Monday, September 3rd, 2018
Stephan: Here is the update on what California is doing about net neutrality. I see this as a datapoint on the trend of moving power from an incompetent corrupt and dysfunctional federal government to the state level. I think it will result in another Blue value state, Red value state dichotomy, part of the Great Schism Trend.
California lawmakers passed the toughest net neutrality law in the country on Friday, a move that would guarantee full and equal access to the internet.
The Washington Post reported that the vote from California lawmakers could set up a fight with federal regulators who moved last year to repeal net neutrality.
The legislation, if signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), would preclude internet providers from blocking, slowing or favoring certain websites, the Post reported.
In addition, it would prohibit internet providers from collecting fees from apps and sites in order for them to reach users.
The Post notes that the bill’s goal is to make California the leader of the increasing backlash from states toward the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The state’s Senate received enough votes for the measure just a day after the state Assembly approved it.
The legislation will now proceed to the governor’s desk for a signature in the coming weeks.
“When Donald Trump’s FCC decided to take a wrecking ball to net neutrality protections, we knew that California had to step in to ensure our residents have access to a free and open internet,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), […]
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Monday, September 3rd, 2018
Murtaza Hussain, - The Intercept
Stephan: I think ICE should be disbanded, it is an agency that by design seems to select personnel for thuggishness. As for Thomas Homan, the former ICE director, who has overseen and approved the Nazis behavior of the agency, and whom I think should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity, well you get the quality of his character by his acceptance and attendance at this event. This kind of agency, in my view, has no place in America.
Have you ever asked yourself: Has there ever been an American administration this corrupt, thuggish and incompetent? What was your answer?
The former acting
Thomas Homan, former acting director of ICE in the Trump Administration.
director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is listed as the “special dinner gala honoree” at an upcoming convention for ACT for America, an organization accused of having links to white supremacists and that is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “an anti-Muslim hate group.” Thomas Homan served as ICE’s acting director under President Donald Trump until June of this year. During a period in which the Trump administration came under intense public scrutiny for its aggressive immigration enforcement tactics, Homan was an unapologetic proponent of controversial policies such as the separation of migrant families at the southern border.
ACT for America and its founder Brigitte Gabriel have been criticized by civil rights groups for fomenting anti-Muslim hatred and conspiracy theories. Gabriel, a vocal activist on the right, has claimed that U.S. government institutions have been infiltrated by seditious Muslim sleeper agents and that Muslims generally comprise a fifth column within the United States. The organization has been involved in efforts to promote anti-Muslim legislation at the state level, including […]
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Monday, September 3rd, 2018
Tanya Basu, - Daily Beast
Stephan: As the fires get worse year after year we are going to see another unintended consequence of climate change.
Pay attention to the picture with this article, and note the proper kind of mask.
Is your area impacted by wildfire smoke? Surgical and dusk masks will NOT protect you.
Choose a mask called a “particulate respirator” that has the word “NIOSH” and either “N95” or “P100” printed on it. More info here from @CAPublicHealth
One night in 2016, Laurie Crosbie woke up in her cabin off California‘s Huntington Lake feeling like she was breathing underwater.
Located an hour and a half outside of Fresno, the cabin was in the crosscurrents of local wildfires that raged during that drought-stricken summer. Smoke had filled the rooms and the fire alarm was going off.
“I felt like I was drowning,” Crosbie recalled.
Days later, she still couldn’t breathe properly and went to the doctor, who used a spirometer to measures how well she could inhale and exhale.
The result was shocking: Crosbie had lost 20 percent of her lung capacity, even though she was a non-smoker, physically active, and otherwise healthy. Simply inhaling and exhaling fire-tinged air had crippled her breathing.
The United States is now in the midst of its worst wildfire season ever, […]
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Sunday, September 2nd, 2018
Stephan: The alliance that has kept the peace for your lifetime is breaking up because of the vulgar lying psychopath and his minions who control the government today. Exactly what the implications of this will be no one really knows, but they will not be good. And over a third of the country thinks that's just grand.
Merkel and Trump disagree
Credit: Reuters/Rheinhard Krause
The dollar is arguably Washington’s most powerful peacetime weapon. But when Donald Trump ignored his EU partners and reapplied sanctions on Iran—undermining a nuclear treaty that European leaders believe in—he added to a long list of officials who resent this financial ammunition. What’s striking is that, this time, the complaints aren’t just coming from Moscow and Caracas, but allies in Berlin.
Last week, Germany’s federal minister for foreign affairs, Heiko Maas, acknowledged a growing rift between the US and Europe, calling for the latter to consider building a bigger military, creating its own version of institutions like the World Bank, and perhaps even prying its bank payment channels apart from the dollar-dominated network. Maas’s point: The US is no longer a reliable partner.
Widening the US/Europe rift would suit Vladimir Putin just fine. Instead of the US-led “unipolar” structure that’s been in place since the Cold War, the Russian president is striving for a world controlled by […]
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Sunday, September 2nd, 2018
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV, - Salon
Stephan: The United States spends more on the military industrial intelligence community than the next seven top-spending nations in the world combined. Children go hungry in the United States, old ladies eat dog food, we have third-rate healthcare, a failing education system, and the country's infrastructure is literally falling apart, but we always have more money for the military. What we never seem to ask is what happens to all that money? Here's at least part of the story.
From my perspective, we have a military designed for the wars of an earlier era, huge armies in conflict on established battlefields. We spend trillions on systems that have little or nothing to do with the actual enemies we face in the endless wars that now define American foreign policy. One can only wonder what might have been if that money had been spent on fostering wellbeing around the world, not for profit but just because wellbeing makes peace easier to achieve.
Credit: Jean-Marc Bouju/AP
It was December of 2003, and I was in Tal Afar, Iraq with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. The Brigade was based at an old Iraqi air force base just outside of the town. I had spent the last week in Rabihya, a small town on the border with Syria. When I say “on the border with Syria,” I mean it literally. The wall along the western side of the Army compound where I stayed was the actual border between Iraq and Syria. You could step up on a pile of sandbags just inside the wall of the compound and see into Syria, where a huge billboard-size photo of the recently deceased Syrian strongman Hafez al-Assad stared back at you. While I was there, they succeeded in erecting a matching billboard depicting the new strongman, Bashar al-Assad, next to the one of his father.
It was a noisy, dusty, primitive place. The Army’s compound was only a few yards from the […]
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