[Guardian] Brazil’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro has chosen a new foreign minister who believes climate change is part of a plot by "cultural Marxists" to stifle western economies and promote the growth of China.
Ernesto Araújo ‐ until recently a mid-ranking official who blogs about the "criminalisation" of red meat, oil and heterosexual sex ‐ will become the top diplomat of South America’s biggest nation, representing 200 million people and the greatest and most biodiverse forest on Earth, the Amazon.
His appointment, confirmed by Bolsonaro on Wednesday, is likely to send a chill through the global climate movement.
Brazil was where the international community first came together in 1992 to discuss reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Its diplomats have played a crucial role in bridging the gap between rich and poor nations, particularly during the forging of the Paris agreement in 2015.
#2
Maybe he realized that there was not going to be some Magic Eco-Action Money Tree™ raining money on the developing nations? Rather a series of silly initiatives that would just keep them poor?
#4
I thought of it more as a Racket, like a Ponzi Scam. The transnational elites, many of them based out EUrope, got their beaks wet in the Oil For Palaces™ scam. The International Green Fund promised to be a revenue stream thousands of time larger --- Loot For Everyone!
[Politico] Senate Republicans are urging President Donald Trump to quickly nominate a permanent attorney general, hoping a new top law enforcement officer will blunt bipartisan concern over the future of special counsel Robert Mueller and boost the GOP ahead of tough government funding talks.
Even after Trump’s latest attack on Mueller in a flurry of tweets Thursday, most Republicans argue the president will not fire Mueller or derail his investigation because the political consequences would be too great.
But they said that naming an attorney general nominee as soon as possible ‐ specifically one who would vow to preserve the Russia probe ‐ would go a long way in halting legislative momentum to protect Mueller and Democratic messaging that acting attorney general Matt Whitaker will undermine the investigation.
"If we had some confidence that there is somebody nominated that would be confirmed in a reasonable period of time, to me it seems like it would relieve a lot of the controversy," said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, who predicted that Whitaker, who was openly critical of the Mueller probe before Trump tapped him for the job, is "not going to be there long."
#1
What sucks about that - Jeff Flake (Douche -AZ) has been making noises about not voting for court picks and vowing to block them. Pretty sure this would be up his alley as well.
[NR] After a long process, Amazon finally announced that it will locate its new headquarters in New York and Virginia. Following the announcement, Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that "Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here."
As a result of her tweet, conservative commentators all over twitter and on shows like Fox Business’s Varney & Co. are making fun of her. They argue that her reaction is yet more evidence that she doesn’t get economics and that doesn’t want New Yorkers and Virginians to get the thousands of jobs that will be created there thanks to the new headquarters.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Ocasio-Cortez is mostly correct on this matter, and her conservative critics are wrong. Handouts like this to Amazon and other prominent companies are appalling in their cronyism, pure and simple. I agree that she doesn’t understand economics and that her socialist ideal is a recipe for fiscal and economic disaster. But her conservative critics reveal their own economic misunderstanding when they support targeted tax breaks as a means of creating jobs.
First, let’s be honest. Tax incentives aren’t anywhere near the top of the factors that company considers when deciding where to locate. In all likelihood, Amazon first surveyed all available locations searching for factors that really matter most ‐ factors such as the presence of a skilled workforce, adequate infrastructure and transportation options (airports and a vast subway network), as well as synergies with other companies for the purpose of enhancing production supply chains and access to professional services. Once, it had a list of places that fit its needs, it might have taken under consideration the tax incentives.
#2
Handouts like this to Amazon and other prominent companies are appalling in their cronyism, pure and simple.
It's called commerce. I believe there's a piece of paper that allows a certain entity to regulate interstate commerce. Why haven't they done something about it? /rhet
[Breitbart] Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) offered his thoughts on who should replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions during an interview with Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor Amanda House.
"I think your cabinet needs to have people in it who agree with you," Paul said when asked if he was happy about Sessions’ departure. "I think for a long time Jeff Sessions hasn’t really been working for what the president would like him to do."
"I also think that there are some big reforms that we need of our justice and our intelligence agencies, and I think justice can be part of that," Paul added. "What they’ve done to the president has been very unfair with going after his campaign, trying to entrap people."
Paul then referenced the deep state, as he believes they are the ones targeting members of the Trump Administration.
[Reuters] PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A U.N.-backed court found two leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide on Friday, almost four decades after the ultra-Maoist regime which oversaw the "Killing Fields" was overthrown.
Most of the victims of the 1975-79 regime died of starvation, torture, exhaustion or disease in labor camps or were bludgeoned to death during mass executions.
Between 1.7 and 2.2 million people, almost a quarter of the population, died during the 1975 to 1979 rule of the Khmer Rouge.
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), said Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two", Nuon Chea, 92, and former President Khieu Samphan, 87, were guilty of genocide against the Cham Muslim minority and Vietnamese people, and of various crimes against humanity.
"Yes," says psychology professor Jean Twenge who says that the smartphone and social media are the cause:
...I think technology is part of the problem, but it is also the professors, parents and society that don't allow kids to fail and feel okay. Everyone is supposed to be a famous superstar and if you can't make it in Hollywood, you make it online with Instagram etc. Teens have such high expectations of themselves on one hand and a limited ability for hard work and perseverance on the other that it is no wonder they feel distraught.
This discrepancy between what a teen thinks they should be and what they are sets them up for depression and mental instability. Add in no real world experience and a lack of ability to handle failure and you have a recipe for an unhappy life.
#1
No, soft lives are creating the (more) fragile generation. Bones and muscles get stronger from hard exercise (or work.) Minds get stronger (smarter) from stimulating use (e. g. Rantburg.) Why shouldn't personalities get tougher from facing obstacles?
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/16/2018 10:42 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Look no further to the 'mentally fragile' (ie millenial) generation's woes than social mdia; Hasbro is getting hammered by the snowflake brigade over the Monopoly for Millenial version, just releasd. Picked mine up at Wal-mart after not finding in other big box stores carrying the evidently 'safe' versions.
Cover art and back of the box quotes are awesome and the melt down only validates the premise behind it.
#4
..except for thousands of copies buried in a landfill in New Mexico to be unearth at a later date to go for gold on eBay. (so do I need to put a /sarc on that?)
#6
Raising? I see women my age (59) and older with phones that could not be surgically removed from their yaps. Remember when people were emotionally secure enough to stand at the bus stop and read the newspaper or watch the world go by instead of talking incessantly?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/16/2018 16:55 Comments ||
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[FrontPage] Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that democracies would have a tough time with foreign policy, in large part because it was so hard for them to maintain secrecy. Recent events show how prescient he was. Indeed, the story reveals one of the most chilling developments in the history of our secret intelligence services.
You wouldn’t know it from the "news coverage," but the CIA’s global secret internet communications network was uncovered by Iranian spooks between 2009 and 2013 (that would be the first Obama term), thanks in part to Iran’s enlisting an American double agent who knew all about the system. A very big deal, as Yahoo reported and Breitbart summarized:
Moving down to the author's 'Fix'
What is to be done? Putting terrific leaders at the top of CIA obviously won’t do the trick. Pompeo, a good man, was director for nearly two years, and there is still no sign that the Intelligence Community is significantly improved. I’m afraid we have to go back to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescription: shut it down and start a new secret intelligence service. It’s a big country, full of talented people. The analyses can be farmed out to think tanks and research centers, where much of the good work is done anyway. As for operations, much of the work should be done by the military, as General Flynn intended (this is one of the reasons CIA went after him, first at DIA and then again at the National Security Council.
And I have a scheme. Recruit young scholars and business people. Pay them to live abroad, and to befriend the next generation of leaders. That way, some years down the road, we will have agents in place who are on first-name terms with the top people. My own experiences testify to the effectiveness of this stratagem. I went off to Italy as a graduate student, and assimilated into the Roman political and intellectual worlds. One of the people I befriended was Bettino Craxi, then an unknown Socialist, who went on to become prime minister. One night it was urgent for President Reagan to talk to Craxi, who wouldn’t take a call from our Embassy late at night. But he did take a call from me, his old friend. It worked out. We need these informal avenues. CIA at its best has them, but not nearly on the necessary scale.
It’s not hard but it’s urgent work. Faster, please.
#1
The author refers to it as his 'scheme.' I believe what the author has highlighted is the need for a long-term investment.
General Mike Flynn saw the need for a long-term approach while serving as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. His insistence upon the 'long-term', and his various attempts at investment and development of the 'long-term', ultimately resulted in his ouster.
The futility of continued crisis management and political motivated operations is evidenced in the rush to find and dispose of UBL, and the subsequent tragic events in 2009 at FOB Chapman in Afghanistan.
Needless to say, our government does not do very well when it comes to long-term planning and stability. Tragically, it tends to follow established election cycles.
#3
Think lots of the CIA etc got retasked to protecting the establishment and neglecting any humint by going for big shiny computers that will do the dirty jobs for them.
The more opaque the bureaucracies are, the more they are run for the convenience of the staff, not the purpose they were set up to do.
#4
Spends too much time plotting to overthrow elected governments, particularly their own. Not just Trump, see the leaks during the Bush administration.
[Breitbart] To celebrate "Trans Awareness Week," abortion giant Planned Parenthood has released seven linguistic tips to help gender-sensitive individuals use terms that will not offend members of the LGBTQ "community."
Partnering with GLAAD ‐ formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation ‐ Planned Parenthood has taken political correctness to a new level, leaving behind feminist inclusivity to remove all references to men or women out respect of for those who are neither.
Thus, the self-anointed language police have determined that "boys and girls" should give way to the more generic "children," while "his or her" should now be the more capacious (but numerically suspect) "their."
In their "Beyond the Binary" campaign, Planned Parenthood not only proposes ousting male-leaning terms like "guys" in favor of the more open-ended "folks," but they suggest that any limitation of human beings to the restrictive categories of male and female is inappropriate.
So, "the lady in the red shirt" should now be phrased, "the person in the red shirt," presumably to prevent people from thinking that a person’s gender is inferable from "their" biological sex.
#3
Don't dare "her" Roberta, er, Bertie,
Or flirt, or assert that they're purty
Or sturdy or dirty
Or curt or too wordy.
Beware, or they're sure to get shirty!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NR] After a long process, Amazon finally announced that it will locate its new headquarters in New York and Virginia. Following the announcement, Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that "Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here."
