Tag: news

 

Via The Daily Bell

 

Bret Stephens delivered the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture this week at the University of California, Los Angeles. Read the full text of his remarks below: I’m profoundly honored to have this opportunity to celebrate the legacy of Danny Pearl, my colleague at The Wall Street Journal … – Time Magazine

The Wall Street Journal makes up stories. This speech that deals in part with the unimpeachable integrity of the the Journal is simply untrue.

Take for instance a recent a recent article about PewDiePie, gaming vlogger Felix Kjellberg, calling him an anti-Semite. He is the most popular personality on YouTube with 53 million subscribers and counting. He’s not anti-Semite though the Journal did its best to make him so.

PewDiePie did videos that explored why it was so easy for people, especially Jews, to be insulted. One video involved two half naked video artists who were willing to say vile things about Jews for $5 dollars. PewDiePie points out this was his way of showing in the Internet era that people will do anything for tiny bits of money.

WSJ for some reason found it necessary to examine PewDiePie’s entire video output before coming up with nine videos that they claimed contained anti-Jew allusions. They also said that because he wore wire rim glasses, he was cultivating a look similar to Himmler’s.

Even if this were true, and we obviously don’t think it is, PewDiePie surely deserved a strong talking to, perhaps a warning. Instead he was stripped of a large TV show and the PewDiePie site itself was downgraded so he’ll receive less money from it.

Vox opined on PewDiePie, badly of course …

“It’s hard to look at his recent string of alt-right allusions as existing in a vacuum during a moment when neo-Nazi politics has abruptly jumped into the international spotlight. As much as Kjellberg might wish for his comedy to be seen as over the top and exaggerated, Disney and YouTube’s respective reevaluations of their business relationships with him are a bold reminder that we’re living in a historical period when joking about controversial subjects is a more tenuous proposition than ever — and one that could have serious real-world repercussions.”

The Wall Street Journal and Youtube stripped him literally of millions of dollars in order to send a “bold reminder that we’re living in a historical period when joking about controversial subjects is a more tenuous proposition than ever.”

In other words, PewDiePie was making jokes, as even Vox admits when evaluating the “evidence.” Nonethess, the Wall Street Journal, in pursuit of “truth”, held him up as someone whose motives were suspect and integrity was questionable – enough so he should lose possible millions in revenue.

From the Journal as regards the Pearl speech:

Some of you may have noticed that we’re living through a period in which the executive branch of government is engaged in a systematic effort to create a climate of opinion against the news business.

 

The President routinely describes reporting he dislikes as FAKE NEWS. The Administration calls the press “the opposition party,” ridicules news organizations it doesn’t like as business failures, and calls for journalists to be fired. Mr. Trump has called for rewriting libel laws in order to more easily sue the press.

 

When you work at The Wall Street Journal, the coins of the realm are truth and trust — the latter flowing exclusively from the former. When you read a story in the Journal, you do so with the assurance that immense reportorial and editorial effort has been expended to ensure that what you read is factual.

Not true, as we have just pointed out. PewDiePie was eviscerated because of a Wall Street Journal story that accused him of anti-Semitism and intolerance far beyond what he was indicating.

It said in his heart he might be closer to the alt.right than he let on. But that’s just supposition. Similarly the WSJ is filled with the “coins of the realm,” truth and trust. Except it’s not.

The accusations that Trump makes are agree to by a majority of Americans, 60-90 percent of whom just don’t trust the mainstream media, including the Journal.

We honor the responsibility to separate truth from falsehood, which is never more important than when powerful people insist that falsehoods are truths, or that there is no such thing as truth to begin with.

No you don’t. Yesterday we carried a story saying Trump might have syphilis. This is the sort of story, appearing in the very mainstream New Republic that leads Trump to say that the mainstream news media is perpetually vile and hurtful when it comes to stories about him.

The rest of the Pearl Memorial speech is a long peroration of what has going wrong under the Trump administration. Some of it is true, but most of it would be better delivered by someone who wasn’t at the Journal.

Trump is winning not because he is popular but because he is right. The news media is impossibly biased as a  whole, and anti-Trump.

The only real caveat is that Trump ought to go after the top level culprits, the ones who actually own the media that is so biased against him. This he has not done yet, presumable because it would bring him into conflict with our true masters, and he is not ready for that battle yet (and maybe never will be).

But this article in the end is simply untrue. The mainstream media pursues its own self interest. It only hits the truth inadvertently while pursuing its factoids for other reasons entirely.

Conclusion: Donald Trump will surely preside over at least a partial realignment of the news media as we know it today. It is losing too badly for it to continue on as it is. But it won’t change totally, only subside, biding its time. If he makes a bad enough mistake, it will roar back to life for the inevitable impeachment.

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By EconMatters

We discuss giving more wasteful government defense contracts to private corporations, and lower taxes and the damage done to the growing and out of control National Debt in this video. Corporations are already paying a much lower effective tax rate, they need to be paying more taxes in my opinion. Especially given the mergers and acquisitions that the government has let go over the last 30 years which creates massive system and sector monopolies and oligopolies that lead to non competitive industries, and is ultimately bad for competitive market environments and consumers.

First of all, the President of the United States should not be cozying up to any CEOs or Corporations this just leads to massive conflicts of Interests, shoot several Corporations have made me sign massive Anti-Bribery Documentation Agreements to avoid this very type of conflict of interest. This is just bizarre theatre under the guise of Job Creation. But we need to downsize all Military Spending given our unsustainable National Debt profile, the interest portion of servicing this National Debt is very troubling for the future economic health of the United States.

Sure Donald Trump might get a short-term, and I mean very short-term jump in GDP with deficit spending programs, but any increase in Military Spending with an already out of control government expenditure of the overall budget on this category is just pure stupid fiscal policy. And to lower Corporate Taxes at the same time as raising Defense Spending and government spending overall is just more “short-termism” government policy that has dire consequences down the line in just two years time for our federal deficit, national debt, interest on the debt and economic prosperity.

Donald Trump we don`t need the Boeing or Lockheed Jet program, we need to cut defense spending given what waste and inefficiencies there are already are in this budget expenditure. The overkill factor alone regarding what the United States spends on the Military versus all of our nearest competitors combined is mind-numbing economic stupidity at its finest. No wonder we cannot balance our budget, pay our bills, and have an unsustainable 20 Trillion Dollars in National Debt. The Rate of Change on the National Debt is just beyond alarming, going from 8 Trillion to 20 Trillion in ten years. Let me restate this: Going from 8 Trillion to 20 Trillion in ten years.

Deficit Spending and Increasing Military Spending is great if somebody else is footing the bill, this money ultimately comes from you and me in the form of higher taxes. Sure you can lower Corporate Taxes, but this is only temporary, because everyone`s taxes including Corporations will just be raised higher in the future (Another 2 years) because of unsound financial policy and our Blow Out National Debt, and Higher Debt Servicing Costs. This is not Rocket Science, this is basic 6th grade Math here. This isn`t a political statement, a Democratic or Republican issue, this is a Taxpayer and American Financial Advisor issue.

You don`t get something for nothing, and given the Rate of Change of our National Debt this country cannot afford Corporate Tax cuts period, A Massive Infrastructure Spending Program, or A Costly Deregulation Program that all over the next four years lead to increased government spending, increasing our National Debt, and ultimately bankrupting the United States.

I know this wasn’t what the country wants to hear because citizens want to think there is a magic solution to all these problems with Voodoo economics, but remember Bush`s statement: “Read My Lips: no new taxes” lowering Corporate taxes will backfire bigtime on Republicans and the Economic future of the United States. This just means taxes will have to be raised by the next administration, probably in two years to address growing budgetary imbalances. Surely, the Republicans in Congress are not this stupid, Donald Trump`s Tax Policy is economic suicide. Most Corporations pay much lower effective tax rates, it is part of the reason we cannot pay our current budgetary bills. You cannot get something for nothing, and somebody always has to pay! You can lower Corporate Taxes, You can lower Individual Taxes, but somebody still has to pay for any budgetary gaps, and our growing National Debt. And that usually means higher future taxes to play catchup to unsound fiscal budgetary policy.

This is why Bush had to raise taxes. You Republicans should be smarter than this, to fall for this trap: You Don’t Get Something For Nothing! Somebody Has To Pay! Moreover, Donald Trump sure didn`t want to pay his fair share of government taxes the last 18 years, this just means somebody else did! Guess who? It is always easy to Deficit Spend Somebody Else`s Money Donald Trump!! And keep in mind I am a-political; I am not coming at this National Debt problem with a political axe to grind: we just are a pretty unsound fiscally run country right now, and headed in the wrong direction at an alarming rate of speed.

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After questioning President Trump's sanity earlier in the week, it appears Democrats have found another narrative to cling to – invoke the 25th Amendment unless Trump "gets a grip."

With a growing number of Democrats openly questioning President Trump’s mental health.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in a floor speech this week called for a review of the Constitution's procedures for removing a president. He warned the 25th Amendment of the Constitution falls short when it comes to mental or emotional fitness for office.

 

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) during a weekend interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” said that “a few” Republican colleagues have expressed concern to him about Trump's mental health.

 

 

And Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of a psychiatrist or psychologist in the White House.

Justifying their questions by pointing to Trump’s habit of making demonstrably false claims.

“It’s not normal behavior. I don’t know anybody in a position of responsibility that doesn’t know if they’re being rained on. And nobody I work with serially offers up verifiably false statements on an ongoing basis,”

And now that narrative has grown louder as CNN's State of The Union just discussed invoking the 25th Amendment unless President Trump "gets a grip"

In fact, The Atlantic’s David Frum joked after the election, “Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Article 4. We’re all going to be talking a lot more about it in the months ahead.”

So, what’s Article 4 to the 25th Amendment? In the abstract, the amendment itself is about presidential succession, and includes language about the power of the office when a president is incapacitated. But Digby recently highlighted the specific text of growing relevance:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

What does that mean exactly?

Well, it means Congress isn’t the only institution that can remove a president from office between elections. Under the 25th Amendment, a sitting vice president and a majority of the executive branch’s cabinet could, on their own, agree to transfer power out of the hands of a sitting president. At that point, those officials would notify Congress, and the vice president would assume the office as the acting president.

And what if the challenged president wasn’t on board with the plan to remove him/her from the office? According to a recent explainer, “If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn’t reached, the president would regain his powers.” All of this comes up in fiction from time to time, and in all likelihood, Americans will probably never see this political crisis play out in real life. And that’s probably a good thing: by all appearances, the intended purpose of the constitutional provision was to address a president with a serious ailment – say, a stroke, for example – in which he or she is alive, but unable to fulfill the duties of the office.

In other words, for the first time, the concept of a "soft palace coup" has been officially brought up on public media; we expect such speculation will only get louder.

The ball is now in Trump's court.

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While vocal critics of Donald Trump, many of them members of the media, saw in Trump’s Thursday news conference, Friday tweet in which he claimed the press was the “enemy of the American people”, and subsequent Saturday campaign speech, a combative, thin-skinned chief executive who continues to blame the media for the controversies roiling his administration, his supporters saw something else entirely: a champion of Middle America who is taking on the establishment and making good on his campaign promises to put the country first.

The Associated Press contacted Trump supporters across the country to see how they viewed Trump’s latest fued with press. Here are the views of some of those supporters:

* * *

Richelle Kirk of Logan, West Virginia, watched some of Trump’s news conference on Thursday and didn’t see any head-scratching comments from the president.

“I back him 100 percent,” said the 42-year-old stay-at-home mom. “You either love it or get out, is my opinion.”

During Barack Obama’s presidency, her husband was laid off from his coal-mining job, a loss they blamed on Obama’s environmental policies. She said they lost a home and “everything we owned.”

After West Virginia voters resoundingly rejected Obama during his 2012 re-election, “we didn’t show our hind ends when Obama was re-elected,” Kirk said. So she believes people shouldn’t overreact to Trump, either.

She particularly agreed with the president when he took credit for an optimistic business climate and a rising stock market, saying Trump is beginning to fulfill his campaign promise to put people back to work.

Reporters, she said, “need to leave him alone. He’s just doing what he said he’s going to do.”

* * *

Kevin Felty of Norfolk, Virginia, said it was the “most impressive presidential press conference” of his life. “Largely because it was so unorthodox,” said Felty, 48, who works as a surgical assistant and sells life insurance. “It was hyper adversarial between the president and the press. And yet he was able to control the questioning and the tone and the mood in the room.”

Felty said the media needs to move on regarding Russia and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. “There was nothing illegal that General Flynn had done at that time,” Felty said. “What he did do is make a mistake in not being accurate with the vice president.”

He also said he believes Trump is trustworthy as president. “He doesn’t need the media to chide him to make the right decisions,” Felty said. “It’s something he’s been doing well for decades.”

* * *

Regina Lenoir of Picayune, Mississippi, enjoyed watching Trump’s news conference and said the president “looked more relaxed.” Lenoir, 69, said she was most interested in the president’s comments about the alleged leaks that led to the resignation of Michael Flynn as national security adviser.

“We don’t know the conversation that happened between him and (Vice President Mike) Pence. Only they know. But the news media gets out there (and) says such and such with no corroboration,” she said. “I’m sick of them making up stories. You know, we’re intelligent people. We can make up our own mind on whether they’re telling the truth.”

She agreed with Trump’s take on how the media has covered his administration and campaign, saying those covering his administration are good reporters but biased. She said if people gave Trump a chance, “he might just surprise everyone.

“He wasn’t my first choice, but he is my president,” Lenoir said. “I think he handled the news conference very well.”

* * *

Joseph Gatlin of Virginia Beach, Virginia, said he did not watch the news conference but heard about the question a Jewish reporter asked Trump about a rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the country. Trump told the reporter to sit down and said it was not a simple or fair question before describing himself as “the least anti-Semitic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

Gatlin, who is Jewish and who was born in Israel, said the media needs to move on from “asking the same question.”

“He’s not a racist. He doesn’t believe in racism,” said Gatlin, who owns a flooring company. “He’s not anti-Semitic at all.”

Gatlin pointed to the number of Jewish people in Trump’s inner circle, including his son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner. He said the media instead should be asking Trump about terrorism and the economy.

“I think that it’s become ridiculous,” Gatlin said. “He wants the serious questions. He wants people to ask him questions that people care about. You can’t mention racism in every speech. They’re looking at the wrong things.”

* * *

Scott Hiltgen, a 66-year-old office furniture sales broker from River Falls, Wisconsin, said he was glad to see the president push back against the media. He said reporters have no proof Trump or anyone around him did anything wrong.

“They’re trying to make up a story that Trump worked with the Russians to rig the election,” he said. “Now they’re trying to make a big deal out of (former national security adviser) Mike Flynn. He was doing what he was supposed to do. He was talking to his counterparts. He was talking to the Russians. He got fired because he lied to (Vice President Mike) Pence. There’s no story there. The left media is so excited. They think they took this guy down. No, he made a mistake. He just lied.”

Hiltgen said he remains squarely behind the billionaire president because he has done what he said he would do on the campaign trail.

“He’s accomplished more in, whatever, three weeks, regarding the stuff he talked about,” Hiltgen said. “That’s what people voted for. I can’t believe there’s actually a politician doing what he says he would do. That never happens.”

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Two weeks after the White House unveiled new sanctions on two dozen Iranian entities in retaliation for a recent ballistic missile test, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard is set to conduct military drills next week, a senior commander announced Saturday, despite warnings from the United States not to engage in such activity and a warning from the White House which said it was putting Iran “on notice.”

“The manoeuvres called ‘Grand Prophet 11’ will start Monday and last three days,” General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the force’s ground units, told a news conference. He said “rockets would be used” without specifying which kind, according to AFP which first reported the drill.

Three weeks ago, Iran conducted drills involving short-range missiles at a time of heightened tensions with the United States, a test which was condemned as violating the terms of Obama’s nuclear treaty.  The Islamic republic said the exercises were aimed at demonstrating Iran’s “complete preparedness to deal with the threats” and “humiliating sanctions” from Washington. President Trump promptly slapped fresh, if largely meaningless, sanctions against Tehran’s weapons procurement network after the January 29 missile test.

“Iran would do well to look at the calendar and realise there’s a new president in the Oval Office. And Iran would do well not to test the resolve of this new president,” Vice President Mike Pence said earlier this month. New Pentagon chief James Mattis, for his part, has branded Iran “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world”.

Meanwhile, speaking at the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Saturyda, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told NBC News he dismissed the possibility of renegotiating the nuclear deal, saying there’s little appetite for opening “Pandora’s box.”  “I believe the nuclear deal is going to last,” the foreign minister said firmly, sentiment which numerous republicans – most prominently Paul Ryan – have echoed in recent weeks.

While as noted above, the White House recently said it was putting Iran “on notice” over the missile test, Zarif warned that Iran doesn’t “respond well” to such language and dismissed sanctions as ineffective.

“Threats do not work against Iran,” Zarif told NBC News. “It would work much better if they decided to use the language of respect, the language of mutual interest.”

Trump has repeatedly criticized the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers, having previously warned he would terminate the deal promptly after coming into office.

Zarif on Sunday criticized American implementation of the nuclear deal as “lackluster” and “slow” but stressed the importance of the deal and it’s mechanisms. “It’s a multilateral deal and multilateral deals cannot be reopened for negotiations because it would open a Pandora’s box,” he told NBC News. Still, he said “Iran has many options” on the table if the U.S. opted to unilaterally withdraw and said he hasn’t and won’t rule out a meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson if the need arises for discussions about the nuclear deal.

“The possibility has not arisen, no request has been made,” he added. “If a need arises to deal with the nuclear issue we have, we have mechanisms within the nuclear agreement for meetings of the ministers.”

Zarif did not provide further details — but did weigh in on Trump’s controversial executive order temporarily banning Iranian citizens from entering the U.S: “It shows the hostility is towards all Iranians — even Iranian members of Parliament in Europe, because there are ministers, members of parliament in Europe who were born in Iran and they cannot enter the United States. This is absurd. What is the message that the United States Government is trying to send?”

However, Zarif was cautious when asked about a potential escalation of hostilities under the Trump administration. “Iran is not interested in conflict,” he said. “I believe at the end of the day reason and rationality will prevail… There is no cause to be served and great cost to be paid.

* * *

In other news, on Saturday a senior official at Iran’s state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said that Iran has found shale oil reserves of 2 billion barrels of light crude in its western Lorestan province.

“Based on studies, it is estimated that the shale oil reserves in Ghali Koh in Lorestan amount to 2 billion barrels of oil in place,” Bahman Soleimani, NIOC’s deputy director for exploration, told the semi-official news agency Tasnim. “The oil is light.” Soleimani said exploration was also being carried out for shale gas reserves in the area, and the studies were expected to be completed by October, 2017.

Iran’s proven oil reserves of about 160 billion barrels, almost 10 percent of the world’s total, rank it fourth among petroleum-rich countries.

Earlier on Sunday, Ali Kardor, managing director of National Iranian Oil, said that Iran plans to boost output to 4.7 million b/d by 2021, oil ministry news service Shana reports, and would reach 4mmbpd in output by mid-April, adding more pressure to OPEC (mostly Saudi Arabi) to extend, or even expand, it production cuts beyond the first half. As reported last week, the US found itself with a new all time high inventory glut of both crude and gasoline, as the much anticipated production rebalancing has so far failed to materialize as US shale companies boost output while gasoline demands tumbles, as discussed on Saturday.

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Submitted by Daniel Mcadams via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Despite vowing not to use depleted uranium (DU) weapons in its military action in Syria, the US government has now admitted that it has fired thousands of the deadly rounds into Syrian territory. As Foreign Policy Magazine reports:

US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Maj. Josh Jacques told Airwars and Foreign Policy that 5,265 armor-piercing 30 mm rounds containing depleted uranium (DU) were shot from Air Force A-10 fixed-wing aircraft on Nov. 16 and Nov. 22, 2015, destroying about 350 vehicles in the country’s eastern desert.

Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman John Moore said in 2015 that:

US and coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.

Now we know that is not true. 

Numerous studies have found that depleted uranium is particularly harmful when the dust is inhaled by the victim. A University of Southern Maine study discovered that:

…DU damages DNA in human lung cells. The team, led by John Pierce Wise, exposed cultures of the cells to uranium compounds at different concentrations.

The compounds caused breaks in the chromosomes within cells and stopped them from growing and dividing healthily. 'These data suggest that exposure to particulate DU may pose a significant [DNA damage] risk and could possibly result in lung cancer,' the team wrote in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

We should remember that the United States is engaged in military activities in Syria in violation of international and US law. There is no Congressional authorization for US military action against ISIS in Syria and the United Nations has not authorized military force in violation of Syria's sovereignty either.

The innocent citizens of Syria will be forced to endure increased risks of cancer, birth defects, and other disease related to exposure to radioactive materials. Depleted uranium is the byproduct of the enrichment of uranium to fuel nuclear power plants and has a half-life in the hundreds of millions of years. Damage to Syrian territory will thus continue long after anyone involved in current hostilities is dead.

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Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, doubled down on Trump’s vocal warnings to the press and advised Americans to take President Trump’s attacks on the media “seriously,” following the president’s denunciations of the press as the “enemy.”

“There’s been a debate about when to take the president seriously,” CBS’ John Dickerson said in a “Face the Nation” interview with Priebus Saturday. “He recently tweeted that the press was the enemy of the American people. Should we take that seriously from him?”

“Well, I think you should take it seriously,” Priebus replied. “I think that the problem we’ve got is that we’re talking about bogus stories like the one in the New York Times, that we’ve had constant contact with Russian officials. The next day, the Wall Street Journal had a story that the intel community was not giving the president a full intelligence briefing. Both stories grossly inaccurate, overstated, overblown, and it’s total garbage. So we spend 48 hours on bogus stories. And the American people suffer. So I do think it’s a problem. And I think that the media needs to, in some cases — not every case, John — but in some cases really needs to get its act together.”

“The enemy?” CBS anchor John Dickerson pressed. Well, maybe not so much the media as their corporate owners.

In any case Priebus responded that “if the theory is that the press is supposed to be a free forum of information to speak to the American people, I think it ought to be accurate,” and echoed Trump’s criticism saying the “media is willing to run with unnamed sources, apparently false, leaked documents to create stories. I think that the media should stop with this unnamed source stuff, put names on a piece of paper and print it. If people aren’t willing to put their name next to a quote, then the quote shouldn’t be listed,” Priebus said.

But why is the media the enemy? Priebus’ response: “I think in our case we have a total feeding frenzy that has gotten so out of control.”

Priebus then said that the major story out of the White House is a “story of accomplishment,” pointing to the administration’s work in pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, issuing executive actions, and nominating a Supreme Court justice, among other things.

Dickerson asked how the chief of staff would respond to anyone that could “act on that declaration by the president” that the press was the “enemy.”

“I don’t know what you mean by act on it,” Priebus said. “I mean, certainly we would never condone violence. But I do think that we condone critical thought.”

“We’re talking about stupidity and intelligence reporting that is based on facts that’s not coming out of the actual heads of these intelligence agencies,” Priebus said of recent media reports. “And we’re sitting here talking about it. And it’s a shame. And it needs to end.”

Trump’s chief of staff was also asked about Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and his recent criticisms at a Munich security conference that the audience would be “alarmed by the growing inability and even unwillingness to separate truth from lies.”

“I don’t even know what he’s referring to,” Priebus said of McCain, a vocal critic of the president. “I mean– I didn’t see his statement. But he would be wrong in regard to that statement and the White House and President Trump.”

Dickerson further questioned the White House representative on whether other congressional leaders have expressed concerns about how the executive branch is being run.

“Is it constant praise that you get from your allies on [Capitol] Hill?” the “Face the Nation” host wondered.

“Look, I think that what we hear from people on the Hill is the same thing I’m telling you — is that the media’s obsessed with a lot of false, hollow stories without sourcing that we have to track down and deal with,” Priebus said in reply. When Dickerson later pointed out to Priebus that “in every answer, you’ve turned it back to the media,” the interview turned contentious. “I guess the question is: Is the strategy now to answer any question by just turning it back on the media and using a fight with the media as a way to try to control the storyline?” Dickerson asked.

“John, the last few questions you’ve asked make no sense,” Priebus said. “I mean, you’re talking about people that you’re not naming, and whether or not some things need to be improved, and what would you say to people that say some things. I mean, what things? What people? What are you referring to? Give me a specific question with a specific purpose– accusation, and I’ll answer the question. But you’re asking me a vague question without any specifics, and you want me to give you a specific answer. It’s ridiculous.”

Trump’s animosity toward the press came to a head on Thursday during a freewheeling news conference, where he railed against journalists for covering his administration critically and dismissed questions about his ties to Russia and the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S. He also defended former national security adviser Michael Flynn, calling him “a wonderful man” who was treated “very, very unfairly by the media.” Flynn was asked to resign on Monday amid revelations he discussed sanctions with Russia’s ambassador and lied to Vice President Pence about the nature of those conversations.

Trump also said at the news conference that if Flynn hadn’t discussed sanctions, he would have instructed him to do so, though he claimed he had no part in directing the conversations.

Priebus echoed Trump’s position in the CBS interview, arguing that there is “nothing” inappropriate about a national security adviser discussing sanctions with a foreign diplomat, though Flynn’s call with the Russian envoy came before Trump took office. “There’s nothing wrong with having a conversation about sanctions,” Priebus said. “And there’s nothing wrong about having a conversation about the fact that the Obama administration put further sanctions in place and expelled some folks out of the United States.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that topic coming up in a conversation,” he said.

We are confident the media will disagree with everything Priebus said and the conflict between the “enemy press” and Trump will only grow from here.

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Two months after an unexpected, landslide loss in the December 4 constitutional referendum which cost him his job as Italy’s prime minister, on Sunday Matteo Renzi quit as leader of Italy’s ruling party, in the process triggering a re-election fight against minority dissidents that threatens the stability of the center-left government, Bloomberg reports. Renzi told a national assembly of the ruling PD that he had handed in his resignation acknowledging he was set back by defeat in last year’s referendum, one day after critics from leftist factions threaten to abandon the Democratic Party.

“Everything stems from the referendum,” Renzi told more than 600 party delegates. “I feel responsible for the defeat, there is a before and an after. That referendum was a blow for the whole country, starting with the economic system and we must now put the car back on the road.” Renzi denounced “blackmail by a minority” and infighting that he called “a gift” to the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He is expected to stand for re-election at a congress in April or May.

As Bloomberg adds, concerns about a party split have pushed Italian bond yields higher and led to the widest spread between Italian and German 10-year bonds since February 2014. The selloff may accelerate as Renzi’s resignation could benefit Five Star, which is neck-and-neck with the party in opinion polls and wants a referendum on Italian membership of the euro area. Renzi has faced challenges to his reformist strategy and leadership especially since losing the referendum, which prompted him to resign as premier and sponsor current Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, a Renzi loyalist and fellow PD member, as his successor.

Renzi, who has pushed for early national elections in June or
September, made no such appeal on Sunday and instead urged his audience
to support Gentiloni and his government.

 

“Basta (enough) with
discussions and polemics on the government,” Renzi said. “I ask you to
applaud Gentiloni and his government because it is unthinkable that the
congress be turned into a congress on the government.”

Renzi’s critics have urged him to drop pleas for early elections and pledge support for Gentiloni to remain premier until the end of the parliamentary term in early 2018. They also want more time to prepare a congress and primaries, and a more leftist program.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of party dissidents on Saturday, critics of Renzi sang “Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag)”, an iconic song of the Italian labor movement. Enrico Rossi, president of the Tuscany region, called for “a party which is on the side of the workers” and derided Renzi for “trying to present himself as the Italian Macron.” Dissidents also include Roberto Speranza, a former PD chief whip in the lower house, and Michele Emiliano, president of the southern Apulia region and a possible challenger for the PD leadership.

However, a breakaway could backfire on the dissidents in making early elections more likely as it could see some 20 members of the lower house, and about a dozen senators, leave the PD and weaken the coalition government, potentially leading to further political instability in Italy.

“The Gentiloni government is our government. We back it and will continue to back it until” Italian President Sergio Mattarella decides to call elections, Matteo Orfini, PD chairman, said on the eve of Sunday’s assembly. “A split would shrink parliamentary support for the government and put it at risk.”

“We’re walking on a tightrope,” Gentiloni confided to his ministers, newspaper La Repubblica reported on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the competition between the PD and Beppe Grillo’s Five Star movement is neck and neck: an Ipsos opinion poll published in newspaper Corriere della Sera on Saturday found that Five Star would have 30.9% of the vote, against 30.1% for the PD, 13% for Forza Italia of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi and 12.8% for the anti-immigrant Northern League. Meanwhile, a breakaway faction from the PD would have limited support with only 4.3% of voters backing a new leftist party.

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Concerns about a potential, and so far unsubstantiated, nuclear “incident” have spread in the past week, after trace amounts of radioactive Iodine-131 of unknown origin were detected in January over large areas in Europe according to a report last week by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, the French national public expert in nuclear and radiological risks. Since the isotope has a half-life of only eight days, the detection is an indication of a rather recent release. As the Barents Observer adds, “where the radioactivity is coming from is still a mystery.”

The air filter station at Svanhovd – located a few hundred meters from Norway’s border to Russia’s Kola Peninsula in the north – was the first to measure small amounts of the radioactive Ionide-131 in the second week of January.  Shortly thereafter, the same Iodine-131 isotope was measured in Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland. Within the next two weeks, traces of radioactivity, although in tiny amounts, were measured in Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, France and Spain.

Norway was the first to measure the radioactivity, but France was the first to officially inform the public about it.

“Iodine-131 a radionuclide of anthropogenic origin, has recently been detected in tiny amounts in the ground-level atmosphere in Europe. The preliminary report states it was first found during week 2 of January 2017 in northern Norway. Iodine-131 was also detected in Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, France and Spain, until the end of January”, the official French Institute de Radioprotection et de Süreté Nucléaire (IRSN) wrote in a press release.

Source: Institute de Radioprotection et de Süreté Nucléaire.

No Health Concerns For Now

Mitigating some of the concerns, however, was the head of section for emergency preparedness at the Norwegian Radiation Protection Autority, Astrid Liland, who spoke to the Barents Observer and said the levels measured raise no health concerns. “We do measure small amounts of radioactivity in air from time to time because we have very sensitive measuring equipment. The measurements at Svanhovd in January were very, very low. So were the measurements made in neighbouring countries, like Finland. The levels raise no concern for humans or the environment.  Therefore, we believe this had no news value,” Astrid Liland answers when asked why the public was not informed.

She points to Norway’s nation-wide online network of 33 stations were people can check real-time measurements.

At Svanhovd, measurements in the period January 9-16 show levels of 0,5 micro Becquerel per cubic meter air (µBq/m3). In France, where authorities decided to publish the information, measured radioactivity were much lower, from 0,1 to 0,31 µBq/m3. Levels measured in Finland were also lower than in northern Norway with 0,27 µBq/m3 measured in Rovaniemi and 0,3 µBq/m3 in Kotka. Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) decided to follow the French example and posted a press release about the increased levels of radioactivity.

But No Explanation Where The Radiation Came From

Finnish authorities also underscores that the levels measured are far from concentrations that could have any effect on human health. Neither STUK, nor IRSN speculate in the origin of the released Iodine-131.

Astrid Liland can’t either explain the origin of the radioactivity. “It was rough weather in the period when the measurements were made, so we can’t trace the release back to a particular location. Measurements from several places in Europe might indicate it comes from Eastern Europe,” Liland explains. “Increased levels of radioactive iodine in air were made in northern-Norway, northern-Finland and Poland in week two, and in other European countries the following two weeks, Astrid Liland says.

As the Barents Observers adds, Iodine-131 in the air could come from an incident with a nuclear reactor. The isotope is also widely used in medicine and for that purpose; many countries around the globe produce it.

All operators of nuclear reactors or institutions using Iodine-131 for medical purposes have detectors for external releases of radioactivity. In other words, as the Observer concludes, “Someone out there knows why the radioactivity was spread over larger areas of Europe.”

Nuclear installations in northwastern Europe, were the radioactivity was first discovered, includes nuclear power plants in Finland, Sweden and Russia, in addition to nuclear powered vessels on Russia’s Kola Peninsula and White Sea area. The source could as well come from even further away installations.

Meanwhile, Constant Phoenix Deployed

Finally, adding an air of mystery to this alleged “incident” was the spotting of the “Constant Phoenix”, which on Friday arrived in the UK’s Mildenhall airbase after departing from Florida.

???? “Constant Phoenix” now on final for RAF Mildenhall, UK ???????? http://pic.twitter.com/9MAoZ6Kl1z

— U.S. Aircraft Spots (@usaircraftspots) February 17, 2017

As the Aviationist explains, the WC-135 Constant Phoenix has been used in the past to determine whether nuclear tests or detonations have taken place in any given region. The WC-135 is a derivative of the Boeing C-135 transport and support plane. Two of these aircraft are in service today out of the ten examples operated since 1963. The aircraft are flown by flight crews from the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron from Offutt Air Force Base while mission crews are staffed by Detachment 1 from the Air Force Technical Applications Center.

The WC-135, known as the “sniffer” or “weather bird” by its crews, can carry up to 33 personnel. However, crew compliments are kept to a minimum during mission flights in order to lessen levels of radioactive exposure.

Effluent gasses are gathered by two scoops on the sides of the fuselage, which in turn trap fallout particles on filters. The mission crews have the ability to analyze the fallout residue in real-time, helping to confirm the presence of nuclear fallout and possibly determine the characteristics of the warhead involved: that’s why the aircraft is important to confirm the type of explosion of today’s test.

As Darin R. Pfaff, a former WC-135 aircrew member explained to us in a comment to a previous article on this aircraft: “airframes have two large supplemental charcoal filter packs, as well as HEPA/ULPA filters (we called them “lungs”) for their cabin air. When the instruments indicate contact with radioactive debris, the crew will also reduce cabin airflow to just maintain pressurization, and all personnel on board will go to 100% oxygen through their masks. They will stay on 100% O2 until activity readings drop back down into the safe levels. Everybody wears a dosimeter, and those records are monitored to prevent unsafe exposure.”

 

Along with monitoring nuke testing, the WC-135 is used to track radioactive activity as happened after the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986 and Fukushima incident back in 2011.

So far there has been no official statement by any entity providing further details on the spike in Iodine levels, nor an explanation from the US military why the “Constant Phoenix” was deployed to Europe.

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