Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong, by Michael Hobbes
(images Finlay MacKay) - The Huffington Post
▻https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong
For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public perception and ruining millions of lives. It’s time for a new paradigm.
David fell into the pit,
▻https://hackernoon.com/david-fell-into-the-pit-6cbb1f0b6726?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4
but the show must go on.Airport rollers buddies: “Hey, we both have no control over where we’re going!”INGOT Coin, our weekly sponsor, will make trading direct, cost efficient, less timely and more available round the clock by discarding the issues brought by third party intermediaries and banks such as high fees, unavailability, and time consumption. Learn more.What a week. As you might or might not know, AMI, the parent company of Hacker Noon, is small. Like surprisingly small. We often get emails & tweets & Facebook messages assuming that we are the size of Medium or The Huffington Post or Product Hunt, which is flattering but also problematic. I guess it is a good problem to have :-)yoooooooo Olivia dela Rosa ???So when our only full time employee & CEO David had an accident (...)
#bitcoincash #fundraising-ideas #scrum-master #firefox-devtools #hackernoon-letter
Federal Court Rules That Employers Can Pay A Woman Less As Long As Her Old Boss Did, Too | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/federal-court-rules-that-employers-can-pay-a-woman-less-as-long-as-h
A federal court ruled on Thursday that women can indeed be paid less than men for doing the same job, based on what their previous salaries were.
According to the Associated Press, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday to overturn a 2015 ruling from a lower court in California.
The 2015 decision, made by U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Seng, stated that basing women’s salaries on their prior salaries was inherently discriminatory, since they likely faced pay discrimination due to gender bias at their former jobs. But with this new ruling, that’s no longer the case.
In Kenya’s Forbidden Forests, Conservation Can Turn Violent | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kenya-climate-change-forests_us_58b72d35e4b0284854b3886b
Covering a 54,000-acre swath of rolling hills in western Kenya, Embobut is one of the country’s last intact mountain forests. It’s a vital watershed. The hills capture rain clouds, which feed rivers, which flow downhill to supply thousands of smallholder and commercial maize farms in Kenya’s breadbasket. The forest is also home to several thousand Sengwer, a hunter-gatherer ethnic minority.
Embobut looks like a place frozen in prehistory, or lifted from Dr. Seuss. Ancient trees tower over carpets of grass; strange fluorescent flowers mingle with twisted vines and ferns; crystal-clear creeks crash through boulders.
But the beauty belies an undercurrent of controversy. The forest has become a flashpoint in a debate about indigenous peoples’ land rights ― and the trouble that can ensue when those rights conflict with the country’s strategy for fighting climate change.
The Sengwer have lived in this forest for generations, building simple wooden houses, and keeping bees for honey and livestock for milk and meat. The population is spread over a large area, and signs of their presence are few. Without a guide, a visitor could walk for hours and only encounter occasional cows.
But the Kenya Forest Service sees forest dwellers like the Sengwer as squatters whose growing demand for timber, water, pasture and farmland puts too much strain on a delicate ecosystem, especially as Kenya works to confront climate change and adapt to its impacts.
Trump Intensifies His Attacks on Journalists and Condemns F.B.I. ‘Leakers’ - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html
Reporters from The Times, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, the BBC and The Huffington Post were among those shut out of the briefing. Aides to Mr. Spicer admitted only reporters from a group of news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed.
Those organizations included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Fox News also attended.
Reporters from The Associated Press and Time magazine, who were set to be allowed in, chose not to attend the briefing in protest of the White House’s actions. The Washington Post did not send a reporter to the session.
Still, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which typically advocates press rights in countries with despotic regimes, issued an alarmed statement on Friday about Mr. Trump’s escalating language.
“It is not the job of political leaders to determine how journalists should conduct their work, and sets a terrible example for the rest of the world,” said the group’s executive director, Joel Simon. “The U.S. should be promoting press freedom and access to information.”
Mr. Trump, in his attack on the news media at the conservative gathering, complained at length about the use of anonymous sources in news stories, charging that some reporters were fabricating unnamed sources to level unfair charges against him.
“They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name,” Mr. Trump said. “Let their name be put out there.”
At another point, he said, “A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people because they have no sources — they just make it up.” He added that his “enemy of the people” label applied only to “dishonest” reporters and editors.
#journalisme #USA #Trump
How the New York Times Is Using Strategies Inspired by Netflix, Spotify, and HBO to Make Itself Indispensible
▻https://www.wired.com/2017/02/new-york-times-digital-journalism
Sulzberger, like more than three dozen other executives and journalists I interviewed and shadowed at the Times, is working on the biggest strategic shift in the paper’s 165-year history, and he believes it will strengthen its bottom line, enhance the quality of its journalism, and secure a long and lasting future.
The main goal isn’t simply to maximize revenue from advertising—the strategy that keeps the lights on and the content free at upstarts like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vox. It’s to transform the Times’ digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever. To hit that mark, the Times is embarking on an ambitious plan inspired by the strategies of Netflix, Spotify, and HBO: invest heavily in a core offering (which, for the Times, is journalism) while continuously adding new online services and features (from personalized fitness advice and interactive newsbots to virtual reality films) so that a subscription becomes indispensable to the lives of its existing subscribers and more attractive to future ones. “We think that there are many, many, many, many people—millions of people all around the world—who want what The New York Times offers,” says Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor. “And we believe that if we get those people, they will pay, and they will pay greatly.”
300 Plumbers Poured Into Flint, Michigan, To Install Water Filters For Free | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/300-union-plumbers-flint_us_56b0e3c3e4b0a1b96203ce9e
More than 300 union plumbers from all over Michigan flooded Flint to install free filters for residents, this past weekend.
New Research Shows Failings of GMO Insect Resistance, Corn Crop in Jeopardy | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carey-gillam/new-research-shows-failin_b_14003604.html
New research adds to evidence that the effectiveness of popular genetically engineered traits used to protect corn and cotton from insects is failing, putting U.S. corn production potential in jeopardy, and spurring a need for increased insecticide use.
The study, authored by a trio of independent researchers, documents resistance in a major crop pest called corn earworm, and adds to warnings that the popular GMO insect-resistant technology known as Bt, after the soil-dwelling bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, has lost its luster. It is noteworthy as the first long-term, in-field assessment of transgenic Bt corn’s effectiveness against one of the most damaging pests of sweet corn, field corn, cotton and many other high-value crops. Before publishing their findings, which cover 20 years of observations, the researchers presented them to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as to the corporations that developed and market the traits, said Galen Dively, a University of Maryland entomologist and lead researcher on the study.
Congress Is About To Pass A Bill That Shows D.C. At Its Worst — It May Also Turn Around The Opioid Crisis And Cure Cancer | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/congress-21st-century-cures_us_583e3d98e4b0ae0e7cdaca32
In 1996, Purdue Pharma introduced a new painkiller it said carried a low risk of abuse or addiction. It called the drug “OxyContin.”
In reality, of course, OxyContin was extremely addictive — and Purdue knew it. A decade later, three Purdue executives, and the company itself, pleaded guilty to criminal charges tied to OxyContin’s marketing and agreed to pay more than $600 million in fines.
But the executives dodged prison time, and the prosecution did little to slow the rise of opioid use. The pharmaceutical industry had spent the past 10 years and billions of dollars pushing the medical community to ramp up the use of OxyContin and other opioids. By 2013, the number of annual opioid prescriptions, including short term and multiple, had nearly tripled, topping 200 million — in a country of just over 300 million people.
Use of OxyContin and other opioids grew to crisis levels. As federal and state governments cracked down on doctors who dispensed pills and prescriptions indiscriminately, users turned to heroin instead: Four out of five new heroin users started out by abusing prescription painkillers. The results have devastated and overwhelmed first responders and an ill-equipped and ideologically hidebound treatment system. From 2010 to 2012, heroin overdose rates doubled in 28 states, according to a 2014 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. In 2014, more than 28,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses, an all-time high, according to the agency. There’s no reason to think the death rate has slowed since then.
Congress is ready to act. On Wednesday, the House will consider the #21st_Century_Cures_Act, a bill that would commit billions of dollars to medical research while sending $1 billion to states to help combat heroin and painkiller addiction and recovery.
But there’s a complication: Instead of cracking down on the pharmaceutical companies that fueled the boom in opioid abuse, lawmakers are rewarding the industry. No health care-related bill of this size could move through Congress without the support of Big Pharma. The authors of the 21st Century Cures Act earned the industry’s support by including regulatory rollbacks that drugmakers have long sought and creating cheaper and quicker paths for drug approval by reducing safeguards. It’s as if the fire department had to pay off the arsonist to get permission to put out a fire.
A #NoDAPL Map | The Huffington Post
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-nodapl-map_us_581a0623e4b014443087af35
When I decided to become a cartographer, I didn’t just want to make pretty and useful maps. I became a cartographer to make maps that change the world for the better. Right now, no situation needs this kind of map more than the current drama unfolding around the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline’s crossing of the Missouri River.
Farsnews
▻http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13950627001263
Saudi Finance Ministry Ex-Advisor: S. Arabia on Verge of Collapse
“When it implodes, will the US and the UK come to the rescue of their Al-Saud clients? We believe not,” wrote Askari. “The US and the others have made thousands of hollow speeches in support of human rights and representative governance, but they have continued to support their client as long as they buy arms and do their bidding.”
But Saudi Arabia blocked internet users from accessing the Huffington Post on Friday just days after it published the article about the kingdom.
Here are the 810 people (and counting) who have lost their lives in jail in the year after Sandra Bland died.
▻http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-deaths
The Huffington Post documented the timing of 620 jail deaths. At least a third of them occurred within just three days.
Photo Series Depicts Women’s Experience of Male Entitlement
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/photo-series-depicts-womens-experience-of-male-entitlement
According to The Huffington Post, 1 in 4 women will be a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime. Is this a result of mainstream media’s beligerent objectification of women? Many suppose so...
Cruel and All-Too-Usual - The Huffington Post
▻http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/cruel-and-all-too-usual
When the video above was filmed, the girl on the bed was 17 years old. For the purposes of this story, I’ll call her Jamie. There was a time when she liked acting in goofy comedy skits at her Detroit church or crawling into bed with her grandmother to watch TV. She loved to sing—her favorite artist was Chris Brown—but she was too shy to perform in front of other people.
Jamie, whose mother was addicted to crack cocaine, was adopted when she was 3. At high school, she fell in with a wayward crowd and started drinking and smoking weed. Since she didn’t always get along with her adoptive mom, she lived with a close family friend from her church whom she referred to as her sister. One fall day in 2011, they got into a bad fight over their living arrangements. The friend told police that Jamie threw a brick at her, hitting her in the chest, and then banged the brick so hard on the front door that she broke the glass mail chute. Jamie denies the assault—and the police report notes that the brick may not have hit her friend—but she admitted to officers that she was “mad” and “trying to get back in the house.” The Wayne County court gave her two concurrent six-month sentences, for assault and destruction of a building.
In a wealthier Michigan county, kids convicted of minor offenses are almost always sentenced to community service, like helping out at the local science center. Doug Mullkoff, a criminal defense attorney in Ann Arbor, told me that prison in such circumstances is “virtually unheard of.” But Jamie is from Detroit, and in January 2012, she was sent to the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, a prison that holds inmates convicted of crimes like first-degree homicide. From this point onward, her world was largely governed by codes and practices and assumptions designed for adult criminals.
This Is How A Prison’s Debate Team Beat Harvard
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bard-prison-initiative-debate-team-defeat-harvard_5614124ee4b022a4ce
hree men currently incarcerated at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility in Ulster County beat Harvard University in a recent debate.
How they did it, though, is as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. Almost everywhere in the United States, time spent in prison is at best wasted, at worst spent in a swirl of violence and humiliation. But prisoners fortunate enough to be situated near Bard College have a chance to participate in a program founded on a radical insight: Prison need not be only about punishment, but can also be a place where people grow and blossom into the educated, responsible citizens they will need to be when they’re released.
The men who stomped Harvard were part of the Bard Prison Initiative. “The most important thing that our students’ success symbolizes is how much better we can do in education in the U.S. for all people,” BPI founder Max Kenner told The Huffington Post. “Our program is successful because we operate on a genuinely human level.”
Beating Harvard wasn’t the first time the Bard team had tasted success. Their first debate victory came last year, when they defeated the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
Creators of Fake Instagram Account Showing a Migrant’s Journey Speak Out
▻https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/abdou-diouf-instagram-migrant1.jpg?quality=65&strip=colo
An #Instagram account that purported to show the tribulations of a Senegalese #migrant embarking on an illegal journey to Spain turned out to be a campaign set-up to promote a photography festival.
Launched a week ago, the account claimed to show how “Abdou Diouf” left his native Dakar in Senegal to find a better life in Europe. The pictures – all self-portraits – showed Diouf at various stages of his “trip”. In one image, he’s seen embarking on a small floating device, while another showed him reach Spanish shores.
▻http://time.com/3982506/immigrant-instagram-migrant-journey-abdou-diouf
The account went viral this weekend after the Huffington Post wrote about Diouf’s journey. However, as international attention turned to Diouf’s mysterious postings and his use of popular, yet unrelated hashtags, the account was revealed as fake. “It’s a campaign for an international festival of photography in Getxo in Spain” Oriol Caba of Volga, a Spanish production company, tells TIME.
The #Getxophoto festival hired Volga and the Barcelona studio Manson to produce a series of videos and images that would promote the event as well as raise questions about the use of #photography in today’s #society.
“In developed countries, there’s a use of the self-image that is not common to other parts of the globe,” says Caba. “[We wanted] to show how the banality of the treatment of the self-image could be used to produce an image of the self but in a very different context, like the dangerous and traumatic trips people embark on to get a better life. We thought it was strong and powerful enough to make a statement and to raise questions.”
The fake account was also a way for the festival’s organizers to show how the “narration of reality is always in the hands of people with power, not in the hands of people living that reality,” says Caba.
But all involved say they never expected the account to garner such international attention. “We were shocked to see it published on the Huffington Post and to see other media organizations follow it up,” Caba tells #TIME. “We never thought about this question on the power of the [fourth estate]. I think that the necessity of selling, having hits and being the first to publish is lowering the standards of news.”
The end result, the festival said in a statement, offers “a reflection on the way we process and share images of displacement and migration in established media and on #social_networks.”
Now, the festival is ready for the potential backlash. “It won’t be surprising to us if we’re accused of trivializing this issue,” says Caba. “But we can see it every day already in the passivity of the people and governments who [are confronted] to the issue of #immigration in every European city.
“We are very respectful of these people going through such unbelievable struggles,” he adds.
A Note About Our Coverage Of Donald Trump’s ’Campaign’
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-note-about-our-coverage-of-donald-trumps-campaign_55a8fc9ce4b08965
Ils sont quand même vaches avec Kardashian et The Bachelorette,
After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of The Huffington Post’s political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.
Mining Heads Into The Deep Sea, Raising Environmental Concerns
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/07/deep-sea-mining-nautilus_n_7748484.html
Mining in the deep sea for minerals is uncharted territory, but one company is well on its way to making it a reality. Now, the company is trying to convince skeptical audiences it’s a good idea.
Shontel Norgate, chief financial officer of Nautilus Minerals Inc., pitched a roomful of ocean advocates at last month’s World Ocean Summit on the idea of deep-sea mining for minerals like copper and gold.
(...) “We are opening up a totally new industry in the deep-sea environment, and the deep-sea environment is a vulnerable environment,” Monica Verbeek, executive director of Seas At Risk, a Brussels-based association of European environmental groups, told The Huffington Post. “It’s low in light, energy, and it takes forever for these deep sea creatures to grow and mature. You can do a lot of damage there very quickly.”
CNN Removes Reporter Diana Magnay From Israel-Gaza After ’Scum’ Tweet
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/18/cnn-diana-magnay-israel-gaza_n_5598866.html
CNN has removed correspondent Diana Magnay from covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after she tweeted that Israelis who were cheering the bombing of Gaza, and who had allegedly threatened her, were “scum.”
“After being threatened and harassed before and during a liveshot, Diana reacted angrily on Twitter,” a CNN spokeswoman said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
“She deeply regrets the language used, which was aimed directly at those who had been targeting our crew," the spokeswoman continued. "She certainly meant no offense to anyone beyond that group, and she and CNN apologize for any offense that may have been taken.”
The spokeswoman said Magnay has been assigned to Moscow.
Hier: NBC News Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children
►http://seenthis.net/messages/276882
U.S. media execs prefer biased reporting on Gaza
▻http://warincontext.org/2014/07/18/u-s-media-execs-prefer-biased-reporting-on-gaza
If Magnay’s use of the word “scum” was so regrettable, what would have been a more appropriate way of describing this group of Israelis?
Bloodthirsty. Savage. Callous. Inhumane. Hateful. Vengeful. Sadistic.
Any of those terms could have been accurately used by Magnay and yet there’s no doubt that CNN would have been just as apologetic.
The only way she could have reported what she was witnessing right next to her and avoided criticism, would have been to say nothing at all.
This is what American media too often now demands from its reporters who cover Israel: silence or unabashed bias in favor of the Jewish state.
Iran could seize on new sanctions bill to drive wedge between Israel lobby, U.S. public -
Haaretz
By Chemi Shalev | Dec. 29, 2013
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.565980
The Huffington Post headline “Saboteur Sen. Launching War Push” on December 19 and the enraged Jewish reactions to it escaped intense scrutiny because of end-of-the-year vacations and the media’s need to sum up 2013. The incendiary headline, however, should serve as a shot across the bow, intended or not, about the malevolent maelstrom that could engulf the American Jewish establishment in the wake of its unequivocal and nearly unanimous support for new sanctions on Iran.
Under the headline, in the middle of the homepage of the most-widely read news site in the world, was a picture of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the main sponsors of the proposed Nuclear Iran Prevention Bill 2013. He was speaking from a podium, behind a lectern on which the name and emblem of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC was boldly displayed.
The message couldn’t be clearer: Menendez was a warmonger. And the people backing him, inspiring him and/or pushing him belonged to AIPAC and the pro-Israel community.
Jewish reactions were fast and furious: David Harris of the American Jewish Committee was “appalled” by the “shameful attack” on Menendez. The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman wrote in a letter to the editor published on the Huffington Post website that the photo of Menendez speaking at an AIPAC event “implies that he was trying to ‘sabotage’ the administration’s efforts on Iran for reasons related to Israel under pressure from American Jews. We are shocked that a version of the anti-Semitic theme that ‘Jews manipulate the U.S. Government’ was boldly featured on your site.”
Foxman also disputed the basic premise of the disputed headline: “We and many in the U.S. and around the world believe that setting the table now for future sanctions against Iran that would kick in if diplomacy fails to achieve a nuclear accord will enhance the likelihood for reaching that agreement without the need for military action.”
This is not the view of the Administration, which has warned with varying degrees of insistence and alarm that the sanctions bill could derail nuclear talks with Iran and thus, inevitably, increase the chances of a military confrontation. American Jewish leaders privately go so far as to suspect that the inspiration for the kind of incendiary headline that Huffington Post chose was the direct result of background briefings and prodding by Administration officials.
Whether it was or it wasn’t, it is the kind of insinuation that Jewish groups should be bracing for, many times over, as the battle over the sanctions bill is bound to escalate as soon as the 113th Congress reconvenes for its Second Session next week. Given that all of the major Jewish groups - with the exception of J-Street - have spoken out publicly and unequivocally in support of a position that is so staunchly rejected by the Administration, the stage is being set for a showdown that more than justifies comparisons to similar face-offs in the past, including the 1981 skirmish with the Reagan Administration over the sale of early-warning AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia and the 1991 clash with George H Bush over settlements and loan guarantees.
The pro- Israel lobby lost both of those campaigns, but those defeats didn’t kill it – they only made the lobby stronger. As JJ Goldberg recounts in his book “Jewish Power” the campaign against the AWACS sale galvanized the Jews, consolidated AIPAC’s standing in Washington and convinced the Reagan Administration that it was a force to be reckoned with and, if possible, enlisted on the Administration’s side. In 1992, the loan guarantees for Soviet immigrant absorption remained frozen until Yitzhak Rabin replaced Yitzhak Shamir as Israeli prime minister, but George Bush went on to lose the November elections, thus creating the unspoken myth that even a president could pay with his job if he tangled too strongly with those powerful Jews and their allies.
Win or lose, however, there is one stark difference between those two renowned altercations and the current situation vis-a-vis Iran: U.S. public opinion couldn’t care less about AWACS and loan guarantees, one way or another, but a military engagement with Iran is something that the American people worry about, and largely - and sometimes vehemently - oppose. A campaign in support of the Senate’s Iran sanctions bill could pit the Jewish establishment not only against the Administration, but also put it on a dangerous collision course with large segments of US public opinion, mostly on the left, and with the American media as well.
But even that altercation would pale in comparison to the unprecedented and untenable situation that the Jewish leadership might find itself in if the Administration loses the sanctions fight, despite a presidential veto, and if its worst case scenarios of an Iranian walkout and an escalation in military tensions are borne out.
Supporters of sanctions, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish groups that support the current Senate bill, maintain that Iran has its back against a wall of economic hardships created by the current sanctions and that the threat of even more sanctions would only increase Tehran’s willingness to make nuclear concessions.
There are those - including the editors of the Huffington Post, evidently - who view this line of reasoning as disingenuous and its proponents as seeking to lead the US to a military confrontation. But even if one ignores such skepticism, supporters of the sanctions bill cannot rule out the possibility that the Iranian regime will either feel compelled to break off talks because of internal pressure by Iranian hardliners, or might even view a new sanctions bill as a unique opportunity to drive a huge wedge between Israel and its lobby, on the one hand, and the Administration and large parts of the American public on the other.
After all, the Administration is already coming close to claiming that legislation of new sanctions, even if they are conditional and set to kick in only in the future, is tantamount to a violation of the November 24 interim nuclear accord signed in Geneva. Iran might very well decide to break off talks, to pin the blame on Congress and the Jews, to cite the Administration’s own statements as corroborating evidence and to leave the P5+1 countries, their politicians and their publics to bicker and recriminate among themselves.
Some people might compare this situation to the 2003 Iraq War, in which Israel and right-wing American Jews were also accused of pushing America to war. In that case, however, the war enjoyed sizeable public support, at least at the outset, Israel and organized Jewry played only a minor public role in prodding the Administration to act and the Administration itself had no history of suspicion and ill will with Israel or its supporters and no interest in pinning the blame on either.
Iran, it should be clear, is no Iraq, in any way, shape or form. Whatever one’s view of the Iranian talks and of the wisdom of new sanctions legislation, it would be foolhardy to ignore the precarious predicament that U.S. Jews may soon find themselves in - one in which headlines alluding to warmongering senators and their Jewish supporters will be much more the rule than the exception but may also be the least of Jewish worries.
Egyptian Military Backed Out Of Prisoner-Release Deal That Could Have Averted Killings: Sources
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/egypt-military-muslim-brotherhood_n_3762068.html
CAIRO — A week before the Egyptian government ordered Wednesday’s deadly clearing of two Muslim Brotherhood protest camps, military leaders and the Brotherhood very nearly came to an agreement that involved a prisoner release and other measures that might have averted the catastrophe, The Huffington Post has learned.
The notion of such a plan, mediated by a handful of diplomats from the U.S. and Europe — including U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and EU Special Representative Bernardino Leon — was first reported on Wednesday by Reuters. HuffPost has learned that the terms of the proposed deal would have seen the Muslim Brotherhood reduce the size of their protest camps by half, and the military release two notable prisoners: Saad El-Katatni, the chairman of the Brotherhood’s political party who was arrested during the military takeover in July, and Abou Elela Mady, the chairman of the Islamist al-Wasat Party who was locked up in the aftermath.
Brotherhood leaders had agreed in principle to the plan, but in the end the military-backed government declined to take part, sources say.
The Economics of Blogging and The Huffington Post - Nate Silver
▻http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/the-economics-of-blogging-and-the-huffington-post
If the case that The Huffington Post were making to its bloggers were a little more frank, along the lines of the following:
Sure, we’d love for you to post here. And there’s the chance that your post could do very well. But odds are that only a few hundred people will see it, and we’ll be lucky to sell enough ads on it to afford a slice of pizza.
…there might be fewer complaints that it doesn’t pay its bloggers. But promises of a huge audience are what persuade people to blog at The Huffington Post rather than somewhere else.
#Loi_de_puissance #publicité #web
via @nathangeffen
Argo fuck yourself: Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage movie is the worst. - Slate Magazine
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/01/down_with_argo_ben_affleck_s_iran_hostage_movie_is_the_worst.html?wpisrc=most
Perhaps my disgust wouldn’t be as intense if it weren’t for the potentially great film suggested by Argo’s opening sequence: a history of pre-revolutionary Iran told through eye-catching storyboards. The sequence gives a compelling (if sensationalized) account of how the CIA’s meddling with Iran’s government over three decades led to a corrupt and oppressive regime, eventually inciting the 1979 revolution. The sequence even humanizes the Iranian people as victims of these abuses. This opening may very well be the reason why critics have given the film credit for being insightful and progressive—because nothing that follows comes close, and the rest of the movie actually undoes what this opening achieves.
Instead of keeping its eye on the big picture of revolutionary Iran, the film settles into a retrograde “white Americans in peril” storyline. It recasts those oppressed Iranians as a raging, zombie-like horde, the same dark-faced demons from countless other movies— still a surefire dramatic device for instilling fear in an American audience. After the opening makes a big fuss about how Iranians were victimized for decades, the film marginalizes them from their own story, shunting them into the role of villains. Yet this irony is overshadowed by a larger one: The heroes of the film, the CIA, helped create this mess in the first place. And their triumph is executed through one more ruse at the expense of the ever-dupable Iranians to cap off three decades of deception and manipulation.
▻http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2013/02/oscar-prints-the-legend-argo.html
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Affleck went so far as to say, “I tried to make a movie that is absolutely just factual. And that’s another reason why I tried to be as true to the story as possible — because I didn’t want it to be used by either side. I didn’t want it to be politicized internationally or domestically in a partisan way. I just wanted to tell a story that was about the facts as I understood them.”
For Affleck, these facts apparently don’t include understanding why the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun and occupied on November 4, 1979. “There was no rhyme or reason to this action,” Affleck has insisted, claiming that the takeover “wasn’t about us,” that is, the American government (despite the fact that his own film is introduced by a fleeting - though frequently inaccurate1 - review of American complicity in the Shah’s dictatorship).
Wrong, Ben. One reason was the fear of another CIA-engineered coup d’etat like the one perpetrated in 1953 from the very same Embassy. Another reason was the admission of the deposed Shah into the United States for medical treatment and asylum rather than extradition to Iran to face charge and trial for his quarter century of crimes against the Iranian people, bankrolled and supported by the U.S. government. One doesn’t have to agree with the reasons, of course, but they certainly existed.
L’Oscar décerné à « Argo » : « Un succès politique et immérité », selon des Iraniens | Nouvelles d’Iran
▻http://keyhani.blog.lemonde.fr/2013/02/26/loscar-consacre-a-argo-vu-par-des-iraniens-un-succes-politique-
Nous l’avons bien compris : les politiques iraniens et les médias proches du régime sont en colère contre l’Academy Awards américaine qu’ils accusent d’avoir couronné le film « anti-iranien » Argo, de Ben Affleck. Mais qu’en pensent des intellectuels, réalisateurs et militants qui ne sont pas proches du régime ?
CIA’s Work With Filmmakers Puts All Media Workers at Risk | FAIR
►https://fair.org/home/cias-work-with-filmmakers-puts-all-media-workers-at-risk
(2016)
Vice’s Jason Leopold (4/6/16) has uncovered documents showing the CIA had a role in producing up to 22 entertainment “projects,” including History Channel documentary Air America: The CIA’s Secret Airline, Bravo‘s Top Chef: Covert Cuisine, the USA Network series Covert Affairs and the BBC documentary The Secret War on Terror—along with two fictional feature films about the CIA that both came out in 2012.
The CIA’s involvement in the production of Zero Dark Thirty (effectively exchanging “insider” access for a two-hour-long torture commercial) has already been well-established, but the agency’s role in the production of Argo—which won the Best Picture Oscar for 2012—was heretofore unknown. The extent of the CIA’s involvement in the projects is still largely classified, as Leopold notes, quoting an Agency audit report:
Marijuana Legalization
The Rocky Mountain High just got a whole lot higher. On Tuesday night, Amendment 64 — the measure seeking the legalization of marijuana for recreational use by adults — was passed by Colorado voters, making Colorado the first state to end marijuana prohibition in the United States.
With about 36 percent of precincts reporting at the time of publishing, 9News and Fox31 report that Amendment 64 has passed.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a vocal opponent to the measure, reacted to the passage of A64 in a statement late Tuesday night:
The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will. This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug so don’t break out the Cheetos or gold fish too quickly.
The passage of the state measure is without historical precedent and the consequences will likely be closely-watched around the world. In an interview with The Huffington Post, the authors/researchers behind the book “Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs To Know” pointed out that the measure in Colorado is truly groundbreaking, comparing it to the legalization that Amsterdam enjoys:
A common error is to believe that the Netherlands has already legalized cannabis (the preferred term for marijuana in Europe). What has been de facto legalized is only the retail sale of 5 grams (about a sixth of an ounce) or less. Production and wholesale distribution is still illegal, and that prohibition is enforced, which is largely why the price of sinsemilla in the “coffee shops” isn’t much different than the price in American dispensaries.
Although Colorado “legalized it,” it will be several months, perhaps as long as a year, before Colorado adults 21-and-over can enjoy the legal sale of marijuana. However, the parts of the amendment related to individual behavior will go into effect as soon as Governor Hickenlooper certifies the results of the vote, a proclamation he is obligated to do within 30 days of the election, The Colorado Independent reported.
It’s a huge victory for the Campaign To Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, the pro-pot group behind Amendment 64. “Over the past eight years in Colorado, we have argued that it is irrational to punish adults for choosing to use a product that is far less harmful than alcohol,” Mason Tvert, co-director of the campaign, said in a statement. “Today, the voters agreed. Colorado will no longer have laws that steer people toward using alcohol, and adults will be free to use marijuana instead if that is what they prefer. And we will be better off as a society because of it.”
This is the second time Colorado voted on legal weed, in 2006 Coloradans voted the measure down, but not in 2012. Tvert told The Huffington Post in an August interview why he thought this year might be different:
The 2006 initiative would have simply removed the penalties for the possession of marijuana legal for individuals 21 years of age or older. The current initiative proposes a fully regulated system of cultivation and sales, which will eliminate the underground marijuana market and generate tens of millions of dollars per year in new revenue and criminal justice savings. It also directs the legislature to regulate the cultivation of industrial hemp, a versatile, popular, and environmentally friendly agricultural crop.
More importantly, voters are more informed about marijuana than ever before. They have also experienced the emergence of a state-regulated medical marijuana system that has not produced any serious problems, but has provided a number of benefits. We now know that marijuana cultivation and sales can be regulated, and that medical marijuana businesses do not contribute to increased crime. We have also seen marijuana use among high school students decrease since the state began implementing regulations, whereas it has increased nationwide where there are no regulations. And, of course, localities and the state have seen how much revenue can be generated through the legal sale of marijuana that would have otherwise gone into the underground market. Voters in Colorado no longer need to imagine what a legal and regulated system of marijuana sales would look like; they have seen it.
It’s also worth noting that 2012 is a presidential election year, so we will benefit from increased voter turnout compared to an off-year election like 2006. Historically, the more people who vote, the more support marijuana reform initiatives receive.
On the same night that Colorado passed Amendment 64, Washington state passed Initiative 502 which regulates and taxes sales of small amounts of marijuana for adults, The Associated Press reports. Oregon also had a marijuana measure on the ballot, but as of publishing and with 47 percent of precincts reporting, it looked as if it would not pass.
Under Amendment 64, marijuana is taxed and regulated similar to alcohol and tobacco. It gives state and local governments the ability to control and tax the sale of small amounts of marijuana to adults age 21 and older. According to the Associated Press, analysts project that that tax revenue could generate somewhere between $5 million and $22 million a year in the state. An economist whose study was funded by a pro-pot group projects as much as a $60 million boost by 2017.
“Today, the people of Colorado have rejected the failed policy of marijuana prohibition,” Brian Vicente, also a co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana, said in a statement. “Thanks to their votes, we will now reap the benefits of regulation. We will create new jobs, generation million of dollars in tax revenue, and allow law enforcement to focus on serious crimes. It would certainly be a travesty if the Obama administration used its power to impose marijuana prohibition upon a state whose people have declared, through the democratic process, that they want it to end.”
The big unknown still is if the federal government will allow a regulated marijuana market to take shape. Attorney General Eric Holder, who was a vocal opponent of California’s legalization initiative in 2010 saying he would “vigorously enforce” federal marijuana prohibition, has continued to remain silent on the issue this year.
In September, Holder was urged by nine former heads of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to take a stand against marijuana legalization again. “To continue to remain silent conveys to the American public and the global community a tacit acceptance of these dangerous initiatives,” the nine said in the letter to holder obtained by Reuters.
Earlier this month those same DEA drug warriors joined by former directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy on a teleconference call to put additional pressure on Holder to speak out against Colorado’s marijuana measure as well as similar initiatives on the ballot in Washington state and Oregon.
The drug warriors say that states that legalize marijuana for recreational use will trigger a “Constitutional showdown” with the federal government.
In a report published Sunday by NBC News, President Obama’s former senior drug policy advisor said that if the marijuana initiatives pass, a war will be incited between the federal government and the states that pass them. “Once these states actually try to implement these laws, we will see an effort by the feds to shut it down,” Sabet said.
But proponents of the legislation say they don’t foresee federal agents interfering in states that have legalized cannabis, citing the federal government’s silence on the issue this election cycle.
The DOJ has yet to formally announce its enforcement intentions, however, the clearest statement from the DOJ came from Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who said his office’s stance on the issue would be “the same as it’s always been.” During a recent appearance on “60 Minutes” Cole elaborated, “We’re going to take a look at whether or not there are dangers to the community from the sale of marijuana and we’re going to go after those dangers,” Reuters reported.
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Intéressant témoignage d’une blogueuse du Huffington Post, qui pense être censurée depuis le rachat par AOL ; le billet est très argumenté et sans acrimonie.
►http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/syria-censorship-aol-huffington-post
Every one of my Syria articles that the Huffington Post refused to publish provides exclusive information of some kind. Its World News section, instead, is filled with wire articles written outside Syria - usually from Amman or Beirut - often citing unverifiable information and claims from “activists” inside the country.