ate going to attend, will be called the "Paris Peace Forum and Global Governance." "Macron does not believe that globalism is over with. He invited the leaders of 80 countries and 900 delegates, whom he asked to bring projects and plans for solving global problems, such as climate, environment, demography, medicine, international relations, security, etc. Most likely, Chinese President Xi Jinping is coming as well.
Putin will try to persuade Xi Jinping
If the Chinese president arrives, Putin may try to persuade him to meet in a trilateral format to consider the INF Treaty issue. John Bolton announced during his visit to Moscow on October 23 that the United States was pulling out from the treaty because Russia had been violating it, while China, Iran, and the DPRK had been creating such missiles thus posing a threat to the United States.
According to US-based publication The Diplomat, the goal of the pullout is the remilitarisation of the Russian-Chinese border. Moscow is concerned about China's missile potential, and as long as the INF Treaty is nullified, Russia will rebuild its ground-based missile systems in the Far East. In particular, it goes about Novator 9M729 missiles (NATO reporting name SSC-8) installed on Iskander complexes, the publication said.
It is worthy of note that the United States has not had a dialogue with China on nuclear weapons since 2008. China and the United States created a confidence-building mechanism in 2014 to exchange information about hostilities. In 2016, the United States proposed to expand the mechanism and include exchange of information about ballistic missile launches. However, China refused. If the dialogue in the direction of the tripartite INF Treaty takes place, it will be a breakthrough in the history of globalisation.
US dollar deposits in Russia in danger
2018/10/31
The Russian Federation may abjure the US dollar in its economy. Naturally, such a move will entail serious consequences for the country.
Source: Tax Credits
Experts in the field of economics note that the first priority objective for the Russian economy would be security. If Russia abandons the US dollar, the country should be prepared for more restrictions that will inevitably follow. Yet, the Russian government has no intention to put spokes in the wheels of those citizens, who keep their savings in US dollars.
Residents of large cities of Russia will suffer in the first place. According to official information, about 80 billion dollars circulate in large Russian cities.
If the government decides to abandon the dollar, the majority of Russian citizens will want to cash their bank deposits and receive their US dollar savings back. Not that long ago, it was reported that the government would have to convert people's dollar deposits in rubles against their will. According to experts' estimates, Russian banks have accumulated a total of $50 billion should the population panic, although such a scenario is unlikely.
The issue of de-dollarization of the Russian economy has been the talk of the day for quite a while, but it still remains a closed book to all.
Russia's electronic warfare system Samarkand can paralyse NATO army easily
2018/10/31
Russian electronic warfare complex Samarkand can neutralise NATO's control systems completely at minimal budget spending, Yury Knutov, director of the Museum of Air Defence Forces, told Zvezda TV channel.
"These complexes, of course, are capable of completely paralysing NATO command and control systems, which allows us to actually restrain the forces of the alliance from aggression at minimal costs, within the framework of the budget of the Defence Ministry," the military historian said.
According to Knutov, the United States has been preparing for a real war with Russia since the 2000s. "Then there was theory, but now they are proceeding to practice (Trident Juncture 2018). The worst thing about these exercises is that they have delivered their hardware for the drills, but they will keep a half afterwards on NATO bases in Europe," the director of the Museum of Air Defense Forces said.
The materials published on the state procurement website says that there are at least 13 Samarkand-U, Samarkand SU-PRD-K2 and Samarkand PU-PRD-D complexes deployed in Russia in Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod regions, as well as in the Primorsky and Krasnodar Territories and in the Jewish Autonomous Region. In addition, the Russian Samarkand system is deployed on the territory of Belarus.
Woman dies in Moscow shopping mall as she falls off railing and lands on another woman
2018/10/31
A 41-year-old woman died at a Moscow hospital after she fell from a railing in a Moscow shopping mall.
Woman dies at shopping mall in Moscow
On Tuesday evening, October 30, a woman sat on the railing on the third floor of the shopping mall on Khoroshevskoye Highway. The woman even tried to lie down while balancing on the railing, but failed and fell down.
The woman fell down on another woman who was passing by on the first floor of the shopping mall. The victim, named only as Chulpan, is 27 years old; she remains in a critical condition. Doctors of Moscow's Botkin Hospital are fighting for her life.
The video of the incident shows a security guard passing the woman by and saying something to her a few moments before the woman fell down to her death. Investigators are trying to find out why he did not make the woman get off the railing.
Explosion inside FSB building in Arkhangelsk: One killed
2018/10/31
In Arkhangelsk, an explosion occurred inside the building of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), one was killed.
Source: Fotodom.ru
"Paramedics took life-saving efforts, but could not save the man who was injured in the explosion. The man died of injuries," a source at the ER service of Arkhangelsk said. The man who was killed in the explosion was the person, who detonated the bomb, news agencies report.
Officials with the National Anti-Terrorism Committee confirmed the fact of the explosion and said that the causes of the explosion were under investigation.
The victim of the explosion is the attacker, who detonated an explosive device. He is being identified. "We can confirm that one person was killed in the explosion, and he was not a FSB employee," Elizaveta Semushina, a spokeswoman for the regional department of the Federal Security Bureau told reporters.
Reportedly, three people were injured and hospitalised as a result of the explosion, which took place inside the building. Specialists said that the explosion was not very powerful, but it was not a household explosion. The bomb blew up near metal detectors, when the victim was standing near the central entrance door.
Khashoggi: An Open Letter to All Journalists
2018/10/30
An Open Letter to All Journalists
By Arlene J. Schar and Dr. David R. Leffler
Terrorism has taken a disturbing turn with the horrific murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Apparently the intent of this murder was to send a message to all journalists dedicated to thoughtful criticism of government. Therefore, what would be the most appropriate journalistic response to such blatant censorship? Is it to continue to report in good conscience, and risk brutal death? Or is it to step away from any controversial reporting and deny the truth to those who need to hear it?
There is yet a third response, one which carries no risk to those reporting it. That response would be to publicize a little known means of ending all war and terrorism once and for all: Invincible Defense Technology (IDT).
Throughout time, militaries have sought to achieve invincibility by applying ever-advancing technologies. History shows they have so far been unsuccessful. Adversaries inevitably devise methods to counter any system of offense or defense. However, there is a scientific, military field-tested solution which has arisen from the latest discoveries in the Unified Field theories of physics, neuroscience, and the social sciences--not from approaches utilizing weaponry, and not from the field of politics.
Invincible Defense Technology: A Non-Religious, Humane and Beneficial Approach
The practical components of IDT are the non-religious Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the more advanced TM-Sidhi programs. When large groups of experts practice these programs together, a powerful field effect of coherence and peace is generated that spills over into the surrounding population. This effect has been shown in extensive scientific research that has repeatedly confirmed measurable decreases in war deaths, terrorism, and crime. Studies have also shown, for example, reductions in verbal hostilities and hostile acts, increased number of cooperative events, and other improvements in quality of life such as reduced accidents, hospital admissions, and infant mortality. These are all tangible signs of reduction of societal stress. Due to this research the non-profit organization Global Union of Scientists for Peace (GUSP) advocates this simple and cost-effective approach for reducing social stress (see: https://ift.tt/2SwJkAI).
In highly stressed areas of the globe, establishment of large groups of experts practicing IDT has led to increased prosperity and economic growth, including a decrease in the "misery index," an indicator of socioeconomic stress, and a significant increase in competitive growth. These positive changes in social trends have occurred concomitant with implementation of IDT approaches. This coherence-creating effect was documented on a global scale in a study published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. When large assemblies of civilian IDT experts gathered during the years 1983-1985, terrorism-related casualties decreased 72%, international conflict decreased 32%, and overall violence was reduced in nations without intrusion by other governments (summaries of this research are available at: https://ift.tt/2zoK7er). Due to these positive changes, militaries in South America and Africa are now actively field-testing this approach. They have already established IDT Prevention Wings of the Military to reduce crime, quell violence, create prosperity, prevent the rise of enemies, and create the conditions for lasting peace.
Invincible Defense Technology is Cost-Effective
For about the cost of a few modern fighter jets, any military could establish a group of 15,000 warriors trained in this advanced IDT approach. This Prevention Wing of the Military would practice IDT programs twice a day in large groups, which would defuse social tensions not only in their country but also globally. Studies indicate that, once such a program becomes operational, societal conditions in their country and other countries worldwide will immediately improve. The collective consciousness of all populations will rise through the influence of greater harmony and peace. Better solutions will occur to the people and their leaders for improving their own living conditions. Those who have engaged in violence will no longer do so. Studies have shown repeatedly that this method works--and will continue to work as long as the peace-creating group is maintained.
Implementation
The quickest and most effective way to implement this alternative would be for heads of states to issue an order to their militaries to deploy this new method. Once successfully implemented, a social phase transition would immediately begin in which the high societal stress which globally fuels crime, poverty, terrorism, and war would be alleviated. By greatly dissipating these formerly intractable problems nationally and globally, these heads of states would thereby be celebrated as great humanitarians and examples of global leadership.
Nothing Else has Worked.
Given the many approaches previously tried by world leaders that have not worked, including many inhumane actions, it is certainly worth giving this benevolent approach a try. It is simple, inexpensive, and has a track record of high success. Any country large or small could become the global leader of this cutting-edge brain-based technology. With IDT, their country would become invincible, they would be creating lasting peace worldwide, and their military would be globally respected and admired.
It's Time for Journalists to Advocate Something New and Proven
Journalists have a responsibility to bring truth to the people; in their unique position they also have the capability to enlist the media in creating a better world for all. Here is an opportunity to ensure that Jamal Khashoggi and all others who have stood up for the truth have not died in vain.
About the Authors:
Arlene J. Schar is the Executive Assistant at the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS). Her husband Dr. David Leffler served as an Associate of the Proteus Management Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director at CAMS (https://ift.tt/1ahzncw).
Photo: By POMED - Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi Arabia: A Deeper Look, CC BY 2.0, https://ift.tt/2zeRchj
Putin does not need Washington to decide the fate of Syria
2018/10/30
An unexpected format gathered in Istanbul to resolve the issue of a political settlement in Syria. Washington and Tehran did not take part in the summit, but Berlin and Paris decided to participate. The choice of Vladimir Putin's.
The leaders of Russia, Turkey, Germany and France - Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Francois Macron and Angela Merkel - gathered in Istanbul on October 28 to give impetus to the process of a political settlement of the crisis in Syria. Until recently, Germany and France took part in the so-called "small group" for the regulation of the crisis in Syria. The group also includes the United States, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Russia, Turkey and Iran created the formed of Astana talks, which largely made it possible to end the "big war" in Syria and organise the meeting of Syrian political forces in Sochi. There is also the UN political mission of Stefano de Mistura in Geneva, but he does not find support among the conflicting parties in Syria.
Of course, the goal of the Istanbul summit was to involve Europe in the process of restoring Syria. However, Berlin and Paris had previously stated that they will not take part in those plans until Syria holds free elections and adopts a new Constitution.
Macron and Merkel came to Istanbul because France and Germany wants terrorists in Syria's Idlib to be relocated, for example, to Turkey. Otherwise, terrorists may move to Europe and organise "sleeping cells" there.
Berlin and Paris also want to have a say in post-war Syria, which one cannot imagine without Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran. Syria plays a central role in Macron's policy in the Middle East - this is a tidbit for French oil and construction companies that will be rebuilding Syria. After all, war is not only death - it is also subsequent loans.
As for Merkel, she is more concerned about one billion euros that Germany spends every year on refugees. However, German businesses do not mind participating in the reconstruction of Syria. The Europeans insisted that the Constitutional Committee should start working before the end of this year. Merkel said that "we could give a certain impetus to this political process."
A lot will depend on how the problem with Jabhat en-Nusra* terrorists in Idlib is resolved. Idlib seems to be the region, where up to 30,000 terrorists are concentrated. Those murderers know that they will not see mercy from Syrian justice.
Another highly important aspect is the formation of the Constitutional Committee of 150 people.
The Syrians do not really trust Stefano de Mistura, a UN representative. On October 24 in Damascus, he failed to promote the list of 50 opposition activists, and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem found the list an act of "foreign intervention."
Until recently, the Turkish government supported radical militants. Putin put pressure on Erdogan and said that Russia would support the Syrian army in the liberation of Idlib unless Turkey looks into the withdrawal of terrorists from the region. Arms supplies to militants from Turkey have been stopped, and Putin is waiting for Erdogan's next decisions.
Fourthly, the results of the November elections in the United States may also show influence on the situation. Le Figaro wrote that Macron coordinated his position with Trump on the eve of the summit, particularly about the inadmissibility of the use of chemical weapons. Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, October 24, that the US was not going to spend a dollar on the restoration of Syria as long as the Iranians keep their presence in the country. Trump has a conflict with Erdogan regarding the Kurdish issue: Washington supports them in the north of Syria, but Ankara considers them terrorists.
Dmitry Egorchenkov, director of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Forecasts of RUDN, told Pravda.Ru that even though Trump and Macron agreed on the position, Washington prefers not to intervene directly in any international multi-sided negotiations. "The Americans do not want to tie their hands with international agreements. They want to stay aside and react as tough as possible if their interests are affected," the expert said in an interview with Pravda.Ru.
According to him, "Turkey needs to defend the north of Syria, so that the current government takes control over the whole territory, including Kurdish regions." Ankara does not want the Americans to ship arms to the Kurds and create parallel power structures in Syria, Dmitry Egorchenkov told Pravda.Ru.
Neither the USA nor Iran took part in the Istanbul summit. These are two radically opposed parties and their absence could give other parties an opportunity to find an agreement.
As Der Tagesspiegel noted, it became clear after the summit that it is Putin who makes most important decisions on Syria. Putin did not invite US officials to Istanbul. Plus, it was Putin, who decided that Europe should invest a lot in Syria, and it will be up to the Russian president to decide the role of the UN in the regulation of the Syrian crisis.
*terrorist group banned in Russia
Also read:
Kurds deserve their independence like no one else
Syria towards the final victory
President of Turkmenistan buys luxury rally car for €520,000 in the midst of food crisis
2018/10/30
The Mini Cooper rally vehicle, which President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov used to prepare for Amul-Khazar 2018 rally, was purchased for 520,000 euros, the Chronicles of Turkmenistan publication said.
Source: Chronicles of Turkmenistan
The vehicle was purchased on June 7, 2018. The state television aired the president's training drive a month after the purchase, on July 11. The rally took place in September, but Berdimuhamedov did not take part in it.
It is worthy of note that the Mini Cooper was acquired in June, when a financial and food crisis struck Turkmenistan. The dollar exchange rate on the black market of the republic exceeded the official one by 9.5 times (29 Turkmen manat per one dollar vs. the 2015 rate of 3.5 manat per dollar). The republic was suffering from the shortage of food products: one was required to present a passport to buy a loaf of bread. People would have to "book" a place in the line for flour a month in advance.
In mid-October, it was reported that residents of Turkmenistan started leaving the country against the backdrop of the shortage of flour and bread in the country. In addition, the police would stop and fine residents of Turkmenistan provinces who travel to the capital of the republic - Ashgabat - to buy food.
Steven Seagal founds new company in Moscow
2018/10/30
Actor Steven Seagal became one of the founders of a new Moscow-based company. The company will deal with the organisation of concerts and other events. According to documents, the authorised capital of Steven Seagal Group is 10,000 rubles ($154).
Source: Fotodom.ru
The new company will deal with activities in concert halls, theatres, opera houses, music halls, and ticket offices. The sphere of activities also includes sports and recreation, performing arts, fitness clubs, sports centres, parks and beaches, reports Moneytimes.ru.
This is not the first time when Seagal starts a business project in Russia. Two years ago, the actor became a co-founder of Russian Fairs LLC, which organised trading platforms throughout the country. Seagal's partner in the enterprise was Akif Gilalov, the head of the Federation of Mountain Jews of Russia, but the company did not last long. In April of 2017, Seagal terminated the cooperation, allegedly due to busyness.
In August 2018, Steven Seagal registered himself as an individual entrepreneur in the tax service of the town of Elektrostal near Moscow.
Steven Seagal, a US actor, received Russian citizenship in November 2016. The decision was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Previously, Seagal had admitted such a possibility himself. The decree about the decision to grant Russian citizenship to US actor Steven Seagal had been published on the official website of the Kremlin.
Russia loses world's largest floating dock when repairing her only aircraft carrier
2018/10/30
Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov suffered an accident in the floating dock of a shipyard near Murmansk.
Source: Mil.ru
According to representatives of the shipyard, where the accident occurred, interruptions in electricity supplies caused the tanks of PD-50 floating dock to sink.
The accident occurred when the Admiral Kuznetsov was exiting the dock. According to the source, the tanks of the PD-50 dock got filled with water because of blackouts thus causing the dock, in which workers were staying, to sink to the bottom of the sea.
There were about 60 people inside the dock during the moment when the accident occurred. Most of them could escape to safety. However, five people failed to do it. Four of them have already been found, but one person is still missing.
According to preliminary data, the dock was flooded as a result of violations of the rules of the technical use of ship-raising mechanisms. During the accident, two tower cranes fell on the Admiral Kuznetsov. One of them crashed on the deck of the aircraft carrier and damaged the take-off deck of the ship.
It was reported that the accident would not affect the repair schedule, because the part of the ship, on which the crane fell, was under repairs anyway. It was said that the crane caused insignificant damage to the hull of the ship, but did not harm vital equipment. It was said that the crane fell from the height of about 15 meters.
About 70 people were evacuated from the plant during the accident. A criminal case has been initiated into the accident under Part 2 of Article 216 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Violation of safety rules, which resulted in the death of a person by negligence").
After the accident, the Admiral Kuznetsov was towed to the 35th shipyard of Zvezdochka enterprise.
The accident with PD-50 floating dock of the 82nd Ship Repair Plant has not created a critical situation for maintaining combat readiness and repairs of large ships of the Russian Navy, Interfax reports with reference to a source familiar with the situation. Russia has another floating dock - PD-190. Like the sunken PD-50, the PD-190 is capable of servicing large ships, like the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier.
Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov suffers accident during repairs
2018/10/30
Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov suffered an accident in the floating dock of a shipyard near Murmansk.
Source: Mil.ru
According to representatives of the shipyard, where the accident occurred, interruptions in electricity supplies caused the tanks of PD-50 floating dock to sink.
According to preliminary information, interruptions in electricity supplies took place because of the weather, after strong winds damaged power lines. It remains unknown whether the shipyard has any engines and why they were not activated.
The aircraft carrier, which currently undergoes repairs in the floating dock, was not damaged. However, a crane fell on her deck during the accident. However, the accident affected several workers, who found themselves in ice-cold water and suffered hypothermia. One of the workers remains in intensive care.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is undergoing scheduled repairs that are to be finished by 2021.
The PD-50 is the world's largest floating dock. The USSR ordered its construction in 1980 in Sweden. The dock is 330 meters long and 67 meters wide. Its carrying capacity is 80,000 tons.
The robots of sex
2018/10/30
The inauguration in Turin of the first house of dating with sex dolls is just the tip of the iceberg of a society now in disarray. In 1956, the German philosopher Günther Anders published a rather meaningful text: Man is antiquated. Why would man suddenly become antiquated in the twentieth century? Because, unlike the latest technological discoveries of his invention, the human being has not yet managed to redeem himself from the original sin of his being generated instead of produced. This is the meaning of that phenomenon that Anders calls Promethean shame. The German thinker writes:
I think I happened on the trail of a new pudendum; of a reason for shame that did not exist in the past. I call it a Promethean shame, and I mean by this the shame you feel when faced with the humiliating height of quality of the objects made by ourselves.
by Claudia Stanghellini
And again:
If I try to deepen this Promethean shame, I find that its fundamental object, that is the fundamental stain of those who are ashamed, is the origin [...]. His shame consists therefore in his natum esse, in his low births; that he judges low because they are natal.
This phenomenological observation may initially arouse some perplexity, at least as long as it is considered in an abstract way; then you pick up a newspaper, or you do a quick scroll of the News Feed on your smartphone and we read that on September 3rd of this year the first appointment house with SexDolls was inaugurated in Turin, followed by a immediate booking boom. This is a franchise business that belongs to the Catalan company LumiDolls, currently also present in Barcelona and Moscow, and that soon - according to what is written on the site - will see further dissemination in other locations.
SexDolls, for those who do not know, are not the common "inflatable dolls", as used to say in jargon, but, we could say, they are certainly their deluxe version, what more like human being our technology, in its current state of the art, has managed to achieve. The SexDolls, equipped with a steel skeleton and made of thermoplastic elastomer, have movable limbs and can be accommodated in various positions; their skin is incredibly soft and warms up in contact with the human body.
Despite the clamor aroused, the curiosity and the inevitable social debate between scandalized detractors and apologists of free customs, it is necessary to resize the fact to contextualize it in a much wider frame, which brings us to the origin and the future of a phenomenon of this kind. The SexDolls are in fact nothing more than the insignificant tip of a huge iceberg; insofar as, in fact, in old Europe, brothels with dolls are a novelty all in all, in the United States they are already about to be overcome.
It is in San Diego, California that we can discover how fruitful it was Anders's intuition; it is here, in fact, that the company Abyss Creation, founded by Matt McMullen in 1997, is based, producer of the so-called RealDoll: the most luxurious erotic doll currently on the market, made by hand, at the cost of several thousand dollars. Yet, despite the high cost, 600 of them are sold each year, to a predominantly male target. The customer can design his own purchase at his leisure, starting from different basic models, both female and male, which can then be customized to the smallest details according to their tastes and budget with a wide selection of options.
What is missing in the last resort to an artificial lover so likely? As in the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, life is lacking. The engineers of Abyss Creation, in the absence of the divine intervention of Aphrodite, have decided to resort to the miracles of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that is how, in collaboration with Realbotix, was born Harmony, the first model of sex robot equipped with ability to move. The robotized head moves the lips and reproduces different facial expressions; the skin is heated, so as to imitate as much as possible the human one, and is littered with sensors, which send signals to the computerized brain and allow it to know where it is touched and react accordingly, until the simulation of an orgasm. The robot software has been equipped with a range of different personalities, selectable at will, of a relative autonomy of interaction and is also able to memorize the tastes and interests of the customer.
This first model was followed by other more advanced products, also produced by competing companies, with the aim of making the experience of interaction with the product increasingly complex and sophisticated. Therefore, we are only at the beginning of what is still a road to beat, but that already makes you imagine a pot of beautiful gold swollen at the end of the rainbow.
This is the fact, a fact that has significant repercussions in the ethical and anthropological field. It is indeed misleading to assume that the problem here lies in the use that is made of a certain instrument. An instrument, such as a fork or a pen, is designed in view of a very specific and determined purpose: good use is conformity to its purpose, misuse of the non-conformity with its purpose. In the case of a sex robot, on the other hand, we do not just deal with a child of technology, but rather with a child of technology. The difference is that if the technique can improve, from a quantitative point of view, a certain type of operation or activity, the technology is able to revolutionize our experience from a qualitative point of view:
Technique is not, in short, technology, although it makes use of technical products, and in this sense it must be thought of as an environment in which the ego is an integral part and to which it is not easily removed, indeed, to which it can not escape. And it is an artificial environment in the sense that it is built by others compared to those who benefit from it, yet for this very reason it is very similar to a natural environment, if by nature we mean what pre-exists at the work of the ego, the world in where we find ourselves living. (A. Pessina - The dissatisfied self. Between Prometheus and God, Life and Thought, 2016).
Technology is therefore an environment in which we all live, which necessarily changes our perceptions and has a decisive impact on our experience. It is no coincidence that the main objection that has been addressed to the sex robot technology concerns the fear that it may progressively lead to the exploitation of human partners, rather than indirect promotion of a culture of domination and violence. Yet the spokespersons of the manufacturing companies categorically deny this type of event, repeating that sex robots are not designed to distort the reality of people. And then what would they be designed for?
In an interview with the Guardian, McMullen states that the primary purpose of robots like Harmony is to help all those people who have difficulty relating. In fact, reading between the lines, it is clear that the decision to develop a technology of this type is mainly linked to motivations of an exquisitely economic nature: if there is market demand, it will naturally also produce an offer.
In any case, that of solitude is a very interesting justification, because beyond its being proposed as a finality that would dignify the use of sex robots, it implicitly discloses a very common philosophical assumption in the field of technical professionals. That is, the utopia that it constitutes a veritable panacea of all evils, which is the ferry that will lead humanity to a higher stage of evolution. In short: a necessary and, above all, inevitable upgrade. From this perspective it is understandable the statement by the British futurist and politician Ian Pearson according to which by 2050 humans will have more sexual relations with robots than between them.
On the other hand, why choose a human being, with his physical imperfections, subject to an inevitable aging, endowed with his own personality and his own free will, which calls us to a commitment and a considerable responsibility, when we can limit ourselves to interact with a robot devoid of consciousness and self-consciousness, programmed solely to satisfy our requests? How we can not be ashamed, we limited and finite human beings, in the face of a product already so perfect and further perfectible? Here is the serious risk to which we expose our humanity: that if the culture of immanence, of unbridled self-esteem, supported by capitalist and consumeristic drives, pushes us to isolate ourselves and reify the other, with the technology there is the concrete possibility to pass from the reification of a human being, to its complete replacement with a res, with a machine.
The paradox is that while we build machines that resemble us and we think of enthusiastic demiurges of a new era in which robots can serve us, we human beings start from the logos of technology to rethink our anthropology. We thus move from exalting the beauty of the Mystery and the uniqueness of each of us, to the aspiration towards seriality and standardized homogeneity, with the difficulty that not even the most invasive cosmetic surgery can ever make us sufficiently competitive towards a sex robot. The res will always be shiner, more glazer, brighter and we, to put it with Anders, will be nothing else that court dwarfs of their own machines park. And yet, there is still a gap that is and will always remain unsurpassed for a res: the ability to access the relational dimension.
The robot is not a moral agent, nor can it exercise a will in the deepest sense of the term. It can be programmed in view of an ever greater selection and combination of options, but will still be programmed by a human engineer. And to believe that a robot or a doll can compensate for the fullness of the human relationship is, at best, a naive illusion: not only can the interaction with a robot really never alleviate loneliness, but it will rather be a confirmation, the present sign of an incapacity, of a defeat, of an always-living defect. In short, nothing but a surrogate, the imago tenuis of something you would like and that is not there.
Certainly, relating is challenging, difficult and is, after all, even a pólemos because the meeting with the Other is always a clash of different universes. The other is hell, Sartre says, because it puts in crisis our own closed system, it hurts it, interrupts it in its confirmatory dynamic and opens it to the world. It is extraordinary how the relationship establishes the subject, which comes to the world in the sign of a relationship, fully expressed in its sexual dimension. And it is precisely within this original relationship that we freely recognize human beings: it is only because there is a "you" to turn to that we can say "I".
But with robots there can not be any kind of recognition, they can not tell us who we are: they are our products. At most the opposite can happen: we are their source of "recognition". Yet sometimes like Narciso, obsessed with his reflection in the water and unable to relate, we seem to forget it and look for confirmations and answers from the machines that, however, will always be a deaf echo to our questions. Hence, the provocation of the philosopher Guardini, who, with prophetic foresight, wrote in 1959:
Life, by now, is framed in a system of machines. It defends itself, aspires to free air and seeks a safe haven. What benefit does it make from this fight? In such a system, can life remain alive? (R. Guardini, Letters from Lake Como - Morcelliana, 2013).
If, therefore, it is undeniable that technology expresses the characterizing trait of contemporary culture, at the same time it is necessary to reiterate that, precisely because we speak of a "culture", it is admitted that this can be continually re-elaborated and rethought. Technology, in fact, as a logos of technology, can not be treated with the instruments proper to technology, because it surpasses them and, if anything, establishes them. Since the paradigm is therefore human and not technical, our objective must be to "humanize" the technique, rather than postulate anthropological models that pursue technical ideals. The action of the human being is an experiential action, where experiences are not always necessarily positive, nor pleasant.
Yet even painful experiences, such as suffering, are fundamental and full of meaning for our existence: trying to exorcise them with "technical solutions", such as sex robots, as if they were "problems to be solved", not only is it vain, but, by preventing us from living these experiences fully, it means that we can not grow, mature and strengthen ourselves. Our historical identity will therefore not come out weakened and we will have delegated something to the answer to a call that was addressed to ourselves, in the first person singular. It is an escape destined to soon turn into a form of inaction without rest or peace. The only solution is to never be ashamed of what we are, because our weakness is also our strength: in our mortality is the immortality of the moments we live; in our fallibility is our freedom; in our imperfection our beauty; in our unique uniqueness our unfathomable Mystery.
*********************
Original article by Claudia Stanghellini:
https://www.lintellettualedissidente.it/societa/sesso-sex-dolls-robot/
Translation by Costantino Ceoldo - Pravda freelance
Photo: By ALoan at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://ift.tt/2Oh2jMi
Reverse racism: Rename the Black Sea!
2018/10/29
Popular American TV presenter Megyn Kelly was ousted from NBC for criticising political correctness in its absurd manifestations.
In the United States, one can make good jokes without a prospect to become an outcast only in relation to people with white skin.
Megyn Kelly became known in Russia after her participation as a moderator of an international forum, in which President Vladimir Putin took part. Later, the journalist held an extensive interview with the President of Russia.
Megyn Kelly was fired because of her remarks that she made in her morning show, when she expressed concerns about the issue of political correctness. Kelly was outraged about the fact that it was not allowed to make jokes about people who put on the so-called blackface makeup. "You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween," she said. "Back when I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character."
It appears that if a white artist is invited to play Othello, then he may find himself in big trouble in the US. It brings up an episode of "Police Academy" comedy, when humour was perfectly acceptable for the topic of inter-racial relationship. At one point, when a white character was covering his face with black camouflage paint, his black colleague was covering his face with white camouflage paint. These days, such a scene in a TV show or a motion picture would be criminal.
The game of tolerance makes its own adjustments in theatrical productions in the countries that have undermined common sense. I would understand the choice of a black actress for the role of Anna Karenina in an African country, but in today's Europe or the United States, political correctness and tolerance interfere in art more powerfully than artistic councils used to do in the Soviet Union.
Posters with dark-skinned Anna Karenina, the character of Leo Tolstoy's classic, went viral all over the Internet. In fact, that picture is not funny at all. It evokes the feeling of numbness and sympathy for those who have to take part in the theatre of the absurd.
I would not be surprised if the pandemic of political correctness will create a global campaign to rename the racist Black Sea. It is worthy of note that it used to be called the Russian Sea. One is left to wonder whether Africans are uncomfortable with the ways some African countries are called - for example, Niger or Nigeria. Is that racist? If it is, then one may assume that the game of chess is the most racist game in the world, because chess pieces are black and white. It's also curious how people in Western countries prefer to avoid the word combination "black and white" in public domain and replace it with "salt and pepper" instead.
As for political correctness, this is always one-sided struggle: white people always have to apologise just for being white. This is reverse racism at its finest that people do not seem to notice.
For some reason, politically correct activists do not offer the role of Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela to a white actor - just for the sake of mutual triumph of political correctness and tolerance.
The term 'political correctness' per se has replaced the concept of tact, relevance, subtlety and propriety. Political correctness, in fact, has become the embodiment of legal and encouraged hypocrisy at the festival of the absurd.
It does not go about the need for one race to have an advantage over another. It goes about the loss of the sense of reality against the background of the matrix that spin doctors have created to manipulate mass consciousness.
We have seen this before in the issue of homosexuality, when they made a fetish of sexual orientation. These days, they are doing the same to the issue of racism. One can see the fruits of perverse tolerance in Europe when they put down traditional Christmas trees, say "Season greetings!" instead of the good old "Merry Christmas!" just because native Europeans are not supposed to somehow insult migrants.
The era of reverse racism started when people stopped using academic names of races. You see, it is not politically correct to say such things as "Negroid", "Mongoloid" and "Caucasoid."
In my opinion, political correctness focuses public attention on the issue of race too much - people only think about colour, rather than talent, virtue, etc. It is the essence of political correctness that hides real racism: shut up and tolerate, because you are miserable.
Russian scientists develop technology to create HIV resistant human embryos
2018/10/29
Scientists from Russian National Research Medical University named after Pirogov in cooperation with the Moscow State University and specialists from the Scientific Centre named after Kulakov created human embryos with a genome that determines resistance to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
The scientists modified the genome of embryos at a single cell stage (zygote) with the help of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. From zygotes, the scientists cut out 32 nucleotides from the CCR5 gene sequence that encodes the receptor, to which the virus clings to enter blood cells.
Some people living on Earth naturally possess this particular variant of CCR5 gene and show increased resistance to HIV infection. The technology may help protect children of HIV-infected mothers who respond negatively to antiviral therapy.
Pravdy.Ru talked about the technology to Denis Rebrikov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"Scientists started working with systems to modify the genome of human embryos not so long ago. Chinese researchers made the first attempt in 2015. Changing the human genome at the level of the embryo is a new direction that has neither the proper legislation base, nor the adequate public perception yet.
"Our society is very conservative. Most people are still concerned about GMO products that have been in use for more than 30 years already. We've seen two generations growing under the influence of GMO products, and numerous studies have shown that GMO products are safer for humans than classic agricultural technologies. Yet, the general public is still wary of plants and animals created with the use of genetic engineering.
"Therefore, the introduction of the technology of genome changing in human embryos into medical practice will be difficult because of public perception in the first place.
"One should clarify here that the genome of the human embryo is not modified on the embryo as such, but on a single cell - a zygote, which formed as a result of the fusion of an egg and a sperm cell. A zygote is the first cell from which the human body develops. Accordingly, the most convenient moment when we can change the genetic program so that it is changed throughout the body is the stage of the zygote.
"Although the idea of changing the zygote genome may seem obvious, its practical implementation was extremely complicated due to the underdevelopment of technologies. However, in the last three or four years, highly efficient genome-changing methods have appeared, based on the CRISPR/Cas bacterial system."
"What are the challenges that this gene technology is facing?"
"If we talk about changing the human genome at the level of the embryo, then there are not so many medical objectives for this technology today. The appearance of the majority of monogenic hereditary diseases in a child from his or her parents can be avoided without changing the genome - it can be done by selecting a healthy embryo in the IVF procedure.
"One of the potentially important objectives for genomic medicine is the creation of HIV-resistant embryos. In our studies, the choice of this particular model was not so much for the solution of a specific medical problem, but for the sake of developing a technology of precise introduction of changes to the human genome on the single cell level.
"With this model, we do not create a new genotype, but only change one natural variant for another. Some people (mostly among the North European population) have a gene variant of one of cell surface receptors - the chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5), which the immunodeficiency virus finds inconvenient to attach to the cell surface. It turned out that such a "protective" receptor protects human cells from the penetration of the virus. The carrier of this CCR5 variant is naturally protected from the HIV infection.
Now let's see where such a modification of the genome could be applied in practice, in medicine. It is an open secret that most patients respond well to anti-HIV treatment. Today, a proper therapy can make an HIV-positive person live as long as a noninflected people do. HIV infection itself is not an obstacle for reproductive function today: mothers on antiretroviral therapy give birth to HIV-negative children. There are people whose response to the antiretroviral therapy is a lot weaker, apparently due to their individual genetic peculiarities. If this is a young woman who wants to have a child, the risk of having a child with HIV will be much higher than the average. In the future, medicine can offer such women a technology to make the foetus resistant to HIV in order to avoid the risk of HIV infection.
State Duma may start selling doner kebabs for MPs
2018/10/29
United Russia MP Vitaly Milonov suggested opening a kiosk in the building of the lower house of the Russian parliament that would sell good quality doner kebabs for MPs.
Milonov complained that it was difficult for him to leave his workplace to buy food, especially in winter time.
"Just put up a doner spit with meat, get a chef from Syria or from the Caucasus, and I'm sure that no one will go to restaurants - all MPs will be lining up for doner kebab, I'm telling you this," the MP said.
Milonov even suggested the recommended price - 250 rubles ($4) per one doner kebab.
Vitaly Milonov is an MP who is best known for his anti-gay views and the anti-gay law that he authored.
Russian film director Gai Germanika's expensive phone stolen during premiere
2018/10/29
On Friday, October 26, Russian film director Valeria Gai-Germanika went to the premiere of the film "The Alien" by Alexander Kulikov.
During the evening, the woman left her new iPhone XS Max on a seat. Valeria bought the phone in the United States on the first day of sales for 220,000 rubles (about $3,400).
When the woman returned, she did not find the phone on her seat.
Valeria Gai-Germanika posted a new picture on her Instagram account and wrote that she was starting a new life "without her past in an iPhone" that was stolen from her. The film director believes that the theft of an expensive smartphone was committed by her ill-wishers, who were haunted by Germanika's success and her wealthy boyfriend.
Russian journalist falls out of window and dies in Moscow
2018/10/29
A Russian journalist died on October 29 when he fell out from an apartment window in Moscow.
The journalist of NTV channel, Nikita Razvozzhaev, was killed this morning after he fell out from a window of an apartment in the north-east of Moscow. The accident occurred at about 7.30 am. The 25-year-old reporter was visiting a friend of his.
Before his death, the journalist left a long message to his loved ones on his social page - to his girlfriend, his parents, friends and colleagues. "I was left alone with my thoughts in a strange city. If you were near, everything would be different," the journalist wrote. Razvozzhaev was from Saratov.
On August 2, 2017, an unpleasant incident with the participation of Razvozzhaev took place in Moscow's Gorky Park. The journalist was reporting live on the traditional celebration of the Day of Airborne Forces in Russia. Suddenly, a former paratrooper, Alexander Orlov, approached the journalist and without any reason punched Razvozzhaev in the face in front of the camera. The attacker was sentenced to six months of community services.
Photo credits: State TV and Radio Company "Saratov"
European Court of Human Rights prohibits insulting Prophet Muhammad
2018/10/29
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) dismissed a complaint from a resident of Austria, who had been earlier fined for criticising Prophet Mohammad. The woman wanted to challenge the decision of local authorities appealing to her right for freedom of speech.
The resident of Austria said during a religious seminar in 2009 that Prophet Muhammad was prone to pedophilia. To substantiate her point of view, the woman referred to information about one of his wives, who, according to her, was only six years old when the marriage was concluded. "A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? ... What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?" the woman then said. She did not mention, though, that the marriage had continued until Muhammad's death, when the girl, Aisha, turned 18.
In 2011, the Regional Criminal Court of Vienna found an unmotivated "humiliation of religious doctrines" in those remarks and sentenced the woman to a fine of €480 and claim costs reimbursements. Neither the court of appeal nor the Supreme Court upheld the appeal against this decision.
The European Court noted that criticism of religious judgments was not prohibited. However, if such statements may pursue the goal of "incitement of hatred on religious grounds", the state has the right to recognise them as statements exempt from freedom of speech. In addition, officials with the ECHR stressed that the fine that the unnamed Austrian citizen would have to pay is one of the lowest and therefore cannot be considered as exceeded.
Indonesia plane crash: New generation Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft kills all on board
2018/10/29
Boeing 737 MAX 8 passenger aircraft of Lion Air Indonesian airline crashed a few minutes after take off from Jakarta airport. The airliner crashed into the sea in the area off the western coast of Java. There were 189 people on board. The crash left no survivors.
The aircraft, Flight JT 610, was flying from Jakarta to the city of Pankalpinang (the administrative center of the province of Bangka-Belitung) on the island of Banka. The jetliner disappeared from radar screens about 13 minutes after takeoff.
Search and rescue teams have discovered the site of the crash. A representative of the National Disaster Management Council of Indonesia, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, posted on his Twitter a video made on the crash site. The video clearly shows the oily stain, which was left on the water surface as a result of the crash.
According to Nugroho, the wreckage of the aircraft and some personal belongings of passengers were also found.
There were 188 people on board - 181 passengers, including three children, and seven crew members. However, a representative of the Indonesian Air Navigation Agency, Johannes Siraith, later told reporters that there were 189 people on board the aircraft - 182 passengers and seven crew members.
Among the passengers, there were 20 employees of the Ministry of Finance of Indonesia. There were no reports about Russian tourists on board the crashed aircraft.
According to Flightradar 24, Flight JT 610 was a new generation Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft with registration number PK-LQP. The liner, designed for 210 people, made its first flight on July 30, 2018, and was transferred to Lion Air on August 15.
The cause of the crash has not been established yet. According to the authorities, immediately after takeoff, the pilots of the aircraft asked permission to return to the airport and received a positive response from flight control officers. However, the connection with the aircraft was lost soon afterwards. The flight experience of the crew commander was 6,000 hours.
Lion Air is the largest private airline in Indonesia. It was founded in 1999. The aircraft fleet consists of 115 aircraft, including new Boeing 737 MAX 8 airliners. The destination network of the airline has more than 120 routes. Lion Air operates domestic flights, as well as a number of international flights in Southeast Asia, Australia and in the Middle East. Due to safety problems, the airplanes of the aircraft were not allowed to fly to EU countries before 2016.
In 2013, Lion Air's Flight 904 crashed into water short of runway when landing at Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport (Denpasar). All 108 people on board survived. In 2004, Flight 538 liner from Jakarta crashed while landing in the Indonesian city of Solo City, killing 25 people. In 2011 and 2012, several pilots of the airliner showed the content of methamphetamines in their blood samples.
The Boeing 737 MAX is the fourth generation of medium-haul Boeing 737 aircraft. The aircraft was designed to replace Boeing 737 Next Generation family. The first 737 MAX was supplied in May 2017.
Indonesia air crash: No survivors left
Brazil: Out of the frying pan, into the fire
2018/10/29
Brazil: Out of the frying pan, into the fire
Sensationalism, populism, when politics is entertainment and the people vote for a circus, a clown as the ringmaster. Brazil just made a huge mistake.
And so right on cue Jair Messias Bolsonaro (PSL, Social Liberal Party), an ex-army captain who has done time in prison, is elected with a substantial majority (55.2% against Fernando Haddad's 44.8%), the Right-Wing candidate sweeping into town with a simplistic discourse to solve Brazil's problems at a stroke. Brazil is the latest victim of Wow! politics.
The stabbing in the abdomen just before the first round of the election three weeks ago meant that Bolsonaro could claim to be unfit for debates, but also saved him from being exposed as an electoral fraud whose grasp of the issues is shallow and lightweight. He is as qualified for the job as any of Brazil's disgusting political class (generally speaking, there are exceptions), in many cases (not all) a gaggle of thieves and infantile Bible-Bashers, Bullet-Peddlers and Beef Yokels who would sell their own grandmothers if they thought they would make a quick buck.
These are the ones behind the deforestation of the Amazon, these are the ones exterminating Native Americans, these are the ones torching or shooting protesters who dare to stand in their way.
Now we come to the election. The type of person who voted for Bolsonaro falls into two categories: those whose right to the vote is dubious because they have no idea what they are doing (one may as well give a machine gun to a three-year-old in a crowded airport) and those who, disillusioned with rising crime rates, turn to Bolsonaro as the last hope.
Understandable to a point when the simple act of going out shopping can mean you come back home with a bullet in your side or else in a coffin, in some regions, but then again these things are complex and require a multi-vector approach taking into consideration complicated developmental and societal policies which have to be managed by people who know what they are doing.
The Brazilian electorate forgot that Fernando Haddad received seven prizes for his management of the Prefecture (Municipality) of São Paulo, including best Prefect (Mayor) of Latin America, they forgot that he has a degree in law, a Master's in economics and a Doctorate in Philosophy. In short, they forgot common sense and voted for someone who has kept his mouth closed during the campaign after making absurd statements which in any other country in the world, except for the most primitive island-state banana republics, would have seen him reach perhaps two per cent of the vote, granted by the idiotic members of society who do not know what the word "economy" means.
And so the Brazilian electorate, in its utter wisdom, voted for the ex-army captain (almost as low a rank as it gets) of 63 years of age who declared that the Military Police should have killed 1,000 rioting prisoners and not just 111 (Carandiru Prison Riot), who said "Pinochet should have killed more people", who stated that only through a civil war involving some 30,000 deaths will anything change, starting with the death of the Presidential candidate Fernando Henrique Cardoso, "If I saw two men kissing in the street I'd beat them up", "the error of the dictatorship was to torture and not to kill", "if a son starts to act half-gay-like, give his hide a tanning and he'll change his behavior", who said that if a son of his was gay he would prefer that he died in a car crash, who said his children would not associate with blacks because they were properly educated, "90 per cent of these children (adopted by gay couples) will turn out to be gay and will end up as prostitutes", "I am not going to rape you because you do not deserve it" (to a female politician), who paid homage to Colonel Ustra, a fascist torturer during the military regime (1964 to 1975), who said he had sired four boys before "giving a weak screw and the fifth turned out a girl", among other idiotic statements, among them praising Trump.
So congratulations, Brazil. You have just elected a Fascist, torture-praising, murder-advocating, racist, homophobic, sexist oaf to represent you for the next four years, whose solution to crime is to flood the country with more guns. Now watch Brazil spin out of control, with a massive exodus of whoever can get on an aircraft to save their skin, with an ensuing economic and social collapse. Next time around, at least cast a blank vote, except there won't be because before that happens you will find yourselves in another military dictatorship after a coup d'état.
Brazil, always the promise of tomorrow, now goes back to yesterday. Time to watch Bolsonaro and his crowd, time to denounce the slightest incident in which human rights are violated.
Senhor "Capitão" Bolsonaro você e sua laia estão sendo vigiados no que diz respeito à vossa gestão de direitos humanos!
Photo: By Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile. - Archivo General Histórico del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores ([1]), CC BY 2.0 cl, https://ift.tt/2JlCrOx
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru. He is an official translator, a coach, a consultant and a professor.
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Libya, seven years on: A shame fot the West
2018/10/28
The FUKUS Axis France-UK-US turned the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa into a failed state. Accountability? Are you joking?
After Messrs. Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy committed a spectacular mission creep violating the terms of the UN Charter and the UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011), I wrote the following indictment along with some colleagues.
http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/06-11-2011/119534-indictment_nato-0/
Needless to say, the European Court of Human Rights did not accept it and the ICC at The Hague likewise. But how can a handful of war criminals invade a country, committing the acts named in the indictment among many others, and walk around today as if nothing had happened?
To put things into context, let us study a few figures about Libya in 2010 (the year before the unrest spurred on by the West in which terrorists were armed and abetted, terrorists on the FUKUS Axis own lists of proscribed groups, to destabilize the country).
GDP down from 188 bn. To 64
GDP in billion USD in 2010 was 187.8. In 2017 it was 64.4. GDP per capita in 2010 was 31,094 USD. In 2017 it was 9,986 USD, more than three times less. The inflation rate jumped from 2.5% in 2010 to a staggering 28% in 2017. The budget balance as a percentage of GDP was a positive 12.5% in 2010 and in 2017 it was 43.2% negative.
In 2010, under Muammar al-Qadafi, homelessness was at zero percent. Homes were guaranteed and free. Electricity was free. Bank loans carried a zero per cent interest rate. Farmers were given land, a house, seeds and equipment for free to set up farms in the interior of the country, where the Great Man-Made River irrigated the Sahara. NATO bombed the water supply network, bombed the tubes factory so it could not be repaired then bombed the electricity grid "to break their backs".
Newly married couples received 50,000 USD, education was free, medical care was free. Higher education was free and students who wished to study abroad received 2,300 USD per month and a car allowance. Libyans who needed healthcare abroad travelled for free and their treatment was paid by the State.
Unemployed graduates received the average salary for the profession they wished to practice until they found a job. The State paid 50% of the price of a car. Mothers were paid 5,000 USD upon the birth of a child. To put this into context, a one could buy three loaves of bread with one US cent. Before al-Qadafi, 75% of Libyans could not read or write. Today the literacy rate is 100% among youths and 87% nationally. The external debt of Libya was zero and it had reserves of 150 billion USD. The FUKUS Axis stole this and today the country's reserves remain frozen.
As said above, Libya had the highest Human Development Index in Africa and Muammar al-Qadafi was to receive a prize from the United Nations Organization for his development work. His crime? To be planning to drop the US Dollar for transactions and replace it with an African currency, which would have deprived the Western bankers of billions of dollars. His e-learning projects and telemedicine networks set up in Africa were already depriving western telecoms giants many millions in lost revenue.
Libya today does not have the resources to deal with illegal migrants, trafficked by gangs who are selling them as slaves in open-air markets, Libya today does not have the resources to deal with terrorism, Libya today does not have a budget to pay for what it needs to guarantee national security.
Today, power and the executive capacity in Libya is divided between the Tobruk-based Government and the National Libyan Army supported by Al-Qadafi loyalists, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya and the Warshefana militias; the Government of National Accord supported by the Misrata Brigares, the Zintan Brigades, the Amazigh Militias, the Toubou Militias, the Tuareg Militias, the Tripoli Brigade, and the Presidential Guard, among others; the National Salvation Government, supported by the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Shura Council of Mujahideen in Derna, Ansar al-Sharia in Derna, the Abu Salim Martyrs; Islamic State (ISIL), divided into Wilayat Barqa, Wilayat Tripolitania and Wilayat Fezzan and supported by AQIM.
What a mess? Thank France, the UK and USA for that, thank Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Sarkozy and those mentioned in the indictment. All of them are walking around Scot-free as if nothing had happened. And what is the international community going to do about it?
Right, nothing. Welcome to Planet Earth 2018 but do NOT tell me that international law exists or that the West respects any form of the law.
Photo: By Maher27777 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14039466
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru. He is an official translator, a coach, a consultant and a professor.
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US media break new ground for Donald Trump's assassination
2018/10/26
In the United States, they start talking about the assassination of Donald Trump through the hands of a "Russian secret agent." Probably, the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was just a rehearsal for the assassination of Donald Trump.
The New York Times published an article describing five scenarios for the development of relations between Trump and Putin. "It's hard not to speculate about what might happen next. To that end, we thought: Who better than some of today's most talented spy and crime novelists - Joseph Finder, Laura Lippman, Jason Matthews, Zoë Sharp and Scott Turow - to conjure possible outcomes?" the article says.
One of the scenarios say that US President Trump will be killed by a Russian secret agent with the assistance from Trump's security guard who had voted for him but then got disappointed.
The story is simple: the two drink all night, then a Russian fires his Makarov in Trump's back, but the gun misfires, and an American security guard gives his Glock to the Russian. Sounds ridiculous, but other scenarios are even more entertaining.
However, if one tries to analyse the events, against the backdrop of which such conjectures appear, one cannot but feel uneasy. It goes about the delivery of mail bombs to prominent Democrats, such as the Clintons and their sponsor, the architect of "colour revolutions," George Soros. To make matters worse, the Pentagon and the administration of Donald Trump received letters with ricin poison in them.
All this appears to be elements of the information war between the US president and the liberal democratic press. This war becomes increasingly irreconcilable. Trump has called journalists "sick" and "dishonest" people, while the Soros media behave similarly organising protest rallies at which the crowd compares Trump to Hitler.
It goes without saying that the United States will not miss an opportunity to get Russia involved even in the topic of Donald Trump's assassination. Thus, CNN noted that Russia was the only member of the international community that did not condemn the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. CNN found it surprising that Putin preferred to wait for investigation results to be revealed even after the journalist's death was confirmed.
One may expect American media to announce that it was Putin, who came into collusion with the Turks to kill Khashoggi to set the USA against Saudi Arabia and sow discord among US allies.
It seems that the US media have been working to prepare the general public for the news about the assassination of President Trump. In the long run, John Kennedy was assassinated for his opposition to the Federal Reserve. In turn, Donald Trump criticises the Fed for its decisions to raise key interest rates.
Russian fans not guilty of Rome subway escalator crash
2018/10/26
CSKA fans were not involved in the escalator accident that occurred in subway of the Italian capital of Rome on the eve of the Champions League match between CSKA and Roma.
The police studied CCTV footage of the accident and concluded that Russian fans were not jumping on the escalator, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said. Earlier, it was reported that it was the Russian fans that caused the accident to occur. Thus, the causes of the accident in the subway have not been established yet.
On October 24, CSKA fans officially stated that they did not cause the escalator to accelerate and crash. The fans insisted that they had nothing to do with the accident. "Italian officials, without conducting an investigation, were quick to accuse us of the accident. Apparently, they are trying to shun the responsibility for what happened," CSKA fans said in a statement.
An escalator on Repubblica station of the Rome subway collapsed on October 23. Up to 30 people suffered injuries of various degrees. Most of the injured were fans of CSKA football club who came to Rome to attend the match of the third round of the Champions League group stage with Roma, Italy. CSKA lost to Roma 0:3. After the match, CSKA offered help to the injured fans.
Rome escalator accident
Russia to field new anti-satellites missiles for MiG-31 interceptor already soon
2018/10/26
The United States believes that Russia has deployed combat laser stations in space to be able to down US satellites.
Military expert Viktor Murakhovsky said in an interview with Pravda.Ru that the development of airborne anti-satellite weapons was launched back during the Soviet times.
"There's the MiG-31 fighter aircraft that carries such anti-anti-satellite missiles - the aircraft was developed during the Soviet era. Photos of MiG-31 fighter-interceptors armed with mass-dimensional models of anti-satellite missiles appeared a while ago, but it took the Americans about three months to react. I think that we will finish the trials within a short period of time to field the missiles soon," the expert told Pravda.Ru.
"Russia is not the only country that develops such weapons. China has conducted several tests of anti-satellite arms too and shot down two or three of its old satellites. The Americans also have such weapons, for example, aerospace aircraft, such as X-37, X-36, X-43, X-47, which can also shoot satellites down from orbit. For the time being, there are only three countries in the world that can have such weapons - United States, Russia, and the People's Republic of China.
"As for the placement of laser systems is space, one should understand that they cannot be deployed in space because they are too cumbersome for the purpose. Look at Russia's Peresvet mobile laser complex and the dimensions of its power plant. Look at American complexes deployed on warships or Boeing airplanes. It is clear that no one has either the power or capabilities to take such systems into space," Viktor Murakhovsky told Pravda.Ru.
Russian MiG-31 downs space satellites
Woman wielding kitchen knife attacks children in Chinese kindergarten
2018/10/26
A woman armed with a kitchen knife attacked and injured 14 children in a kindergarten in Chongqing, China, Ming Pao news website reports.
The 39-year-old suspect attacked a group of children in a kindergarten on Friday morning, October 26, when the children were returning inside from their morning exercises. Kindergarten employees and security guards managed to stop the woman.
As many as 14 children were injured and taken to hospitals for treatment. Nothing is known about their condition.
An eyewitness said that the woman attacked the children after she had had a fight with her husband. The woman was arrested.
In June of this year, a knife-wielding man attacked children near a school in Shanghai. Two children were killed, another schoolboy and an adult woman were injured in the attack. It was reported that the attacker arrived in Shanghai in June, but could not get a job and wanted to take revenge on society by committing such a crime.
Woman attacks children in China
US public figure makes first statement about Russia's involvement in US mail bombs
2018/10/26
An American TV presenter suggested that Moscow was involved in the recent distribution of bombs to US politicians.
Chuck Todd of MSNBC suggested on the air that Russia could be involved in sending parcels containing explosive devices to American politicians, including Barack Obama and the Clintons.
"I have this fear it could be some Russian operation, too, designed to do what's happening now," Todd said on his MSNBC show, "Meet the Press Daily."
Todd's remarks became the first public statement from a well-known American citizen, who decided to associate Moscow with bomb parcels. No American public figure has expressed such an opinion before Todd.
Russian ice hockey player files for Canadian citizenship
2018/10/26
The Federal Court of Canada scheduled new hearings on the case of Nikolai Kulemin, a 32-year-old striker of Metallurg (Magnitogorsk, Russia), a member of the Russian national ice hockey team.
Kulemin's goal is to receive Canadian citizenship. A court rejected his first petition in 2017 despite argumentations of the player's connection with Canada.
"Russia has given me a lot, but I consider Canada to be my home. My children deserve the opportunity to live in a free and democratic country," Kulemin said in a statement, sports.ru reports.
Kulemin and his wife filed for Canadian citizenship in December 2014. The hockey player put emphasis to his life in Canada from December 2010 till December 2014.
The judge then rejected the petition noting that the player had not spent enough time in Canada. During the lockout in the 2012/13 season, the striker returned to Russia and played for Magnitogorsk.
However, Kulemin decided to challenge this decision by claiming that a person could remain a resident of Canada even in one's absence, if one has a strong connection with the country.
In the NHL, Nikolai Kulemin played for Toronto in 2008-2014 with a break on the lockout and the New York Islanders (2014-2018). He has had 669 matches in regular NHL championships, in which he has scored 274 points (121 goals).
Nikolai Karachentsov, legendary Russian actor, dies of kidney failure
2018/10/26
Nikolai Karachentsov, a legendary Soviet and Russian film and stage actor, died on October 26. According to his son Andrei, the actor died of kidney failure.
Source: Fotodom.ru
Karachentsov died in a Moscow hospital at age 73. He would have celebrated his 74th birthday on October 27.
The actor was diagnosed with cancer in 2017. A tumor was found in his left lung. Karachentsov went to Israel for treatment, but it had no effect. In 2005, the actor got into a car accident, after which he was in a coma for almost a month. He could never manage to restore the speech completely afterwards.
Nikolai Karachentsov was born in 1944 in Moscow. He had appeared in 140 films, but remains best known for his roles in Soviet musical "The Man from Capuchin Boulevard" and "Juno and Avos" rock opera. In addition, Nikolai Karachentsov would often voice over foreign actors. For example, French actor Jean Paul Belmondo speaks with the voice of Nikolai Karachentsov in Russian film distribution.
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