Members of the U.S. Army Drill Team perform in Times Square in New York City in honor of the Army’s 240th birthday on June 12, 2015 in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

My daughter was born in the 22nd year of the Forever War, which stands today upon its 27th year and counting. People who should know better may tell you the war started only 17 years ago, after September 11, but those people are likely trying to sell you something, and it’s probably more war.

The Forever War began as Desert Storm and wended its way through different iterations such as Operation Desert Fox, before morphing into the current multi-theater murder machine we know today. It has no Pentagon jargon name any more, not really. It’s just forever.

They came for me just before it all began. I was a newly minted high school graduate, green as new grass, when the man in the uniform paid his call. Saddam Hussein is as dangerous as Adolph Hitler, the Army recruiter told me in my living room, with a huge army that threatens the world. War is coming. If I join the Reserve Officer Training Corps in September, however, I wouldn’t see that war for another four years, and I would be an officer when I did. “Probably,” he said, “it will all be over by then.”

My father heard a similar argument some 25 years before my conversation with the recruiter, and heeded it by joining ROTC before volunteering for Vietnam. A good FDR liberal from the Deep South, where they still remembered the Tennessee Valley Authority (a wildly successful New Deal jobs program) with deep fondness, my father wanted to run for office someday, and you didn’t run for office without time in uniform back then.

So he went, and he came home, but he never came back, not all of him. In many ways, I lost my father to that war before I ever met him. Even then, so long ago, I knew this about him, about war. Remembering, I thanked the recruiter for his time and sent him on his way.

My father passed away three years ago with pieces of his…

The US Justice Department has announced the conviction of a former CIA contractor who pleaded guilty for theft of classified information amid growing cases of government contractors accused of stealing secrets from spy agencies.

According to US prosecutors, Reynaldo B. Regis – who was assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from August 2006 to November 2016 — “spent a decade conducting unauthorized searches in classified CIA databases, then copying secret information into personal notebooks that he took home,” Politico reported Friday.

Citing court documents, the report adds that the 53-year-old Regis lied about his actions when confronted by investigators about the alleged theft but a subsequent search of his home uncovered “approximately 60 notebooks filled with classified information.”

The government, however, did not elaborate about the contractor’s motivation for transferring the confidential information out of the…

US President Donald Trump thanks North Korea for showing willingness to scrap a nuclear site.

In a tweet on Saturday, the president asserted that such a move would be “a very smart and gracious gesture.”

“North Korea has announced that they will dismantle Nuclear Test Site this month, ahead of the big Summit Meeting on June 12th,” Trump tweeted. “Thank you, a very smart and gracious gesture!”

Pyongyang has announced that it would dismantle the test site by the end of May, just before a scheduled meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12.

Pyongyang initially announced last month that it would to decommission the site following a thaw in ties with the South and Washington.

The move is expected to take place between May 23-25, “depending on weather condition,”

Trump has been trying to negotiate with North Korea in an effort to denuclearize the country.

Amid escalating tensions between Washington…

Breitbart
May 11th, 2018

More than 2.2 million people have discontinued their participation in food stamps during President Trump’s first full year in office, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data on food stamp enrollment.

The latest USDA data shows that since Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017—when food stamp enrollment was at 42,289,366— participation in the program decreased by 2,257,235 to 40,032,131.

The continued decline in enrollment during Trump’s first full year is on pace with the steady decline in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation since 2013.

Before then, participation in the federal welfare program swelled to 47.6 million—the highest amount it has ever been since former President Lyndon Johnson authorized the creation of the food stamp program in 1964. Taxpayers spent $79.8 million on SNAP when enrollment reached its peak in 2013.

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This article was posted: Friday, May 11, 2018 at 7:18 am

[Journal of Libertarian Studies 15, Number 1 (2000)]

Modern history is nothing but an inventory of bankruptcy declarations. —Nicolas Gomez Davila

I

Monarchy is a form of government not well understood in North America. To many people in that part of the world, monarchy seems to be a totally obsolete, even childish, institution. The surviving monarchies, after all, might still play a symbolic or even a psychological role, but not a decisive political role.

As a rationalist and a liberal (in the worldwide sense rather than in the American sense), I am also a monarchist who realizes that monarchy, combined with Christianity and Antiquity, was responsible for the rise and flowering of Western civilization, which is slowly assuming an almost global character. Yet, the modern mind is political rather than historical, and therefore is hopelessly tied to the spirit of his time. As Goethe wrote:

He who cannot give account
Of the last three thousand years
Rests in darkness inexperienced
though he lives from day to day.

Such a person, intellectually nurtured by the boob-tube and newspapers, would be greatly surprised to hear British Prime Minister Disraeli say:

The tendency of an advanced civilization is in truth Monarchy. Monarchy is indeed a government which requires a high degree of civilization for its full development. … An educated nation recoils from the imperfect vicariate of what is called a representative government.

Democracy is, after all, the oldest form of government in which majorities rule over minorities.

Democracy reappeared in a more civilized form in Athens, but when, in a truly political trial, Socrates praised monarchy, he was condemned to death.3 Remember also that Madariaga said rightly that our civilization rests on the…

John Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute,
May 12, 2018

We have no real property rights.

Think about it.

That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down through your family or that you scrimped and saved to acquire, whatever money you manage to keep in your bank account after the government and its cronies have taken their first and second and third cut…none of it is safe from the government’s greedy grasp.

At no point do you ever have any real ownership in anything other than the clothes on your back.

Everything else can be seized by the government under one pretext or another (civil asset forfeiture, unpaid taxes, eminent domain, public interest, etc.).

The American Dream has been reduced to a lease arrangement in which we are granted the privilege of endlessly paying out the nose for assets that are only ours so long as it suits the government’s purposes.

And when it doesn’t suit the government’s purposes? Watch out.

This is not a government that respects the rights of its citizenry or the law. Rather, this is a government that sells its citizens to the highest bidder and speaks to them in a language of force.

Under such a fascist regime, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which declares that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” has become yet another broken shield, incapable of rendering any protection against corporate greed while allowing the government to justify all manner of “takings” in the name of the public good.

Practically anything goes now.

Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, entire neighborhoods have been seized and bulldozed to make way for shopping malls, sports complexes and corporate offices.

Indeed,…

Quebec’s “Nurses on the Move” Facebook page bans WSWS reporters for criticizing unions

By
Louis Girard

12 May 2018

Two World Socialist Web Site reporters, banned from the Infirmières en mouvement (Nurses on the Move) Facebook page, have sent an open letter to its administrators protesting the anti-democratic action and insisting that “workers entering into struggle need access to a wide range of ideas.”

The recently-established Infirmières en mouvement Facebook page attracted more than 35,000 members after Quebec nurses, in some cases outside official union channels, mounted sit-ins and other protests. It quickly became a forum for nurses and other health care workers to expose, and discuss how they can best fight against, the onerous working conditions and deteriorating patient care that has resulted from years of savage budget cuts imposed by all levels of government.

Several nurses have used this forum to directly criticize the union that represents the vast majority of Quebec nurses, FIQ (or in English, the Interprofessional Federation of Health of Quebec). Like the other unions, both public and private sector, FIQ has suppressed opposition to the austerity policies of successive Liberal and Parti Québécois (PQ) governments.

A video showing FIQ President Nancy Bédard talking about a “positive” emergency meeting with Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette provoked many hostile comments on Infirmières en mouvement.

Ridiculing Bédard’s and Barrette’s empty promises to institutionalize patient-nurse ratios, a young nurse from Laval writes: “Ha ha ha! That’s great! She might get us a free subscription to the review of the oiiq [the order responsible for regulating the nurses’ profession in Quebec]!” He added: “I’m sure she would…

Richardo Duchesne, Council of European Canadians, 10 May 2018

Don’t let them deceive you. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) and the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 encourages Euro-Canadians to “preserve” and “enhance” their cultural heritage and ethnic identity. Section 27 of the Charter clearly states that the “Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement” of the culture of all ethnic groups in Canada, including Euro-Canadians. The Multiculturalism Act clearly states that “all citizens,” including Euro-Canadians, “are equal and have the freedom to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage.” The racial identity of Euro-Canadians is part of this cultural heritage since this heritage was built by them.

Canadian law recognizes the fundamental right of Euro-Canadians to advocate for a Canada that remains majority European in its ethnic and cultural character.

It may seem contradictory to be encouraging White identity politics through the employment of multicultural principles that were intended in their inception to encourage the dominant majority Anglo-European people to “respect” the “human need” of non-European minority groups to cherish and enhance their ethnic and religious identities within the framework of Canada’s political system. Is not multiculturalism a call upon the government to provide extra funding for minority cultural programs as well as “special” rights for non-European groups against past…

American writer and academic James Petras says the regime of US President Donald Trump has lost its most loyal European partners.

Petras, who has written dozens of books on international issues, made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Saturday while commenting on a recent statement by British Prime Minister Theresa May who on Friday told Trump that the UK and its EU partners will remain “firmly committed” to the Iran nuclear deal.

“The prime minister reiterated the government’s position on the Iran nuclear deal, noting that we and our European partners remain firmly committed to ensuring the deal is upheld,” Downing Street announced in a statement following May’s phone conversation with Trump.

Petras said, “I think this is a very important division between the US and the European Union such as we haven’t seen from its foundation. So this is a very significant political step and indicates that the Trump regime has lost its…

Breitbart
May 12, 2018

President Trump allegedly laid into Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a White House meeting, as border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border continue to skyrocket, according to a new report.

In a cabinet meeting attended by advisers Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Larry Kudlow, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump blasted Nielsen for failing to secure the southern border, the Washington Post reports:

Trump lashed out at his Cabinet, and Nielsen in particular, when told that the number of people arrested for illegally crossing the Mexico border topped 50,000 for the second consecutive month. The blowup lasted more than 30 minutes, according to a person with knowledge of what transpired, as Trump’s face reddened and he raised his voice, saying Nielsen needed to “close down” the border. [Emphasis added]

“Why don’t you have solutions? How is this still happening?” he said, adding later, “We need to shut it down. We’re closed.” [Emphasis added]

Indeed, border crossings have continued to soar under Nielsen’s direction at DHS. For example, as Breitbart Texas reported, border crossings in March approached Obama-era levels of illegal immigration at the border. Last month, border crossings continued to increase, with nearly 40,000 illegal aliens crossing the border.

Read more

This article was posted: Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 5:00 am

Striking McDonald’s restaurant employees lock arms in an intersection before being arrested, after walking off the job to demand to demand a $15 per hour wage and union rights during nationwide ‘Fight for $15 Day of Disruption’ protests on November 29, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: David McNew / Getty Images)

This story was originally published at Labor Notes.

Like everyone else in the labor movement, I’m nervously awaiting the Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, which would weaken public sector unions by letting workers receive the benefits of representation without contributing toward the cost.

But I’ve got a unique vantage point: I work in the same building as the plaintiff, Mark Janus.

We’re both child support specialists for the state of Illinois, where we do accounting on child support cases. I do this work because it’s fulfilling to help kids and single parents get the resources they need to support themselves.

What convinced Mr. Janus to join this destructive lawsuit? Your guess is as good as mine. I do know it’s much bigger than him. He’s the public face, but this case is backed by a network of billionaires and corporate front groups like the National Right-to-Work Foundation.

But the truth is, even Mark Janus himself benefits from union representation. Here are a few of the ways:

1. Without our union, Mr. Janus’s job would probably have been outsourced by now.

A drastic provision in the state’s “last, best, and final offer” in 2016 would have given Governor Rauner the right to outsource and privatize state employees’ jobs without accountability. Our union is all that’s preventing critical public services from being privatized.

Our agency would be at particular risk, because Illinois already has a longstanding contract with a scandal-ridden, for-profit corporation called Maximus to perform some of our agency’s functions. They modify child support orders and interact with employers about income withholding — pretty simple tasks, yet state…

With Israel and Iran exchanging direct fire, Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and John Bolton promoting regime change in Tehran, Inder Comar offers four reasons why the US may be close to attacking the Islamic Republic.

By Inder Comar

In 1953, the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, with the help of the British government, orchestrated a coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq.

Mossadeq had nationalized the Iranian oil industry, including the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This was unacceptable to the United Kingdom. A request to the United States for assistance led to “Operation Ajax,” and the overthrow of Mossadeq. 

Mossadeq’s political successor was the Shah of Iran, who ruled with the support of the U.S. and the U.K. until 1979, when he was himself overthrown by a popular revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

None of this is secret. The CIA openly admitted that it was behind the coup in 2013.

While the coup is not a secret, it remains ancient history in the United States. Maybe even forgotten history.

But while the U.S. has forgotten, the rest of the world remembers. Iran certainly remembers.

Mosaddegh in 1951: Iranians remember.

And this history adds a weighty and grim perspective to the U.S. decision to walk away from the multi-party agreement with Iran related to nuclear development. 

The fact of the matter is that the United States has already successfully sponsored regime change in Iran. And even more recently, the United States invaded Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, under false pretenses to overthrow its government. The United States promised democracy, but instead, Iraqis were subjected to years of death and destruction, torture and ISIS. 

The past is prologue. In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the support of rebel groups against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the support of a Saudi-led war of aggression in Yemen, the question on everyone’s mind at this time is a terrible one: has the United States now committed itself to violent regime change in Iran?

Here are four reasons that point towards a potential attack against Iran in the near future.

(1)…

Photo source Friends of the Earth Scotland | CC BY 2.0

The cost of pollution in human lives is often abstract due to the long-term nature of such deaths. The cost, however, is quite concrete: A new report estimates that 4.1 million people died as a result of ambient air pollution in 2016. And that’s a conservative estimate.

Globally, only five causes of death took a higher toll. (High blood pressure and smoking were the leading causes.)

That sobering report was issued this month by teams of researchers at the Health Effects Institute and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Their report, State of Global Air 2018, sought to analyze worldwide air pollution exposures and health impacts; data for 2016 is used because that is the most recent data available. The report states:

“Worldwide exposure to PM2.5 contributed to 4.1 million deaths from heart disease and stroke, lung cancer, chronic lung disease, and respiratory infections in 2016. PM2.5 was responsible for a substantially larger number of attributable deaths than other more well-known risk factors (such as alcohol use, physical inactivity, or high sodium intake) and for an equivalent number of attributable deaths as high cholesterol and high body mass index. Ozone, another important component of outdoor air pollution, whose levels are on the rise around the world, contributed to 234,000 [additional] deaths from chronic lung disease.”

“PM2.5” refers to particulate matter less than or equal to…

Days after US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and ahead of the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem al-Quds, the US says it is ramping up security at diplomatic posts in the Middle East.

CNN reports that the US State Department has been working on increasing security at posts around the Middle East region for weeks, amid concerns about the consequences of the Trump administration’s policy shifts in the Middle East.

Trump’s policy shifts in the Middle East and his recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli capital has made a turbulent region potentially all the more volatile.

This week Trump announced his decision to withdraw the United States from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

“I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said Tuesday in a televised address from the White House. “This…

How do we explain our obsession with relatively low risk dangers and our collective blindness to manufactured/marketed scourges that kill tens of thousands of people annually?

If you’ve bought a new vehicle recently, you may have noticed some “safety features” that strike many as Nanny State over-reach. You can’t change radio stations, for example, if the vehicle is in reverse. Who knows who or what you’ll run over in reverse if you were allowed to change radio stations while in reverse gear?

How many injuries can be traced to people changing radio stations while in reverse?

A friend recently told us that the California Legislature is considering a law that makes it legal for parents to let their children walk to school unattended.

Perhaps this is “fake news,” but it’s certainly plausible, given that leaving any child unattended is now viewed as not just irresponsible but criminal.

Money and Work Unchained
Charles Hugh Smith
Best Price: $12.29
Buy New $17.00
(as of 07:50 EDT – Details)

How the Free-Range Kids Movement Is Helping Parents Embrace Their Libertarian Side

The mainstream “news” is chockful of worried-looking news anchors announcing another e coli outbreak or recall of a consumer product, many of which now sport absurd warnings, including scary-sounding ones such as “This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.”

This is scary until you realize it’s on practically every consumer product in the state of California, which mandates the warning.

The narrowness of this obsession with safety comes into focus if we ask: how can a society so obsessed with safety have spawned an opioid addiction crisis that kills tens of thousands of people and ruins the lives of millions…

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday bowed to pressure from families of the 71 people who died in last year’s Grenfell Tower fire by appointing new experts to assist an inquiry into the blaze.

“To best serve the increasing scale and complexity of the inquiry, I have decided to appoint an additional two panel members,” she said in a written statement.

“The fire in Grenfell Tower was an unimaginable tragedy, and I am determined that justice is done for the victims, survivors, bereaved and the wider community.”

Survivors’ groups feared the inquiry risked being a whitewash unless May appointed a diverse panel that would better represent the local community to oversee the investigation.

Prior to May’s announcement Friday the panel was to consist only of inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick.

“We should not have had to campaign for it,” Adel Chaoui, who lost four relatives in the London fire, said, adding that they were “relieved” by the…

A top American nuclear expert has handed his resignation to President Donald Trump after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement this week.

Richard Johnson, the assistant coordinator for Iran nuclear issues at the Office of Nuclear Implementation, handed in his resignation this week, but did not give an exact reason for his decision.
Johnson had worked as a non-proliferation officer in the US State Department since 2006.

He had been involved in weeks-long negotiations with the United Kingdom, France and Germany, during which the European governments strived in vain to salvage the agreement.
In an email circulated to his colleagues and staff, Johnson has described the Iran deal “an extraordinary achievement.”

“I am proud to have played a small part in this work, particularly the extraordinary achievement of implementing the [deal] with Iran,” he wrote.

The landmark deal, officially known as the Joint…

ABC News
May 12, 2018

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has questioned several witnesses about millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee last year, including questions about donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, sources with direct knowledge told ABC News.

Those interviewed included longtime Trump friend and confidant Thomas Barrack, who oversaw the fundraising effort, as well as individuals familiar with the massive inaugural fund, according to sources with direct knowledge.

Barrack, a real estate investor, has long been described as a Trump “whisperer” whose close friendship with the president landed him a prime appearance during the GOP convention the night Trump accepted his party’s nomination.

The billionaire runs a fund with hundreds of millions in real estate and private equity holdings in the Middle East. Barrack oversaw the largest inaugural fundraising effort in U.S. history, bringing in $107 million – more than double what President Barack Obama raised for his first swearing-in festivities.

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This article was posted: Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 5:05 am

Hundreds of people have gathered in front of Israel’s embassy in London to protest 70 years of the occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli regime, calling on the government of Prime Minister Theresa May to stand up for the Palestinians.

Protesters, wearing masks of May and US President Donald Trump, were chanting “Stand up for Gaza” and “Stop the Killing,” in front of Israel’s embassy on Friday.

Holding Palestinian flags and banners, they were also chanting “Free Palestine,” “Freedom Now,” and “End Occupation.”

Lindsey German, an activist from Stop the War campaign told reporters that “all of us here in Britain have a duty to stand up for the Palestinians, particularly in light of the role of our government.”

Hugh Lanning, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said the government of May needs to “stop making platitudes and to start taking sanctions against the Israeli government.”

Protesters were…

Zero Hedge
May 12, 2018

Yesterday we reported on a disturbing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberly Strassel suggesting the FBI had a mole within the Trump campaign. 

After a battle between House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein over the release of classified information that was so top-secret that the DOJ refused to show Nunes on the grounds that it “could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI” – the agency finally relented on Wednesday, allowing Nunes and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) to receive a classified briefing.

This U.S. citizen, according the WSJ report, is a spy that the FBI embedded in the Trump campaign – and Strassel says she knows who it is but won’t say. 

“I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it.”

Mole hunt

In February, The Last Refuge reported that Trump campaign advisor Carter Page was working as an “under-cover employee” (UCE) for the FBI – helping the agency build a case against “Evgeny Buryakov,” Then – seven months later, the FBI told a FISA court Page was a spy.

In April 2017, writing a story about Carter Page (trying to enhance/affirm the Russian narrative), the New York Times outlined Page’s connections to the Trump campaign.  However, New York Times also references Page’s prior connection to the Buryakov case. If you ignore the narrative, you discover the UCE1 description is Carter Page.  READ [Notice how the story is shaped] LINK HERE –The Last Refuge

When asked over Twitter by OANN‘s Jack Posobiec whether it was him, Page denied the charge – replying “But if what I’m hearing alleged is correct, it’s a guy I know who splits most his time…

US President Donald Trump has chosen billionaire military contractor Stephen Feinberg as chair of his Intelligence Advisory Board that oversees the country’s intelligence community, deriving its influence from direct access to the president and his senior staff.

Feinberg is the co-founder, executive chairman and co-chief executive officer of Cerberus Capital Management, an investment firm that also owns defense contractor DynCorp International, which contracts security to the State Department and other agencies.

The New York Times reported last July that Steve Bannon, then the White House chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser, had asked Feinberg, as well as Blackwater founder Erik Prince, for proposals to send private-sector workers to Afghanistan in place of American troops.

In March 2017, Feinberg joined Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on a trip to see the new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford…

Plymouth, New Hampshire electrical workers strike to defend pensions

By
John Marion

12 May 2018

On Monday 80 linemen and five warehouse workers went on strike at the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) in Plymouth. The workers’ contract expired on April 30 and they are refusing to give in to management’s attack on their pension plan. According to the web site of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1837, all five of the warehouse workers and 79 of the linemen voted in favor of strike action. However, by Tuesday NHEC had already brought in scabs.

In a statement Monday NEHC declared it “has activated a contingency plan that will provide for adequate coverage of power outages and protect public safety. Certified line crews have been engaged and will be accompanied on any outage calls by non-union NHEC employees who are familiar with the service territory.”

Despite this threat, the IBEW has done nothing to mobilize telecom and power workers behind the strikers. Instead it has worked to isolate the workers, making sure they battle alone.

Workers at NHEC are eligible for both a defined benefit pension plan and a small amount of matching if they contribute to a separate 401(K). According to the Cooperative’s 2017 audited financial statements its contribution of $2.4 million to the defined benefit plan for 2017 was only 5 percent of total employer funding for the year. Because the plan is multi-employer, pooled contributions cover all eligible employees no matter where they work.

The NHEC limit on matching 401(K) contributions for IBEW members is only 2.5 percent, while non-union staff—whose jobs are not as dangerous as those of linemen—receive matching of up to 4.5 percent.

The workers have gone out because management is demanding…

When Jim Rogers talks, investors listen. One of the world’s most famous investors, Rogers is known for his no-nonsense style and investment wisdom. He is the author of several best-selling books, such as “Hot Commodities” and “Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets.” ETF.com recently spoke with Rogers about the latest financial market developments, including why he sees a big downturn taking shape in the next year or two.

ETF.com: You recently said you see the worst stock market correction of your lifetime coming next year. What’s going to cause that?

Jim Rogers: I can give you lots of possibilities. These things always start small and with nobody noticing.

For instance, in 2007, Iceland went bankrupt when most people didn’t know there was an Iceland, much less that it could go bankrupt. And then the next thing you knew, Bear Stearns collapsed; and then Lehman Brothers collapsed. Finally, everybody said, “Oh, there’s a problem.”

That happened slowly over a year. That’s probably what’s going to happen this time. It may have already started. There are companies going bankrupt in China. The whole banking system in Latvia collapsed recently.
Who knows what will cause it? I don’t. Rising interest rates, trade wars, real wars— many things could cause it. But it will be gradual. The worst collapse in my lifetime doesn’t happen in a day. It will evolve over a year or two.

ETF.com: Why do you think the next downturn will be so extreme?

Street Smarts: Adventu…
Jim Rogers
Check Amazon for Pricing.

Rogers: Historically, we’ve always had economic setbacks and bear markets. In 2008, we had a problem because of too much debt worldwide. Since then, the amount of debt has skyrocketed everywhere in the…

Breitbart
May 12, 2018

Sanctuary city jurisdictions that harbor and shield criminal illegal aliens from deportation by federal immigration officials have nearly doubled since President Trump took office and began more strictly enforcing immigration laws.

According to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), there are now 564 sanctuary cities across the United States, compared to when former President Obama was in office, when there were 338 sanctuary cities in 2016.

Graphic by FAIR

Experts with FAIR say that it is no longer only sanctuary cities that are expanding, but entire states — like California — are becoming sanctuary jurisdictions under Trump.

“Increasingly entire states are declaring themselves sanctuaries, thereby imposing these policies on county and municipal governments,” the FAIR report notes. “They have also morphed from passive non-cooperation policies to active efforts to obstruct federal enforcement, including against most criminal aliens.” [Emphasis added]

Likewise, the FAIR report says the increase in sanctuary cities across the country has also “sparked a counter-trend” of states banning sanctuary cities.

Read more

This article was posted: Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 4:48 am

Rally organizers carry away props following a protest outside the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) building against the end of net neutrality rules December 14, 2017, in Washington, DC. Led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the commission this week announced net neutrality will end on June 11, 2018. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Open internet advocates urged Americans to “ramp up” pressure on their senators on Thursday after FCC chair Ajit Pai announced in a press release that the widely popular net neutrality rules his agency voted to repeal last December will officially die on June 11.

“There has been much confusion about when exactly the FCC’s repeal, which allows [internet service providers] like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon to block sites, charge access fees for online content, and throttle apps and services, goes into effect. Today’s news ends the confusion, but not the fight,” noted Fight for the Future (FFTF) in a series of tweets responding to the news. “We need to be paying attention, educating ourselves and others, and speaking out. This is the moment to fight!”

The FCC’s announcement comes just a day after Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and 32 other Senate Democrats officially filed a petition to restore net neutrality protections using the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

A vote on the petition — which has the support of every member of the Senate Democratic caucus and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), but still requires one more vote to pass — could come as early as next Wednesday.

Senate will soon vote! Call your senators now (this phone number connects you directly to your reps & gives you a script): 513-854-0120 #RedAlert for #NetNeutrality https://t.co/xQZcubjKv5

— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) May 10, 2018

Denouncing the GOP-controlled agency’s vote to repeal net neutrality as “shameful” in response to Pai’s announcement on Thursday, Democratic FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel urged Americans to keep “making a ruckus until internet…

Photo source gnuckx | CC BY 2.0

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Each May 15, Palestinians solemnly commemorate Nakba Day. Nakba means catastrophe, and that’s precisely what Israel’s independence has been for the more than 700,000 Arabs and their five million refugee descendants forced from their homes and into exile, often by horrific violence, to make way for the Jewish state.

Land Without a People? 

In the late 19th century, Zionism emerged as a movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Although Jews ruled over kingdoms there more than 2,000 years ago, they never numbered more than around 10 percent of the population from antiquity through the early 1900s. A key premise of Zionism is what literary theorist Edward Said called the “excluded presence” of Palestine’s indigenous population; a central myth of early Zionists was that Palestine was a “land without a people for a people without a land.”

At its core, Zionism is a settler-colonial movement of white, European usurpers supplanting Arabs they often viewed as inferior or backwards. Theodore Herzl, father of modern political Zionism, envisioned a Jewish state in Palestine as “an outpost of civilization opposed to barbarism.” Other early Zionists warned against this sort of thinking. The great Hebrew essayist Ahad Ha’am wrote:

We… are accustomed to believing that Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys,…

Poverty is the greatest cause of death and illness globally; it strangles the lives of billions of people, denying the expression of innate potential, condemning men, women and children to live stunted uncreative lives of interminable suffering and drudgery.

Whilst the numbers living in extreme poverty (the World Bank calculates this to be living on $1.90 a day) has decreased, over half of the world’s 7.5 billion population are somehow surviving on less than $5 a day (the cost of a designer coffee in developed countries). Hundreds of millions of others live in a condition of relative poverty or economic insecurity, anxiety and worry their constant companion. The majority of the World’s poorest people live in developing countries, India, Sub-Saharan Africa and rural China predominantly, but tens of millions are pushed into the shadows in industrialized nations.  America, for example, has an estimated 44 million people, or 13% of the population, living in ‘official’ poverty. Wherever the poor are found they live on the margins of society, are exploited and disregarded.

Walking hand-in-hand with poverty is the crime of extreme inequality. Obscene levels of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of trillionaires whilst the poor are forced to beg for the crumbs that fall from their burgeoning tables.

Poverty results from and is itself a form of injustice; so too is poor education, inadequate health care, homelessness and…

The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Iran-linked military targets in Syria on Thursday in response to rocket fire, marking a significant escalation in regional hostilities a little more than a day after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. 

Israel said the attacks followed a volley of rockets directed at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, which caused no casualties. 

The Israeli military blamed the attack on Iran’s Quds Force, a special forces unit affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and said this marked the first time that Iranian forces have fired directly on Israeli troops. 

Syrian and Iranian news outlets accused Israel of firing the first shot, saying it was Syria that had responded after Israel targeted the Syrian town of Quneitra with artillery fire and missiles. There was no official response from the Iranian government. 

The rocket fire was followed by Israel’s largest intervention in neighboring Syria in decades. Jets headed for Syria screamed over northern Israel for more than four hours, and about 70 previously identified targets were hit, according to the Israeli military.

“This was by far the largest strike we have done, but it was focused on Iranian sites,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman. Syrian antiaircraft batteries were also targeted after they fired on Israeli planes, he added. 

In a statement carried by Syria’s state news agency, an unidentified…

Daily Caller
May 12, 2018

The California Assembly discussed Thursday a bill that would replace Abraham Lincoln or George Washington’s birthday with International Socialist Workers’ Day as a paid holiday.

California Democrat Assemblyman Miguel Santiago introduced Bill AB-3042, which would allow schools to replace Washington Day and Lincoln Day with Presidents’ Day and install an “International Workers’ Day” — conventionally known as “May Day” — as a second holiday.

“I’m aghast that a bill like this would be able to get through committee,” California Republican Assemblyman Matthew Harper said to the Assembly. “Are we in competition to be the laughing stock of the United States?”

“Are we going that far to the left?” Harper asked. “This is ridiculous; this is insane; this is un-American. And for folks who think that the U.S. won the Cold War with the Soviet Union, this makes it sound like we’re going in the other direction — that indeed California is kowtowing to the Soviet domination of the Cold War.”

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This article was posted: Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 4:55 am

Eagle-eyed Twitter users spot ‘weird protrusion’ coming from her back after she stepped out in New York’s warm weather bundled up in a coat and long scarf

US stealth fighter jets intercepted two Russian long-range bombers in international airspace off the coast of Alaska on Friday, according to North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The Russian TU-95 “Bear” bombers flew into the Air Defense Identification Zone, which extends approximately 200 miles off Alaska’s western coast, marking the first time in just over a year that Russian aircraft had flown that close to US territory.

The Russian bombers were “intercepted and monitored by the F-22s until the bombers left the ADIZ along the Aleutian Island chain heading west,” NORAD and USNORTHCOM spokesman Canadian Army Maj. Andrew Hennessy said in a statement.

The F-22s monitored the Russian jets until they left the ADIZ along the Aleutian Islands, heading west.

Hennessey said the Russian aircraft never entered North American airspace.

Alaska houses the Pentagon’s strategic missile interceptor base at Fort Greely, about 100 miles southeast of…

Daily Mail
May 11th, 2018

Incredible footage has revealed the terrifying capabilities of Black Mirror-style robots, branded ‘future death machines’.

Boston Dynamics has posted two videos showing off the new skills of two of its advanced automatons.

In one, Atlas, a humanoid robot, can be seen jogging around a grassy field, before leaping over a log that’s obstructing its path.

In the second, a SpotMini robo-dog navigates its way around an office building, climbing and descending a set of stairs with ease, all under its own direction.

The canine automatons look eerily similar to those featured in an episode of the sci-fi series, where mechanised creatures hunt humans in a post-apocalyptic future.

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This article was posted: Friday, May 11, 2018 at 8:17 am

Boston Dynamics has released a new video showing its bipedal robot, Atlas, jogging though a field.  Atlas ambulates autonomously at a steady, running pace and even jumps over a log.

This was accompanied by another video that depicts the company’s quadruped machine, SpotMini, negotiating a route through an office space and lab facility. The description for this video reads as follows:

SpotMini autonomously navigates a specified route through an office and lab facility. Before the test, the robot is manually driven through the space so it can build a map of the space using visual data from cameras mounted on the front, back and sides of the robot. During the autonomous run, SpotMini uses data from the cameras to localize itself in the map and to detect and avoid obstacles. Once the operator presses ‘GO’ at the beginning of the video, the robot is on its own. Total walk time for this route is just over 6 minutes. 

Leaders of a US Navy SEAL team deployed to Africa have been suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct, according to a report.

The SEAL team’s commander and the senior enlisted adviser have been relieved of their duties and sent back to the United States while the allegations are being investigated, CNN reported.

“Special Operations Command Africa commander Maj. Gen. Mark Hicks suspended the Special Operations Command Forward – East Africa commander and senior enlisted adviser of their duties on May 10 due to allegations of misconduct,” Maj. Casey Osborne, a spokesman for Special Operations Command Africa, told the network.

Many of the Navy SEALs in East Africa conduct operations in Somalia, supposedly advising local forces combating al-Shabab militants.

News of the investigation into the alleged sexual misconduct comes as Special Operations Forces in Africa have come under intense scrutiny over the past months.

US Africa Command,…

It’s Mother’s Day this weekend, and racial justice groups around the country are bailing black women out of jail so they can spend the holiday with their families. For the second year in a row, “Black Mama’s Bail Out Day” is raising money to bail out as many black women from jail as possible. The effort is taking place in dozens of cities to call attention to the injustice of cash bail. We speak to Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners on New Ground and an organizer of National Black Mama’s Bail Out Day.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Sunday is Mother’s Day. Racial justice groups around the country are bailing black women out of jail so they can spend the holiday with their families. For the second year in a row, Black Mama’s Bail Out Day is raising money to bail out as many black women from jail as possible. The effort is taking place in dozens of cities to call attention to the injustice of cash bail.

This is Serena Sebring, an organizer with Southerners on New Ground, or SONG, which spearheaded the effort. This is video from SONG’s celebration last year in Durham, North Carolina.

SERENA SEBRING: SONG has been spearheading this effort, because Mary Hooks had a dream. She thought, “What if we came together with our local and national partners and collected our resources to bail as many black mamas out of jail the week before Mother’s Day?” It’s part of a larger critique of money bail as a system, which we know leaves people in cages, when we believe that nobody should live in cages.

AMY GOODMAN: Since the effort launched last year, there’s been a growing national movement to eliminate cash bail from the criminal justice system. Just this week, Google and Facebook announced they’ll no longer take money from America’s for-profit bail bond agencies. Still, the cash bail system keeps millions of people who have not been convicted of any crime imprisoned in jails every day nationwide while they await trial.

For more, we go to Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners on New…

Daily Mail
May 11th, 2018

Apple is working with Goldman Sachs on a credit card that will carry the iPhone maker’s digital wallet logo.

The card will replace a rewards-card Apple currently has with Barclays and is likely to be tied to Apple Pay.

It will be available in 2019, and could cause a major disruption to traditional high street banks, sources claim.

It could, for instance, provide loyalty points that offer discounts on Apple products. However the exact benefits it will offer remain unclear.

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This article was posted: Friday, May 11, 2018 at 8:18 am