No 935 “En mi opinión” Abril 29, 2015
“IN GOD WE TRUST” LAZARO R GONZALEZ MIñO EDITOR
AMENPER: Respeto a la Ley y el Orden
Los sucesos de Baltimore son un ejemplo de la necesidad de elegir a
candidatos que apoyen la ley y el orden sobre el anarquismo de los motines y el
desorden con la destrucción de la infraestructura de la nación.
La alcaldesa de Baltimore, después de permitir que los amotinados
destruyeran todos los comercios del área, los comercios que creaban los
trabajos para la comunidad, finalmente pidió la ayuda a la guardia nacional
para implantar el orden. Gracias a que el gobernador electo era un
republicano la respuesta fue solamente tres horas después de la petición. Si
O´Malley hubiera sido el gobernador en vez de Hogan, todavía estaríamos
esperando por la guardia nacional para poner el orden.
Hoy el juego de pelota de los Orioles de Baltimore con Chicago White Sox,
por primera vez desde que existe la liga de pelota, se jugará sin permitir la
participación del público. O sea que se jugará sin espectadores,
esto no se había visto ni en los Mangitos. Los Mangitos era un campo
de pelota de mi pueblo que no tenía mucha concurrencia, pero tenía mucho más
que los del juego de esta noche.
Esta administración tiene un legado, el legado es que estamos viendo cosas
que nunca se habían visto en el país a través de la historia, y no es
precisamente para mejorar la tradición, pero para ver cómo se deterioran los
valores tradicionales de la nación.
Por eso es importante el recuperar los
valores de la nación eligiendo a candidatos como el gobernador Hogan que
responde a las necesidades de situaciones de una manera efectiva que logre
defender la propiedad de los ciudadanos contra el vandalismo de los amotinados
Ben Carson to Baltimore
Parents: 'Take Control of Your Children'
Presidential
hopeful and former pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson is pleading with Baltimore
parents to control their children and keep them away from the violence in the
streets.
"I urge parents, grandparents and guardians to please take control of your children and do not allow them to be exposed to the dangers of uncontrolled agitators on the streets," Carson said in a statement on his Facebook page about the riots in Baltimorefollowing the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died earlier this month while in police custody.
"I urge parents, grandparents and guardians to please take control of your children and do not allow them to be exposed to the dangers of uncontrolled agitators on the streets," Carson said in a statement on his Facebook page about the riots in Baltimorefollowing the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died earlier this month while in police custody.
"As a
former resident of the city of Baltimore, it is very sad and unfortunate to see
the destruction taking place by irresponsible individuals," he said.
"It is vital to remember that the best way to create positive change is through peaceful conversation and policy ideas that display a commitment to resolution," the presidential hopeful explained.
"My thoughts and prayers are extended to those who are experiencing fear and loss during this troubling time, including the families of Mr. Gray and first responders/officers," Carson added.
One Baltimore mom is being called "mom of the year" after a video captured her slapping her son on the head for taking part in the violent protests.
A local ABC affiliate in Baltimore said that the unidentified mother had seen her son on television throwing rocks at the police when she decided to take the matter into her own hands.
"It is vital to remember that the best way to create positive change is through peaceful conversation and policy ideas that display a commitment to resolution," the presidential hopeful explained.
"My thoughts and prayers are extended to those who are experiencing fear and loss during this troubling time, including the families of Mr. Gray and first responders/officers," Carson added.
One Baltimore mom is being called "mom of the year" after a video captured her slapping her son on the head for taking part in the violent protests.
A local ABC affiliate in Baltimore said that the unidentified mother had seen her son on television throwing rocks at the police when she decided to take the matter into her own hands.
Baltimore
Police Commissioner Anthony Batts praised her during a news conference Monday
night.
"You had a mother who grabbed their child who had a hood on his head and she started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed," Batts said.
"I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight. I think these were youth coming out of the high school and they thought it was cute to throw cinder blocks at the police department and address it that way," he added.
Violence erupted in West Baltimore Monday following Gray's funeral and later spread to other neighborhoods in East Baltimore and downtown near Camden Yards.
Two dozen people have been arrested and 15 police officers have been injured. Six officers were still in the hospital Monday night.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has come under fire after some say she gave permission to rioters to engage in violence when she said "while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave to those who wished to destroy space to do that as well."
"You had a mother who grabbed their child who had a hood on his head and she started smacking him on the head because she was so embarrassed," Batts said.
"I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight. I think these were youth coming out of the high school and they thought it was cute to throw cinder blocks at the police department and address it that way," he added.
Violence erupted in West Baltimore Monday following Gray's funeral and later spread to other neighborhoods in East Baltimore and downtown near Camden Yards.
Two dozen people have been arrested and 15 police officers have been injured. Six officers were still in the hospital Monday night.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has come under fire after some say she gave permission to rioters to engage in violence when she said "while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave to those who wished to destroy space to do that as well."
AMENPER: The surrender of the administration to Iran regarding
the negotiations of Nuclear Power is not the only surrender of the
liberals regarding Nuclear Power. The surrender of the Nuclear Power for
energy sources by the liberals has been affecting the United States for over 30
years, while our enemies are using the energy source developed in the United
States to profit from our overregulation’s.
This article in the WSJ today by Mr. McFarland is a professor and director
of the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at the University of
Queensland, Australia, addresses this issue.
Rethinking the U.S. Surrender on Nuclear Power
Russia and China are racing to profit from an energy
source developed—and overregulated—in the West
By ERIC MCFARLAND
The ghosts of Lenin and Mao
might well be smirking. Communist and authoritarian nations are moving to take
global leadership in, and profit from, the commercial use of nuclear power, a
technology made possible by the market-driven economies of the West. New
research and development could enable abundant, affordable, low-carbon energy
as well as further beneficial products for industry and medicine.
Yet outdated and burdensome
regulations and restrictions have stifled nuclear innovation in the U.S. and
other Western nations, and are pushing these opportunities to China and Russia.
China is joining Russia to
build five new reactors in Iran—regardless of what becomes of the current
negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Beijing and Moscow are also
marketing nuclear technology and infrastructure to other Mideast and Asian
nations. China and Russia have a clear commercial and strategic purpose in
advancing nuclear technology abroad, technology that the West seems loath to
exploit.
If the world is serious about
shifting to low-carbon energy, nuclear energy is the most direct path. Nuclear
power is the densest (in watts per square meter of land) and safest (in deaths
per joule) form of energy known to man. Yet the expansion of nuclear power and
other commercial applications of nuclear reactions have stalled in the West
since the 1980s.
This is partly due to fears of
unseen radiation and memories of accidents like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, at
a facility originally designed to produce weapons, in the now defunct Soviet
Union. Mainly, though, what holds back nuclear power is its high cost, which is
almost entirely due to government regulations and restrictions that have kept
the industry confined to minor yet expensive improvements to existing reactor
designs. Out-of-the-box thinking on new reactor concepts that could be far
cheaper and safer is systemically discouraged. The most common retort to any
new idea in the nuclear industry is along the lines of “that will never be approved
in my lifetime.”
President Dwight Eisenhower’s
Cold War “Atoms for Peace” campaign notwithstanding, there has never been any
real attempt to allow competitive, innovative, private-sector exploitation of
nuclear reactions. Potential applications that might be co-developed with new
reactor system concepts go well beyond producing simply heat for baseload
electricity. They include medical and industrial isotope co-production,
large-scale radiation-induced chemical synthesis, water treatment, food preservation
and other applications that creative thinkers will certainly invent.
The hot steam produced for
nuclear power is, in fact, the least potentially valuable output of a nuclear
reaction; the radiations and isotopes are unique, and if available in large quantities
at a low price, innovators will find new and beneficial ways of using them.
A nuclear reactor might well
be the center of an advanced-materials production facility with the electrical
power the least valuable of its many products.
There was a brief period
between 1970 and the late 1980s when high fossil-fuel prices and the widespread
belief that oil was running out caused nuclear power to expand rapidly. Under
these conditions, even expensive government-mandated nuclear technology seemed
to be temporarily competitive. But governments piled additional regulations and
constraints on nuclear power in the wake of the Three-Mile Island accident in
Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl.
Governments are right, of
course, to monitor and tightly control the application of nuclear energy, as
they do chemical and biological weapons. But the well-intentioned systems,
agencies, regulations, legislation, safeguards and bureaucratic mass that have
been applied to every aspect of nuclear technology since its inception have
tended to prevent us from realizing its full potential.
Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear
disaster occurred because of the use of outdated technology as much as it was
the preceding earthquake and tsunami. Molten-salt and molten-metal reactors,
for example, have inherent design and safety features that could vastly reduce
cost and increase safety. These reactors cannot melt down or cause steam
explosions, the prevention of which is the purpose of massively expensive
containment vessels.
Early innovators in
nuclear-reactor technology introduced large numbers of such concepts and some
were tested only to be put on the shelf. Now a few struggling small companies
have begun to look again in these areas but are hampered by costly,
time-consuming regulations. Unlicensed, nontraditional fuels and new processes
not approved by Western regulators could radically reduce waste problems,
further driving down costs. For example, in several molten-salt reactor
designs, the “waste,” which includes valuable isotopes and other materials, is
continuously reprocessed during reactor operation.
Today’s light-water nuclear
reactors are constrained by government regulations and agencies appropriate for
the 1950s to look much like those built for the production of isotopes for weapons—not
because these are the lowest-cost power-reactor designs or the best and safest
fuel cycles, rather because these are what we have built a gargantuan
regulatory framework to accommodate.
Chemical industries safely
produce billions of tons of potentially toxic substances safely, but the
nuclear industry has not had the technological freedom to create the cheapest
and safest reactor designs to compete with fossil-fuel technology. We have
never set our best and brightest young technologists to the task of designing
entirely new, safe, modern power stations based on nuclear reactions that can
be operated over their entire life-cycle to produce low-cost electricity and
make an attractive profit.
Globalization is real.
Preventing the innovators in Western democracies from creating new
cost-effective technologies using nuclear reactions won’t prevent it from being
done. It’s ironic, but given America’s ever-burdensome nuclear regulations, it
will likely be engineers from nondemocratic, authoritarian regimes like those
in China and Russia who will be free to design the safe and cost-effective
commercial nuclear technologies of the future.
Mom Who Yanked Son Off Baltimore Streets
Speaks Out: ‘And At That Point…Not Even Thinking About Cameras’
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The Baltimore mother who was caught on camera yanking her son off the
streets after catching him rioting recounted the incident Tuesday.
“He gave me eye contact. And at that point, you know, not even thinking
about cameras or anything like that. That’s my only son and at the end of the
day I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” Toya Grahamtold
CBS News.
“There’s some days that I’ll shield him in the house just so he won’t go
outside and I know that I can’t do that for the rest of my life,” she
continued. “I’m a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me, know I don’t
play that.”
“He knew he was in trouble,” Graham added. “He said when ‘I seen you,’
he said, ‘ma, my instinct was to run.’”
Video of Graham approaching her son and slapping him on live television went viral. Many online hailed her as the “mom of the year” for her actions.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said Tuesday that he had
seen the video.
Baltimore descended into chaos Monday as individuals upset with the
recent death of a man in police custody rioted across the city, setting fires
and attacking police officers.
This
story has been updated with more information.
Baltimore ‘Protesters,’ You Are Not Fighting
Injustice. You Are The Injustice.
Apr.
28, 2015 12:30pm
Matt Walsh
Matt Walsh is a blogger, writer, speaker, and professional truth sayer.
It bears repeating: the “protesters” in Baltimore aren’t fighting
injustice — they are the injustice.
They are violence and destruction. There is no
message. There is no voice to be heard. There is no consideration we should
give these people. Their actions deserve only condemnation, and that’s all.
A Baltimore council member appeared on Fox News last
night and lightly chastised the rioters for “speaking out in a very wrong way.”
But, no, they’re not. They’re not speaking out in a wrong way. They’re not
speaking out at all. These people are communicating nothing but chaos and
greed. That’s what happens when you destroy your own community to make a point.
Immediately and completely, your point is moot. Nobody cares what you have to
say, nor should they. You are now the problem.
You lose the right to
be taken seriously the moment you start demolishing stores and chucking rocks.
Share:
You lose the right to be taken seriously the moment
you start demolishing drug stores and chucking rocks. I think that’s a
reasonable rule, isn’t it? I don’t have to listen to you if your method of
communication involves burning a city to the ground. That’s fair, right?
Let’s make another thing clear: apologists will argue
that only a small group of “agitators” are responsible for the riots while
everyone else was peaceful, but that’s bull crap.
There were no peaceful protestors in Baltimore last night. You don’t end
up with 144
vehicles on fire, 15 buildings torched, and 200 arrests from just a small group of agitators. This was an entire inner city
erupting in violence. This was dozens of square miles plagued by riots and
looting.
There were no peaceful protests. This was a citywide
riot. Period.
To be honest, I’m taking this one personally because
I’ve lived in the Baltimore area for most of my life. I know the town very
well. Those places you see on the news are familiar to me, except this is the
first time I’ve had the chance to see them all in flames.
My family lives there. My parents aren’t far from
where this violence is beginning to spill into.
I’m in Utah as I write this, but my wife and kids are still in Maryland,
and she and my parents and my sister were planning a trip to the Baltimore Zoo
yesterday. Fortunately, they decided to cancel. If they hadn’t, they would have
been a half a mile from where swarms of black teens were tearing the Mondawmin Mall to shreds.
But then, the zoo hasn’t been the safest destination
for a while now.
People who’ve lived around Baltimore know that it’s
all been slowly consumed and destroyed by inner city elements, and now perhaps
that process will be completed in dramatic fashion.
When I was a kid, I used to hang out at the Owings
Mills Mall, just four miles from my house and not far from downtown. But then
you started hearing about the shootings in the parking lot, and the gangs, and
then one night my parents walked right into a drug bust outside the food court,
and that was it. Another thing taken from us.
It’s politically incorrect but it’s true: they built a
subway stop next to the mall, allowing people from the city to come, and next
thing you know the mall is a dangerous, crime-infested ghost town. This is how
it always worked. I’ve seen it play out around here dozens of times.
I’m angry about that. I’m allowed to be angry about
that.
Maybe this is my way of venting. I think I should be allowed to vent
with the written word if these thugs can vent by attacking police officers, lighting
senior centers on fire, and looting liquor stores — and still have the media rush to their defense to insist that we
should appreciate their anger.
They’re looting for a purpose, we’re told. It’s a
movement.
Nonsense.
This is not a movement, it’s just crime. Cops are in
hospital beds today. Businesses are destroyed. Homes are in ashes. This town —
my town, our town — is reeling because of what these vicious sociopaths have
done, and are continuing to do. The place that gave birth to the National
Anthem has been turned into a national disgrace.
The place that gave
birth to the National Anthem has been turned into a national disgrace.
Share:
So, you know what? Screw their anger. Their anger is irrelevant. Their
plight, their experience, their background, none of it justifies anything we’ve
witnessed. None of it entitles them to act like animals. None of it provides
“context” when you ignite buildings then cut the hose as firefighters try to put it out.
Anger. Hey, we’re all angry. Life is difficult and it
makes you angry sometimes. Most of us can deal with it in ways that don’t
involve firebombing cop cars. Why can’t they? And the rest of us have an extra
reason to be angry this morning, after we watched a community turn this country
into Beirut.
Yeah, I’m angry about that. And I’m angry that many
parts of Baltimore have been a crime ridden cesspool for decades. I’m angry
that Baltimore has had one of the highest murder rates in the nation for years,
and not due to cops shooting black people, but due to black people shooting
black people.
I’m angry that even before these riots, I had to be nervous about
bringing my family to the Inner Harbor because of the roving bands of black teens who’d decided to start assaulting and robbing white visitors.
I’m angry that this is the town where a group of black people attacked,
robbed, and stripped a white guy naked in the middle of the street for no reason at all, and were never charged
with a hate crime.
Demonstrators climb on a destroyed Baltimore Police car in the street
near the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues during violent protests
following the funeral of Freddie Gray April 27, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
I’m angry because there are clearly deeply ingrained
problems in the inner city black community, but we never talk about them. No
matter what happens, they can raze the whole city to rubble, and still we
meekly stand to the sidelines and lecture about oppression and racism.
More nonsense.
They’re not oppressed. I mean, good Lord, they were essentially allowed
to loot and riot at will last night. I think an oppressive system would have
dealt a bit more harshly with them. Indeed, the system should have been more oppressive against this
chaos. Rubber bullets, tear gas, fire hose, whatever it takes. Bring out the
bus and start arresting people by the dozens.
Yeah, I’m angry.
And I’m especially angry at the narrative.
We’re constantly informed that black people are under
attack, yet every symbolic case they choose involves the death of a black
person who happened to also be a known criminal.
We still don’t know the circumstances surrounding
Freddie Gray’s death (but obviously we should assume, because our assumptions
have always been proven correct in the past). We only know that he was arrested
and while in custody he was fatally injured.
It certainly seems possible, even likely, that
something illegal happened on the part of one or two or several officers. If
that is the case, the perpetrators should be brought to justice.
But either way, the fact remains that Michael Brown,
Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray were not law abiding, helpful, constructive
members of society. That doesn’t mean they deserved to die, but it does mean
they put themselves in a category of people who are more likely to be involved
in violent interactions with cops. And that category isn’t “black people” —
it’s “criminals.”
Freddie Gray was a known drug dealer with 18 arrests on his record, yet people have the nerve to complain that we was
profiled. Of course he was profiled. He was a thug. A
perpetual problem. Is it unreasonable that police officers, somewhere around
maybe the 12th or 13th time they arrest you in the span of a couple of years,
might start to be suspicious?
The point is, you can’t convince the world that cops
are out to exterminate black citizens when your most prominent case studies are
men like Brown, Garner and Gray. If they prove anything, it’s that cops tend to
get rough with guys who demonstrate a disregard for the law.
Does that justify it? No, but it does take the racial component out of
it. Especially considering white people are killed by cops, too — maybe even more often — and, logic would tell us, most of them were involved in criminal
activity as well.
I often hear it said that cops are “terrorizing” black
people. But if law enforcement can be considered terrorism, what do you say
about the people selling poison to kids and shooting each other over who gets
to stand on which corner? Are they suddenly the protagonists in this twisted
fairy tale?
No, the dealers and thugs and gangsters are the
terrorists, and they’re the ones the police have to handle every day, all day,
all week, all year, for as long as they stay on the job.
If we’re supposed to appreciate the context which
leads a person to smash open a storefront and steal bags of Fritos from the
snack aisle, can’t we at least appreciate the context which leads cops to
sometimes have a less than pleasant demeanor around predators, deadbeats, and
social parasites?
That doesn’t mean they all — white or black – should
be shot (although some of them, like Brown, certainly brought it upon
themselves), it just means that crooks have a lifestyle that exposes them to
this danger more so than the rest of us.
Watching the footage of the Baltimore riots, we see
one “protestor” after another complaining that “cops are out here killing black
men.” But they completely leave out the first portion of that sentence, which
is the part about how black men are out here committing violent crimes.
How can anyone think that the two facts are mutually
exclusive and unrelated, as if cops are randomly strolling up to black patrons
waiting in line at Starbucks and executing them for the hell of it?
No, black men in the city often lead lives full of
crime and violence, and often it ends at the point of a gun. Usually it’s
another black criminal holding the gun, but in a small minority of cases, it’s
a cop. And in a small minority of that minority, the cop is killing unjustly.
When that happens, the cop should answer for it. But you
don’t get to take those instances and use them to paint all cops as villains
and all black men as innocent victims. It’s absurd, and these riots illustrate
the absurdity in stark detail.
One interview I saw last night was with a guy
complaining that the cops had shot him and his group with beanbags. He showed
off his battle scars and acted quite flabbergasted by the whole thing. Finally
the reporter asked him what they were doing when the bags were fired at them,
and the man quickly and matter-of-factly admitted that they were throwing
bottles.
Oh.
So, um, maybe that’s why you have those bruises?
Possibly? You think?
Cops can’t win, can they? Apparently, according to
some folks, you should be able to hurl glass objects at their faces without
fear of “police brutality.” Cops should not only be peaceful under all
circumstances, but should be like uniformed Bhuddas patrolling our cities and
never reacting violently to anything, under any circumstance, because racism or
something
Speaking of racism, the Baltimore Police Department is almost 50 percent black. It’s run by a black commissioner and a black
deputy commissioner, and they all answer to a black mayor. If there is
“institutional racism” in the BPD, where’s it coming from?
If anything, this all debunks that talk about how the
Ferguson Police Department needed more minority representation. The Baltimore
PD is a black department run by black people, and what difference did it make? Still,
they riot and complain about “racist cops.”
Racism is a human sin and institutions are human
constructions. For an institution to be racist, the people who run it would
have to be racist. Otherwise, you’re suggesting that the very act of policing
is inherently unfair to blacks, which therefore suggest — what? — that black
people are naturally incapable of following the law?
Talk about a racist point of view.
And that’s what I can’t stand about the constant
apologizing and rationalizing that people do on behalf of these rioters. It
infantilizes the black community. It sends the message that society shouldn’t
expect more from them; that somehow we can’t hold black people responsible for
annihilating their own neighborhoods the way we would with white people.
It’s insulting.
Disgusting, frankly.
If I were a black person, I would be infuriated by
pretentious white liberals constantly explaining why black people should be
given a free pass when they loot and destroy. They’re the real racists.
As far as institutions and systems go, if you want to
blame them for anything, blame them for being cowardly, negligent, and
incompetent. The system is not governed by racists; it’s governed by impotent
fools who care only about the optics and the politics of the thing, even when
lives are at stake. That’s the true evil of the system.
In Baltimore, the mayor actually got in front of cameras and announced a
plan to give the looters “space to destroy.” This is a woman
elected to lead a major American city, and this is what she calls leadership.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s performance is
another defeat for affirmative action “diversity” advocates. By their logic, a
black woman should be best equipped to handle these race riots, but instead
she’s proven historically inept. Martin O’Malley used to be mayor, and he was
terrible, but her crisis management skills make him look like Winston Churchill
by comparison.
The police stood by for hours and watched swarms of
people commit serious felonies, not because they didn’t want to act, but
because the bureaucrats and politicians in charge presumably told them to stand
down. They didn’t want the news cameras to catch law enforcement officers in
the act of enforcing the law. That would just be unseemly.
Time to get with the times. The system isn’t designed
to keep the black man down anymore, it’s just designed to keep hapless idiots
in power by insulating them from blame when they make minor mistakes like
explicitly allowing their city to be pillaged and demolished.
Police in riot gear charge as they try to push protesters away during a
march in honor of Freddie Gray on April 25, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo
by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
But maybe we shouldn’t be talking about the system at
all, as flawed as it may be. Maybe we should be talking about the individual.
This whole thing is, after all, a sad metaphor. A
microcosm, you might say. Watching Baltimore be eaten alive by thugs, I realize
that we’re only witnessing the condensed version of what’s been happening in
this city, and many other cities, for a longtime.
These are individuals making violent and terrible
choices. Emphasis on choices. And they’re making these choices largely because
they’re mad about the state of their communities — but it’s their choices that
turned their communities into hellholes in the first place.
When they protest, they protest themselves.
Here’s the answer, then. The black community in
Baltimore, and in every other city, can stop “protesting” some external
boogeyman, and start taking charge of itself.
You want to lash out against what’s happening in your
neighborhood? Good. You should.
So get a job. Get an education. Get married before you have kids, and
then stay and raise them. Move forward. Work for something better. Work.
Worried about the government and policies and law
enforcement and all of that? Fine, after you’ve completed, or started on the
path towards completing, the first steps, the next is to get involved.
How many of these “protestors” have actually been to a
city council meeting? How many stay abreast of the issues and vote for better
leadership on Election Day? How many do you think? What percentage?
One percent? Less?
None?
Well, there you go. Job, education, family, community
involvement.
If you want a better community, you’d do these things.
If you don’t, you’ll keep rioting.
Either way, it’s your choice.
–
TheBlaze
contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The
opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author.
Is This Clinton Cash Connection The ‘Smoking
Gun’ That Will Shoot Down Hillary’s High Hopes?
Scouring through State Department financial disclosures and...
With her questionable
ethics under assault and her plunging poll numbers under near-constant downward
pressure, Hillary Clinton is having no success freeing herself from a firestorm
of controversy over allegations concerning her access and influence while
secretary of state. And now, as though in response to former Clinton operative
George Stephanopoulos’ recent question on ABC’s This Week — “Is there a smoking gun?” — an
investigative piece in International Business Times (IBT) may have just provided an answer in the affirmative.
It’s been widely
reported that the Bill,
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation was the recipient of tens of millions of
dollars in foreign donations from governments and business interests while
Hillary ran the U.S. State Department. All that cash flowing into the Clinton
Foundation coffers raised serious questions about possible influence
peddling in a supposed pay-to-play arrangement involving Mrs. Clinton’s
international dealings while serving as America’s top diplomat.
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While Hillary herself
has had very little to say about the growing scandal, Clinton defenders have
insisted that there’s no quid-pro-quo proof of misdeeds or ethical lapses on
the part of the Democrats’ leading candidate for president in 2016.
Now, as the IBT
report details, the connection between Hillary’s State Department and Bill
Clinton’s bank account is becoming more clear and direct.
“Former President
Bill Clinton accepted more than $2.5 million in speaking fees from 13 major
corporations and trade associations that lobbied the U.S. State Department
while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, an International Business Times
investigation has found. The fees were paid directly to the former president,
and not directed to his philanthropic foundation.”
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The IBT investigation
has also connected important timeline dots showing that several big companies
that paid Bill big bucks in speaking fees received their own financial benefits
from the Department of State while Hillary was in charge.
“The disclosure that
President Clinton received personal payments for speeches from the same
corporate interests that were actively seeking to secure favorable policies
from a federal department overseen by his wife underscores the vexing issue now
confronting her presidential aspirations….”
Scouring through
State Department financial disclosures and House of Representatives lobbying
records — then cross-checking with Bill Clinton’s reported speeches and
payments made to the former president — International Business Times compiled
the following chart showing Bill’s speaking fees paid by companies (in bold
below) lobbying the State Department for favorable actions.
Image Credit: International Business
Times
Adding insult to
injury, a new poll of Hillary Clinton’s favorability in a key swing state is
offering no solace to the embattled presidential candidate. This is even a
state where long-time Clinton pal, defender and big-time fundraiser Terry
McAuliffe is the governor. The Washington Free Beacon reports on the new survey by Christopher Newport University:
“The survey found
that Clinton’s favorability numbers are underwater among Virginia voters. Just
44 percent have a favorable opinion of her, compared to 52 percent who view her
unfavorably. Clinton’s lead over the Republican field has slipped significantly
since February, and she no longer polls over 50 percent against any of her
potential challengers.”
The new book Clinton
Cash that purports to
reveal numerous details about the Clinton Foundation’s financial dealings and
Hillary Clinton’s supposed influence peddling is set for release on May 5th.
The Palestinians No One Talks About
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
The international media continues to ignore the "plight" of the Palestinians living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as a number of Arab countries, especially Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
The international media continues to ignore the "plight" of the Palestinians living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as a number of Arab countries, especially Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
§
"The Palestinian Authority does not want democracy." — Mother
of Jihad Salim, assaulted by Palestinian interrogators who asked him why the
Islamic Bloc won student elections at Bir Zeit University.
§
The international community pays attention to Palestinians only when
they are "victims" of Israel. The continued obsession of the media
with Israel allows the Arab countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority and
Hamas, to proceed with their systematic violations of human rights and freedom
of speech.
The international community seems to have forgotten
that Palestinians live not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also in a
number of Arab countries, especially Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Western journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict regularly focus on the "plight" of Palestinians who are
affected by Israeli security policies, while ignoring what is happening to
Palestinians in neighboring Arab countries.
These journalists, for example, often turn a blind eye
to the daily killings of Palestinians in Syria and the fact that Palestinians
living in Lebanon and other Arab countries are subjected to Apartheid and
discriminatory laws.
A Palestinian who is shot dead after stabbing an
Israeli soldier in Hebron receives more coverage in the international media
than a Palestinian woman who dies of starvation in Syria.
The story and photos of Mahmoud Abu
Jheisha, who was fatally shot after stabbing a soldier in Hebron, attracted the
attention of many Western media outlets, whose journalists and photographers
arrived in the city to cover the story.
But on the same day that Abu Jheisha was brought to
burial, a Palestinian woman living in Syria died due to lack of food and medicine. The woman was identified as Amneh
Hussein Omari of the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, which has been under
siege by the Syrian army for the past 670 days. Her death raises the number of
Palestinian refugees who have died as a result of lack of medicine and food in
the camp to 176.
The case of Omari was not covered by any of the
Western journalists who are based in the region. As far as they are concerned,
her story is not important because she died in an Arab country.
Had Omari died in a village or refugee camp in the
West Bank or Gaza Strip, her story would have made it to the front pages of most
of the major newspapers in the West. That is because they would then be able to
link her death to Israeli measures in the West Bank or the blockade on the Gaza
Strip. The same journalists who report about the harsh economic conditions in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip do not seem to care about the Palestinians who are
being starved and tortured to death in Arab countries.
Nor are the journalists reporting to their readers and
viewers the fact that more than 2800 Palestinians have been killed in Syria
since the beginning of the civil war there four years ago. A report published this week by a Palestinian advocacy group also revealed that
more than 27,000 Palestinians have fled Syria to different European countries
in the past four years. The report also noted that Yarmouk camp has been
without electricity for more than 730 days and without water for 229 days.
Earlier this month, another report said that eight Palestinians died of torture while in Syrian prison.
Three of the victims were women, including 22-year-old Nadin Abu Salah, who was
pregnant when she died. The report said that 83 Palestinians died of torture in
Syrian prison during March this year.
These Palestinians are unfortunate because they do not
live in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. The international community pays attention
to Palestinians only when they are "victims" of Israel.
Similarly, the international media continues to ignore
the "plight" of Palestinians living under Palestinian Authority (PA)
rule in the West Bank and Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, PA security forces continue to
arrest Palestinians who post critical remarks on Facebook or speak out against
Palestinian leaders.
Last week, for example, the Palestinian General
Intelligence Service arrested Khalil Afaneh, an employee of the Wakf (Islamic Trust) Department, for
"slandering" Yasser Arafat on his Facebook page.
On April 25, the PA arrested journalist Ahmed Abu Elhaija of Jenin as he was on his way to attend a
conference in Jordan. No reason was given for the arrest, which is not the
first of its kind involving Palestinian journalists and bloggers.
Another story that has been ignored by the
international media is that involving Jihad Salim, a member of the
Hamas-affiliated Islamic Bloc at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. Salim
was arrested by Palestinian security officers shortly after the Islamic Bloc
won the student council election of the university.
Upon his release, he said that his interrogators, who
questioned him about the reasons why the Islamic Bloc won the vote, had
physically assaulted him. "The Palestinian Authority does not want
democracy," his mother said after his release. "Why are they arresting students and who does
this serve?"
The situation regarding the Gaza Strip is not much
different. Most stories that appear in the international media ignore the
practices and violations committed by Hamas against Palestinians. Take, for
example, Hamas's recent decision to impose a new tax on a number of goods. The decision has drawn sharp criticism from many
Palestinians, with some openly calling for a rebellion against Hamas.
|
A Palestinian woman, shopping at an open-air market
in Gaza, complains to Al Jazeera News about a new tax being imposed by Hamas,
April 25, 2015. (Image
source: Al Jazeera video screenshot)
|
Again, this is not a story of interest to many Western
journalists based in the Middle East, mainly because Israel is not involved.
By turning a blind eye to the plight of Palestinians
in Arab countries and under the rule of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,
journalists are doing a disservice not only to their publics, but also to the
Palestinians themselves. The continued obsession of the media with Israel
allows the Arab countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, to
proceed with their systematic violations of human rights and freedom of speech.
Jorge Alberto
Villalón Y.
“FREEDOM
IS NOT FREE”
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