Stephan: The Trump administration's commitment to protect carbon energy above all other considerations is putting us at odds with the rest of the world, and is appallingly ill-considered. Almost as bad is the administration's constant lying about it. It degrades people's respect in the integrity of government and threatens our democracy.
Credit: Slate
In the wake of the decision to leave the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Trump administration has been touting the salutary impact of its policies and general attitude on the beleaguered coal sector. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said on Meet the Press on Sunday that “in fact since the fourth quarter of last year to most recently added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.” Aside from being ungrammatical, that’s wrong. And it represents a willful misreading of the data from one of the reportedly central voices behind Trump’s decision to withdraw from the climate pact. (Needless to say, Chuck Todd didn’t correct him.) As the government’s own numbers show, there were only 51,000 coal-mining jobs in the entire U.S. in May. Last month, 400 coal jobs were added—not 7,000. It was the overall mining sector, which includes oil, gas, and metals mining in addition to […]
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Stephan: Running the world, that is keeping large social systems operating to a goal, involves a series of skill sets. Just as biologists, anthropologists, physicians, and physicists, have professional societies and events where the intention community gathers, so world leaders meet. We are high order primates, that's how we do things. The question is not that meetings such as the one described in this report happen, but to what intention? The report makes it clear that wellbeing is not the intention being expressed. We must make wellbeing the first priority or we are in for a very painful, violent future in which many will die, and there will be much suffering. Since the 1% have the money and the armies, we must develop a strategy which creates mass intention. Nothing is more powerful.
The highly secretive Bilderberg meetings are taking place in this unassuming Westfields Marriott hotel in Chantilly, Va.
Credit: Flickr
Hundreds of political and economic elites are gathering in Chantilly, Va., for a three-day summit on international geopolitics known as the Bilderberg meetings. At the top of the group’s agenda? “The Trump administration: a progress report.”
The outcome of the summit is anyone’s guess, as the infamous Bilderberg meetings are top secret (the name “Bilderberg” comes from the Dutch hotel where the first summit was held in 1954). The summit “[kicked] off on Thursday in heavily guarded seclusion at the Westfields Marriott, a luxury hotel a short distance from the Oval Office,” The Guardian reports. “The hotel was already on lockdown on Wednesday, and an army of landscapers have been busy planting fir trees around the perimeter, to protect coy billionaires and bashful bank bosses from any prying lenses.”
The Guardian continues:
According to the meeting’s agenda, “China” will be discussed at a […]
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JESSICA SCHLADERBECK, - New York Daily News
Stephan: If you don't live in the world of the fundamentalist "christian cult" you really can't believe what goes on. A fact free world where the vilest sorts of behavior are justified by a religious world view out of the middle ages. I regularly read that cohort's websites because I think this community presents the real threat of social instability in the United States; it is the highest probability trend. On the basis of social outcome data White "christian" males are much more likely to cause you problems than a Muslim man. But at the social level it isn't just men. This story should give you some insight into what I mean.
Brooke Covington
One of the five people charged with trying to beat “homosexual demons” out of a fellow church member incriminated herself on the stand and admitted to throwing out the first blow in the attack.
Despite her attorney’s objections, Sarah Anderson, 30, testified that she told other leaders at Word of Faith Fellowship that Matthew Fenner had experienced “some kind of sexual sin or thought.”
She claimed Minister Brooke Covington, who is standing trial for kidnapping and assault, confronted the 23-year-old about his homosexual thoughts and that she started pushing Fenner’s chest, screaming “Open your heart!”
That’s when Anderson said she slapped Fenner in the face, with about 30 other members of the church joining in — beating, screaming at and choking the man for hours. Even after he admitted to having homosexual thoughts in a dream, the assault continued.
Fenner, who has since left the church, testified earlier this week that he thought he was “going to die” during the Jan. 2013 prayer session or what they call “blasting.”
Fenner, who […]
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Jaweed Kaleem, Reporter - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: Here is another manifestation of the same Identitarian impulse and the trend it is creating. We are moving closer to civil strife with the Theocratic Right egged on by the attitudes and words of Donald Trump.
kirmishes broke out Sunday in downtown Portland as hundreds of President Trump’s supporters who were rallying for free speech faced off against a series of counter-demonstrations far bigger in size.
Police in riot gear made 14 arrests and used pepper spray and flash-bang grenades to break up the crowds. But the violence was far less than city officials had anticipated after a white supremacist was accused of stabbing to death two men who tried to defend a pair of teenagers from his anti-Muslim insults and racist taunts on a city train. A third man was injured during the confrontation May 26.
Trump supporters held signs aloft saying, “Don’t tread on me,” “God, guns and Trump” and “Make America great again,” as they engaged in heated arguments with black-clad protesters holding signs saying, “Black lives matter,” “You have blood on your hands” and “Portland stands against hate.”
The pro-Trump March for Free Speech drew the ire of many Portlanders after images went viral showing the 35-year-old suspect in the killings attending a similar protest in April led by local video blogger Joey Gibson, who also organized Sunday’s demonstration. As Jeremy Joseph Christian was arraigned Tuesday on charges of
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