July 3, 2016


News and Views


GOOD DOGGY!


http://www.inquisitr.com/3268389/dog-retrieves-mans-hand-after-it-was-blown-off-in-horrific-fireworks-accident/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Feed&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_content=FaceBook

Dog retrieves man’s hand after it was blown off in horrific fireworks accident
Tara West
July 2, 2016


A Chicago nurse was startled when she heard a loud explosion in her Portage Park neighborhood followed by a scream. The nurse says she initially thought the sound was a gunshot but soon learned that a neighbor was the victim of a fireworks accident that blew off part of his hand. Approximately three hours after the accident, the woman let her dog out into the yard and he came back with something shocking in his mouth: a human hand.

KFSM reports that a Chicago barber lost a portion of his hand in a fireworks accident this week. The barber was shooting off fireworks on Thursday afternoon when one accidentally went off in his hand. The explosion, which authorities say had the power of a half stick of dynamite, caused a portion of the man’s hand to be blown completely off and he was rushed to a nearby trauma center for treatment.

Cheri Steigert says she was sleeping at approximately 3:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon when she heard a loud bang outside. The nurse, who typically works nights, says the noise woke her from her sleep and was immediately followed by a loud scream. The nurse didn’t know what the sound was, but did not go outside to investigate. However, about three hours later, the woman says she let her dog outside in the backyard. The dog retrieved something from the yard and brought it back to Steigert.

The nurse says she initially thought the dog had brought back a rabbit, but upon further inspection realized the dog was holding a human hand in his mouth.

“I came back out to pick it up, and I found out it was the other part of the young man’s hand.”

Steigert says she called authorities to report the hand and was told that a fireworks accident had taken place in the neighborhood earlier that day. The 39-year-old man, a barber, had lost a portion of his hand in the accident and the force of the explosion must have sent the hand flying into Steigert’s yard.

According to the Daily Mail, the hand was found 250 feet from where the original fireworks accident took place. The nurse says that this is the first time she has had the Fourth of July off in years and that she wasn’t expecting human body parts to be flying into her yard.

“This is the first Fourth of July I’ve had off in three years… and now I’ve got body parts flying in my yard.”

The victim was later identified by ABC 7 as 39-year-old Rafat Shejaeya. The paramedics that responded to the horrific scene noted that they were able to find two of Shejaeya’s fingers in an alley near the explosion and put them on ice. However, the majority of Shejaeya’s hand remained missing until authorities received the call from Steigert about her dog’s strange find.

Shejaeya told reporters from his hospital bed that he is still in shock about the accident and that he would warn others to “be careful” when playing with fireworks this weekend.

“I remember looking at my hand and there was no hand there. No fingers, no nothing.”

Shejaeya is one of the first reported fireworks injuries this year, but he isn’t the only fireworks accident victim speaking out about the dangers of Fourth of July celebrations. Nick Beheng, 31, nearly died in a horrific fireworks accident back in 2012 and is encouraging those celebrating with fireworks to treat them as if they were loaded firearms.

“They should be treated like a loaded firearm, they need to be treated with respect.”



This article didn’t say whether or not the hand was reattached by the hospital or not. I hope it was. We used to use fireworks without adult supervision every Fourth of July, but we were told to be “very careful.” Sparklers at that time were considered to be mainly safe, but on the TV news this morning there was a demonstration of a sparkler instantly setting fire to piece of clothing, and the speed with which it happened. User beware!



http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/trending-now/girl-who-texted-boyfriend-urging-suicide-must-stand-trial-court-rules/378212203

Girl who texted boyfriend urging suicide must stand trial, court rules
by: WFXT - Boston Updated: Jul 2, 2016 - 3:57 AM

Photograph -- Peter Pereira/Standard Times via AP, Michelle Carter listens to defense attorney Joseph P. Cataldo argue for an involuntary manslaughter charge against her to be dismissed at Juvenile Court in New Bedford, Mass.


BOSTON —
Massachusetts' highest court has ruled that a teenage girl must stand trial on a manslaughter charge for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself by sending him dozens of text messages and telling him to "get back in" a truck filled with carbon monoxide fumes.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday that a grand jury had probable cause to indict Michelle Carter in the 2014 death of 18-year-old Carter Roy III.

"The court said that in the future they would look at the facts of individual cases and it is possible to be charged with involuntary manslaughter even if you’re not actively engaged in it, and you're just encouraging it or cheerleading it,” criminal defense attorney Peter Elikan said.

Carter's lawyer said her texts were protected by the First Amendment and didn't cause Roy to kill himself.

But the court noted that the grand jury heard evidence suggesting that Carter engaged in a "systematic campaign of coercion" that targeted Roy's insecurities and that her instruction to "get back in" his truck in his final moments was a "direct, causal link to his death."

"They really were in uncharted territory here, they’ve never made a ruling that mere speech could get you charged with involuntary manslaughter,” Elikan said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Excerpt -- "The court said that in the future they would look at the facts of individual cases and it is possible to be charged with involuntary manslaughter even if you’re not actively engaged in it, and you're just encouraging it or cheerleading it,” criminal defense attorney Peter Elikan said. Carter's lawyer said her texts were protected by the First Amendment and didn't cause Roy to kill himself. But the court noted that the grand jury heard evidence suggesting that Carter engaged in a "systematic campaign of coercion" that targeted Roy's insecurities and that her instruction to "get back in" his truck in his final moments was a "direct, causal link to his death." "They really were in uncharted territory here, they’ve never made a ruling that mere speech could get you charged with involuntary manslaughter,” Elikan said.”


Why do people “cheerlead” a suicide threat or attempt? Where is our great intelligence, conscience and basic concern for others? Too many people, especially young people, SEEM to be sociopaths. Two more things – 1) the Internet is dangerous, and 2) the spoken or written word is a powerful tool and a powerful weapon. Our First Amendment “rights” don’t include things like this. We’re supposed to be bright enough to do the right thing even if some rightwing yeehaws keep saying we shouldn’t have to.


ISLAM, JUDAISM AND THE US PUBLIC – THREE ARTICLES


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-arrest-united-arab-emirates-warns-citizens-traditional-clothing/

U.S. apologizes over Ohio arrest of Arab, UAE says
CBS/AP
July 3, 2016, 8:44 AM

Photograph -- Traders wearing kanduras talks on the phone during the opening of the Dubai stock market in the United Arab Emirates on June 26, 2016. REUTERS/AHMED JADALLAH


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The United Arab Emirates is warning its citizens to avoid wearing traditional garments when traveling abroad after an Emirati man was handcuffed in Ohio over terrorism fears.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet late Saturday that Emiratis should avoid wearing the garments for their safety. A separate ministry statement urged women to abide by bans on face veils in parts of Europe.

Local media reported Sunday that Emirati national Ahmed al-Menhali was detained at gunpoint last week while wearing a traditional white kandura, or ankle-length robe, and headscarf in Avon, Ohio after a hotel clerk raised suspicions he could have links to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS.) The man was in Ohio to seek medical treatment in nearby Cleveland after suffering a stroke.

"She went off and texted her sister and said I pledged my allegiance to ISIS," Menhali told Al Jazeera. The sister and her father then called 911, according to the news network.

Menhali told the network he may have suffered another stroke during the subsequent arrest.

Cleveland's WEWS-TV posted police camera video footage of al-Menhali's arrest, which involved several officers with rifles aggressively taking down a visibly distraught man.

The news site also posted video of a later meeting where Avon officials offered their apologies.

"No one from the police department (wanted) to disrespect you," Police Chief Richard Bosley told Almenhali, according to WEWS-TV. "That was not the intent of any of our officers. It is a very regrettable circumstance that occurred for you. You should not have been put in that situation like you were."

"There were some false accusations made against you," Mayor Brian Jensen said. "And those are regrettable. I hope...the person that made those can maybe learn from those."

WEWS-TV reports officials are still contemplating charges against the clerk who made the false accusations.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, Avon police said "contact was then made with the front desk clerk and it was learned that the male did not in fact make any statements related to ISIS."

In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had summoned the U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Ethan Goldrich over the incident, and he apologized.

"He emphasised that the United States respects the right of different nations to wear their national dress, adding that this incident was an exception which was totally unacceptable," the statement reads.



Excerpt -- “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet late Saturday that Emiratis should avoid wearing the garments for their safety. A separate ministry statement urged women to abide by bans on face veils in parts of Europe. Local media reported Sunday that Emirati national Ahmed al-Menhali was detained at gunpoint last week while wearing a traditional white kandura, or ankle-length robe, and headscarf in Avon, Ohio after a hotel clerk raised suspicions he could have links to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS.) The man was in Ohio to seek medical treatment in nearby Cleveland after suffering a stroke. "She went off and texted her sister and said I pledged my allegiance to ISIS," Menhali told Al Jazeera. The sister and her father then called 911, according to the news network. Menhali told the network he may have suffered another stroke during the subsequent arrest. Cleveland's WEWS-TV posted police camera video footage of al-Menhali's arrest, which involved several officers with rifles aggressively taking down a visibly distraught man. …. "There were some false accusations made against you," Mayor Brian Jensen said. "And those are regrettable. I hope...the person that made those can maybe learn from those." WEWS-TV reports officials are still contemplating charges against the clerk who made the false accusations. In a statement to Al Jazeera, Avon police said "contact was then made with the front desk clerk and it was learned that the male did not in fact make any statements related to ISIS."


This brings to my mind the news clip in 1968 or so when Eugene McCarthy, the Democratic peace candidate who ran as a third party candidate, after having lost the election against Nixon turned to the cameras and said that we have to realize in this country that it isn’t “the wild west anymore.” It seems that so many people who would make really good leaders are rejected by our fear-based “conservative” turn of mind. We’ll just have to keep trying, though. We mustn’t give in to them or they will totally take control.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/houston-florida-mosques-worshipers-shooting-beating/

Worshipers attacked at mosques in Texas and Florida
CBS/AP
July 3, 2016, 10:43 AM

Photograph -- The Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, in Fort Pierce, Florida. CBS NEWS
Play VIDEO
U.S. Muslims describe dealing with Islamophobia
Play VIDEO -- Trump changes language of controversial Muslim ban proposal
Play VIDEO -- Orlando shooter's father: "I don't approve of what he did"


FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A pair of attacks on Muslims near their mosques this weekend may be a sign of increasing physical violence against worshipers of Islam in the United States. It is a fear many have expressed as the issue of Muslims in the U.S. takes center stage during the 2016 presidential race.

Authorities said they have arrested a suspect in the early Saturday beating of a man outside a Florida mosque that Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen had attended, and an Islamic group said the victim was a Muslim.

Meanwhile, worshipers at a mosque in Houston tell KTRK-TV that a doctor who was trying to attend morning prayers was shot just outside after being approached by a group of three men.

In the Florida attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said racial slurs were made by the attacker, though authorities said they had no immediate indication of any racially motivated comments. Authorities said, however, that they were continuing to investigate.

St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken J. Mascara said deputies were called to the Fort Pierce Islamic Center at 4:11 a.m. Saturday by a caller who said someone was attempting to burglarize a vehicle. His statement said deputies found a man bleeding from the mouth who said he was approached by a man who "asked him what he was doing and then punched him several times in the face and head."

Mascara added that the man left but an officer's traffic stop minutes later halted a vehicle and the victim subsequently "positively identified the driver as the man who attacked him."

The sheriff's statement said a suspect identified as Taylor Anthony Mazzanti, 25, was arrested and has been charged with felony battery. Mazzanti was booked into jail on a $3,750 bond.

It wasn't immediately clear if Mazzanti had an attorney.

Mascara didn't identify the victim, but said he was treated for injuries at a medical center and released.

The Council, or CAIR, issued a statement earlier that a white truck stopped at the mosque early Saturday and that a man had made slurs, saying "You Muslims need to get back to your country."

Mateen's father is among the roughly 100 members that attend the mosque. Ruiz said Omar Mateen sometimes attended Friday prayers but didn't socialize with others.

Mascara said there was no initial indication of any such statements though he said more interviews would be conducted in the investigation. The sheriff's statement also reported no possible motive or any apparent link to the mosque or those attending it.

CAIR said there was a witness to the beating it identified as Abdul Rauf Khan, 43.

Reached by phone by The Associated Press, Khan said he was driving from his home in Boca Raton when it was nearing time for morning prayers around 4 a.m. Saturday. He stopped at the mosque and saw the victim in the parking lot struggling to enter his car after locking the keys inside. He said a man approached, began punching the victim in the face and knocked out one of the man's teeth.

"He just start throwing punches and saying all kinds of foul language," said Khan, adding he called 911.

The Council statement said the sheriff's office has repeatedly ignored pleas to tighten security since Mateen fatally shot 49 people at a nightclub two weeks ago. "Unfortunately, our requests were repeatedly ignored," said CAIR spokesman Wilfredo Amr Ruiz.

Mascara denied that, saying in his statement Saturday that he and his agency "have repeatedly attempted to communicate with the mosque to explore options of working together and there has been no response." He previously said deputies are patrolling the mosque more frequently.

In the Houston attack, a spokesperson for the mosque near Bellaire said the doctor who was shot was on his way to the 5:30 a.m. morning prayers when three people approached and eventually shot him. Witnesses say the doctor was not robbed.

"It is very scary right now given the current political climate," Mohammed Imaduddin said.

After the Orlando nightclub massacre, likely Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled down on his call for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Many have criticized his rhetoric on worshipers of Islam for an increasingly hostile atmosphere to all Muslims, regardless of origin.

In the wake of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino last year, Muslims around the U.S. reported the rhetoric against them becoming increasingly incendiary.

Armed protesters picketed a mosque in Irving, Texas, some chanting "Every Muslim is a terrorist!"

In Virginia, tempers erupted at a meeting over building a mosque -- one man yelled "every one of you are terrorists" at a Muslim man. In Philadelphia, a severed pig's head was found outside a mosque.



Excerpt -- “Mascara added that the man left but an officer's traffic stop minutes later halted a vehicle and the victim subsequently "positively identified the driver as the man who attacked him." The sheriff's statement said a suspect identified as Taylor Anthony Mazzanti, 25, was arrested and has been charged with felony battery. Mazzanti was booked into jail on a $3,750 bond. …. Meanwhile, worshipers at a mosque in Houston tell KTRK-TV that a doctor who was trying to attend morning prayers was shot just outside after being approached by a group of three men. In the Florida attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said racial slurs were made by the attacker, though authorities said they had no immediate indication of any racially motivated comments. Authorities said, however, that they were continuing to investigate. …. Mascara didn't identify the victim, but said he was treated for injuries at a medical center and released. The Council, or CAIR, issued a statement earlier that a white truck stopped at the mosque early Saturday and that a man had made slurs, saying "You Muslims need to get back to your country." …. Reached by phone by The Associated Press, Khan said he was driving from his home in Boca Raton when it was nearing time for morning prayers around 4 a.m. Saturday. He stopped at the mosque and saw the victim in the parking lot struggling to enter his car after locking the keys inside. He said a man approached, began punching the victim in the face and knocked out one of the man's teeth." He just start throwing punches and saying all kinds of foul language," said Khan, adding he called 911. …. In the Houston attack, a spokesperson for the mosque near Bellaire said the doctor who was shot was on his way to the 5:30 a.m. morning prayers when three people approached and eventually shot him. Witnesses say the doctor was not robbed. …. In the wake of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino last year, Muslims around the U.S. reported the rhetoric against them becoming increasingly incendiary. Armed protesters picketed a mosque in Irving, Texas, some chanting "Every Muslim is a terrorist!" In Virginia, tempers erupted at a meeting over building a mosque -- one man yelled "every one of you are terrorists" at a Muslim man. In Philadelphia, a severed pig's head was found outside a mosque.”


“The Council statement said the sheriff's office has repeatedly ignored pleas to tighten security … Mascara denied that, saying … have repeatedly attempted and have been ignored…” There’s a lot of lying going on here, possibly on both sides. There’s a fight and then the cops are called, and suddenly everybody is searching for a good story to tell. Nonetheless, serious events have occurred in some four different places around the country according to this article, with one non-Muslim man taunting all Muslims to “go back to their home countries,” another saying that “all Muslims are terrorists,” then an ARMED protest at Irving TX, a Muslim medical doctor shot on his way to prayers and in Philadelphia a severed pig’s head left outside the Mosque. I wonder what Homeland Security and the FBI are doing about these things? Are the perpetrators being arrested for hate crimes? This article was the first I had heard about them, yet they didn’t all happen in the last week. Are the Mainstream Press covering these stories, and if not, why not?



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-star-of-david-image-appeared-first-on-white-supremacist-site/

Controversial Trump tweet first appeared on neo-Nazi site, report claims
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS
July 3, 2016, 1:41 PM


Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has already come under fire for his controversial Saturday tweet that included a six-pointed Star of David -- and now it appears the image he used first originated on a message board frequented by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Trump sent his tweet Saturday morning, saying "Crooked Hillary makes history." It appeared to be photoshopped from multiple places, including a graphic from a Fox News poll and scattered hundred-dollar bills. Next to Hillary Clinton, there is a red, six-pointed Star of David -- the primary symbol of Judaism -- that reads, "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!"

screen-shot-2016-07-02-at-10-59-24-am.png
The tweet has since been deleted, with a red circle replacing the Star of David in one of Trump's subsequent tweets:

View image on Twitter
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Crooked Hillary -- Makes History! #ImWithYou #AmericaFirst
11:19 AM - 2 Jul 2016
9,179 9,179 Retweets 20,332 20,332 likes

According to the news site Mic, the image of Clinton with the Star of David showed up in /pol/, an online message board for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as early as June 22. That's more than a week before Trump sent his tweet featuring the image. (The thread where the image appeared no longer exists, but can be viewed as it originally appeared using an archive website.)

A watermark on the image, as it was posted on the message board, features a Twitter handle which frequently tweets out racist memes and anti-Democratic tweets. That watermark was not included in the image Trump tweeted out: instead, that space was covered up by a Fox News poll graphic.

Trump's campaign has not yet commented on the image.


Excerpt -- “Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has already come under fire for his controversial Saturday tweet that included a six-pointed Star of David -- and now it appears the image he used first originated on a message board frequented by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. …. According to the news site Mic, the image of Clinton with the Star of David showed up in /pol/, an online message board for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as early as June 22. That's more than a week before Trump sent his tweet featuring the image. (The thread where the image appeared no longer exists, but can be viewed as it originally appeared using an archive website.) A watermark on the image, as it was posted on the message board, features a Twitter handle which frequently tweets out racist memes and anti-Democratic tweets. That watermark was not included in the image Trump tweeted out: instead, that space was covered up by a Fox News poll graphic.”


The old Dixiecrats were radical Rightists, but not like Trump. Or, at least, they weren’t always saying and doing yet another and another disgusting thing in front of the news cameras as Trump is. I tend to view him as being so immature that he just can’t resist playing for headlines; but this Star of David is more like a genuine attempt to flirt with hardcore Nazis outrightly rather than merely with the usual drunken and excitable rednecks who love a good bar fight.

Taking the article just above this one about violent assaults and verbal threats from rednecks against Muslims as a case in point, the dangerous trend in American thought which has blossomed since Trump decided to run and began making so many violent threats, it appears to me to be what in chemistry is called a catalyst. It’s a substance that does not itself react chemically, but when two other substances are placed in its presence it can cause a reaction between them to occur.

Our society today is such a chemical mix. Without saying specifically for his followers to attack and kill innocent Muslims (and Jews and others), his gutter level commentary is bringing an innate hatred against all non-Christians and non-whites up onto the front burner where the heat is causing it to boil. They don’t like Liberals or “pointy headed intellectuals” either, so it’s just a matter of time before we’re all being assaulted by “righteous” primarily poor white men.

I have nothing against that element of society. I accept all economic conditions and I grew up among them; but when I was growing up in the South, at least in my home town, the people in that class were “working class” when “work” was not an offensive term, and they were mostly honest and decent. That appears to me to be no longer the case in a significant number of cases. I can’t help feeling very concerned about where we are heading.

July 2, 2016


News and Views


THREE SANDERS ARTICLES


https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/07/01/bernie-sanders-is-winning-some-big-victories-over-the-dem-platform/

Opinion
Bernie Sanders is winning some big victories in the fight over the Democratic platform
By Greg Sargent
July 1 at 12:50 PM

Photograph -- Sanders Speaking, (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Pay Video – 00:53, In an interview with C-SPAN, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said in the strongest terms yet that he will not be the Democratic nominee for president. (C-SPAN)


The latest draft of the Democratic Party platform, which is set to be released as early as this afternoon, will show that Bernie Sanders won far more victories on his signature issues than has been previously thought, according to details provided by a senior Sanders adviser.

The latest version of the platform, which was signed off on recently by a committee made up of representatives for the Sanders and Clinton campaigns and the DNC, has been generally summarized by the DNC and characterized in news reports. Sanders has hailed some of the compromises reached in it, but he has vowed to continue to fight for more of what he wants when the current draft goes to a larger Democratic convention platform committee in Orlando coming weeks, and when it goes to the floor of the convention in Philadelphia in late July.

But the actual language of the latest draft has not yet been released, and it will be released as early as today. It will show a number of new provisions on Wall Street reform, infrastructure spending, and job creation that go beyond the victories that Sanders has already talked about. They suggest Sanders did far better out of this process thus far than has been previously thought. Many of these new provisions are things that Sanders has been fighting for for years.

We already know from the DNC’s public description of the latest draft of the platform that it includes things such as a general commitment to the idea of a $15-per-hour minimum wage; to expanding Social Security; to making universal health care available as a right through expanding Medicare or a public option; and to breaking up too-big-to-fail institutions.

Here’s more.

Warren Gunnels, the chief policy adviser to the Sanders campaign, shared with me some additional details and principles the platform draft commits to:

1) Eliminating conflict of interest at the Federal Reserve by making sure that executives at financial institutions cannot serve on the board of regional Federal Reserve banks or handpick their members.

2) Banning golden parachutes for taking government jobs and cracking down on the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington.

3) Prohibiting Wall Street from picking and choosing which credit agency will rate their product.

4) Empowering the Postal Service to offer basic banking services, which makes such services available to more people throughout the country, including low-income people who lack access to checking accounts.

5) Ending the loophole that allows large profitable corporations to defer taxes on income stashed in offshore tax havens to avoid paying more taxes.

6) Using the revenue from ending that deferral loophole to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs.

Gunnels told me the Sanders campaign has mostly been satisfied with the process and the outcome so far.

“There are some very good initiatives in this platform that will create millions of jobs and rebuild the middle class,” Gunnels said. “This document is not perfect. We hope to improve it. But we’re off to an excellent start, and we look forward to continuing to work with Secretary Clinton’s campaign to make this the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. The process itself has been very good.”

To be sure, Sanders will continue to fight for more in coming weeks, such as a commitment to oppose any Congressional vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal during this session. And we can’t be certain whether Sanders will endorse Clinton before the convention or if he is unsatisfied with the final platform product.

But it looks as if this process is going better for progressives and Bernie supporters than previously suggested. And this perhaps makes it more likely that, in the end, Sanders could end up backing the nominee and helping to unify the party with less discord than expected



http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/bernie-sanders-democratic-party-platform-concessions-15-dollars-minimum-wage

Sanders wins concessions in Dem draft platform
By Ben Kamisar
July 01, 2016, 05:46 pm


Bernie Sanders won a handful of concessions in the Democratic National Committee’s platform, with the party lining up behind his vision on the minimum wage, financial regulation and other issues.

A draft version of the platform was released Friday, amid an ongoing battle to get Sanders to end his presidential campaign and endorse presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The platform explicitly calls for a $15 minimum wage, a position long espoused by Sanders.

"Democrats believe that the current minimum wage is a starvation wage and must be increased to a living wage," the text reads.

"We believe that Americans should earn at least $15 an hour and have the right to form or join a union. We applaud the approaches taken by states like New York and California. We should raise and index the minimum wage, give all Americans the ability to join a union regardless of where they work, and create new ways for workers to have power in the economy."

Sanders also campaigned on protecting Social Security, which is reflected in the platform's call to "expand" the program. His push to end the death penalty and nix private immigration detention centers also appear in the draft.

The platform includes a vigorous defense of the Postal Service, something that was not mentioned in the 2012 platform. The section calls for, among other things, post offices to allow simple banking services like cashing paychecks — which is something Sanders fought for.

Sanders didn't win all of his concessions, however, with the platform punting on a number of his key priorities, including a full repudiation the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.

"We have won some huge victories in the Dem Platform," Sanders policy director Warren Gunnels tweeted Friday afternoon.

But Gunnels also noted in his tweet that Sanders also missed out on some key pieces of his policy agenda. The platform does not ban fracking or institute a carbon tax, and it effectively punts on the TPP.

"On the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), there are a diversity of views in the party," it says.

"Many Democrats are on record stating that the agreement does not meet the standards set out in this platform; other Democrats have expressed support for the agreement. But all Democrats believe that any trade agreement must protect workers and the environment and not undermine access to critically-needed prescription drugs."

It also eschews Sanders' call for a more nuanced stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instead underscoring the party's unwavering support for Israel.



Excerpts – washingtonpost – “It will show a number of new provisions on Wall Street reform, infrastructure spending, and job creation …. a general commitment to the idea of a $15-per-hour minimum wage; to expanding Social Security; to making universal health care available as a right through expanding Medicare or a public option; and to breaking up too-big-to-fail institutions. …. 1) Eliminating conflict of interest at the Federal Reserve by making sure that executives at financial institutions cannot serve on the board of regional Federal Reserve banks or handpick their members. 2) Banning golden parachutes for taking government jobs and cracking down on the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. 3) prohibiting Wall Street from picking and choosing which credit agency will rate their product. 4) Empowering the Postal Service to offer basic banking services, which makes such services available to more people throughout the country, including low-income people who lack access to checking accounts. 5) Ending the loophole that allows large profitable corporations to defer taxes on income stashed in offshore tax havens to avoid paying more taxes. 6) Using the revenue from ending that deferral loophole to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs.
…. Gunnels told me the Sanders campaign has mostly been satisfied with the process and the outcome so far. “There are some very good initiatives in this platform that will create millions of jobs and rebuild the middle class,” Gunnels said.”


Excerpts -- thehill – “Bernie Sanders won a handful of concessions in the Democratic National Committee’s platform, with the party lining up behind his vision on the minimum wage, financial regulation and other issues. …. We should raise and index the minimum wage, give all Americans the ability to join a union regardless of where they work, and create new ways for workers to have power in the economy." …. Sanders also campaigned on protecting Social Security, which is reflected in the platform's call to "expand" the program. His push to end the death penalty and nix private immigration detention centers also appear in the draft. …. The platform includes a vigorous defense of the Postal Service, something that was not mentioned in the 2012 platform. The section calls for, among other things, post offices to allow simple banking services like cashing paychecks — which is something Sanders fought for. …. The platform does not ban fracking or institute a carbon tax, and it effectively punts on the TPP. "On the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), there are a diversity of views in the party," it says. …. But all Democrats believe that any trade agreement must protect workers and the environment and not undermine access to critically-needed prescription drugs." It also eschews Sanders' call for a more nuanced stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instead underscoring the party's unwavering support for Israel.”


This is the first mention I have heard of PRIVATE Immigration Detention Centers. That means profit-driven enterprises and that means more aggressive activity by Border Patrol and INS to bring in more inmates. That trend in our prisons has already increased the incidence in US courts’ of the unthinkable imprisonment of people (poor people) for the inability to pay fines, and arrests for things like a broken tail light, in other words, virtual “debtors’ prison” not merely sanctioned, but enabled by the courts, which has long been outlawed but still squeaks by because it is not CALLED debtors’ prison. Poverty means a great deal more than the simple inability to pay for housing and food. Thank goodness we do have an active social services system in this country, but yet there are probably as many as several million people living on the street including whole families. Let us not allow such an increase in our INJUSTICE system as these detention centers.

Other key changes are -- $15.00 indexed minimum wage, right to join a union no matter where the person is employed, expanding rather than diminishing Social Security, universal health care available as a right, limits in the options currently available to executives at financial institutions, illegal and unfair financial links between Wall Street and the government, basic banking services through the Postal Service, preventing corporations from offshoring profit into accounts not subject to the US IRS and using the tax income from that on infrastructure repair and job creation, DNC work to end the death penalty. TheHill stresses that Sanders didn’t win some others, but as we know Sanders isn’t ready to give up the fight. Some think that Sanders is just stubborn and self-centered, but it’s clear to me that if he gives up now and endorses Clinton he will lose all leverage. He’s too smart and too dedicated to do that. At first the fight resembled a marathon or a horse race, but now it’s more like poker. At any rate, he’s still a contender, and I’m behind him.

The following article has just come out. It covers most of the same material, but has some more detail in it. Read through it also.


http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/democrats-take-step-left-new-platform-n602791

POLITICS JUL 1 2016, 6:51 PM ET
Democrats Take a Step Left With New Party Platform
by ALEX SEITZ-WALD

Democrats are considering approving what is almost certainly the most progressive platform in the party's history, though supporters of Bernie Sanders are still not satisfied with provisions on trade and other issues.

A draft of the platform, obtained by NBC News, was approved by a 15-member subcommittee and sent Friday to members of the full platform committee. The full committee will have a chance to make changes before sending it to the an up-or-down vote by the entire Democratic National Convention later this month in Philadelphia.

The draft includes many of the provisions sought by Sanders and his allies on the minimum wage, death penalty and more. But it lacks concessions they sought on climate, trade and healthcare.

Related: Democrats Urged to Make Immigration a Priority in Platform

"This draft touches on the many pressing issues facing Americans and includes new language on economic inequality and the minimum wage, Wall Street reform, reproductive health, criminal justice reform, and voting rights, among many other topics," Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a memo to platform committee draft members.

The draft platform states Americans should earn $15 per hour and have a right to join a union, and it supports a so-called "model employer executive order" to raise standards for federal government contractors.

It calls for the complete abolishment of the death penalty, stating, "It has no place in the United States of America."

PlayA new focus for Bernie Sanders Facebook Twitter Google Plus Embed
A new focus for Bernie Sanders 7:33

On Wall Street, the platform lays out a number of reforms proposed by Clinton, Sanders and other Democrats, and states the party "will not hesitate to use and expand existing authorities as well as empower regulators to downsize or break apart financial institutions," it states.

The platform adopts Elizabeth Warren's mantra that "personnel is policy" to promise, "We will nominate and appoint regulators and officials who are not beholden to the industries they regulate."

On social security, the draft platform calls for changing the cap on taxes so people contribute to the fund on income above $250,000.

Related: Sanders on Israel, Peace and the Democratic Platform

The draft platform calls for making community college free and easing student loan burdens through a number of measures, like a Student Borrower Bill of Rights.

It calls for repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of taxpayer funds for abortion, and states the party will "strongly and unequivocally support a woman's decision" on abortion.

It calls for giving the District of Columbia statehood, banning assault weapons and overturning Citizens United. Democrats vow to protect voting rights, "reaffirm our commitment to eliminate poverty," and reform the criminal justice system to make it easier for people to re-enter society after incarceration.

The platform also took a step towards Sanders on drug policy, saying states should be able to decriminalize marijuana if they chose to. Marijuana reformers, including Sanders, had hoped for more.

However, some of the stickiest issues remain unresolved -- at least as Sanders supporters see it.

Related: Hillary and Bernie Agree to Work Together

On climate change, the Sanders wing tried to insert a ban on fracking and a tax on carbon. Neither made it. However, the draft platform makes a strong commitment to reducing carbon emissions and investing in renewable energy.

Sanders and Clinton sparred on health care this year, with Sanders calling for a single-payer system and Clinton favoring a more pragmatic approach to expand the Affordable Care Act.

The draft platform states, "we believe as Democrats that healthcare is a right," but it does not mention single-payer.

PlayDonald Trump's incoherence on trade Facebook Twitter Google Plus Embed
Donald Trump's incoherence on trade 9:37

The most contentious issue in the platform fight was on trade and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), with Sanders allies insisting that opposition to the trade deal be included in the platform.

Both Clinton and Sanders oppose the TPP, but President Barack Obama supports it, so the draft platform opted for a compromise in the language. "[T]here are a diversity of views in the party," the draft states. "But all Democrats believe that any trade agreement must protect workers and the environment and not undermine access to critically-needed prescription drugs."

Related: Bernie Sanders Says He Will Vote For Hillary Clinton

Neil Sroka of Democracy for America, which supported Sanders in the primary, said the platform had "some good things in here that reflect the impact that Bernie Sanders has had on the race," but didn't believe the draft was complete.

"There is still a great deal that's missing from the platform that needs to be in there," he added. "At the end of the day the only reason why an anti-TPP plank would not end up in the platform is because some democrats are too afraid to offend their corporate paymasters."

It remains unclear, however, how much leverage Sanders and his supporters still have to make changes.



"There is still a great deal that's missing from the platform that needs to be in there," he added. "At the end of the day the only reason why an anti-TPP plank would not end up in the platform is because some democrats are too afraid to offend their corporate paymasters."


Too bad that the party of my choice and their sworn enemies have so much in common!



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-tweet-with-star-of-david-draws-social-media-backlash/

Donald Trump tweet with Star of David draws social media backlash
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
July 2, 2016, 12:08 PM


Accusing rival Hillary Clinton of corruption, Donald Trump sent a controversial tweet Saturday morning, invoking a six-pointed Star of David -- a well-known Jewish symbol -- overlaid on piles of money.

screen-shot-2016-07-02-at-10-59-24-am.png
(The original tweet has since been deleted.)

The graphic appears to be photoshopped from several different elements, including a Fox News poll that found 58 percent of voters believed Clinton to be "corrupt." It's juxtaposed against a photo of Clinton and a riff off her own campaign statement about making history as the first presumptive female nominee of a major party.

Next to Clinton is a red six-pointed Star of David with text reading "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" Hundred-dollar bills are scattered in the photo behind her.

It raised the eyebrows of more than a few Twitter users.

Follow
Matthew Yglesias ✔ @mattyglesias
Some interesting graphic design choices here. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/749235486389043200 …
10:53 AM - 2 Jul 2016
38 38 Retweets 56 56 likes
Follow

Zeke Miller ✔ @ZekeJMiller
Uh oh... (That star...) https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/749235486389043200 …
10:46 AM - 2 Jul 2016
19 19 Retweets 23 23 likes
Several bluntly called the tweet anti-Semitic.

Follow
Prof. Jeff Brexit @ProfJeffJarviss
Interesting to see a major party nominee leverage the antisemitism meme so aggressively: pic.twitter.com/LmHZWegQte
10:52 AM - 2 Jul 2016 · Manhattan, NY, United States
39 39 Retweets 57 57 likes

Follow
Rembert Browne @rembert
pen and pixel antisemitism https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/749235486389043200 …
10:52 AM - 2 Jul 2016
47 47 Retweets 95 95 likes

A Clinton campaign staffer and an economic policy adviser also weighed in:

Follow
Josh Schwerin @JoshSchwerin
Why is there a Star of David? https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/749235486389043200 …
9:53 AM - 2 Jul 2016
86 86 Retweets 75 75 likes

2h
Michael Shapiro @mpshapiro
Yet another example of @realDonaldTrump 's divisive imagery and rhetoric. https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/749236405226901504 …

Follow
Michael Shapiro @mpshapiro
.@realDonaldTrump will deport 11M; attack judges heritage; bar Muslims. This new divisive dogwhistle isnt surprise: pic.twitter.com/3tiOTcC9PZ
10:43 AM - 2 Jul 2016 · New York, USA, United States
4 4 Retweets 3 3 likes

Trump later tweeted an amended version of the graphic, nearly two hours after the Twitter firestorm began. The latest version uses a red circle in place of the Star of David:

View image on Twitter
Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Crooked Hillary -- Makes History! #ImWithYou #AmericaFirst
11:19 AM - 2 Jul 2016
2,293 2,293 Retweets 4,874 4,874 likes

Trump, for his part, has defended against accusations of anti-semitism and racism before.

In a March speech to AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Trump proclaimed his love for Jewish people and Israel.

"I love the people in this room," Trump told AIPAC attendees. "I love Israel. I've been with Israel so long in terms of - I've received some of my greatest honors from Israel. My father before me. Incredible. My daughter Ivanka, is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby. In fact, it could be happening right now which would be very nice as far as I'm concerned."



Unfortunately there are an increasing number of people in this great nation who will become even more enamored with Trump over this. Luckily, they are still a minority.



NORTH CAROLINA, FOR SHAME!


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-brain-eating-amoeba-found-at-whitewater-center-after-teens-death-lauren-seitz/

CDC: Brain-eating amoeba found at whitewater center after teen's death
CBS/AP
July 2, 2016, 12:49 AM

Photograph -- An undated photo shows 18-year-old Lauren Seitz. WBNS

9 PHOTOS -- Brain-eating amoeba: How to stay safe from Naegleria fowleri


RALEIGH, N.C. -- The chlorination and filtration systems at an artificial water rapids course where Olympic kayakers train were inadequate to kill a rare, brain-attacking organism, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said after an Ohio teenager died from the amoeba.

The rushing water channels at the U.S. National Whitewater Center had become so murky with debris that the chlorine and ultraviolet light that might have killed the Naegleria fowleri amoeba didn't work, Dr. Michael Beach said Friday.

"It's kind of a murky water," said Beach, the CDC's associate director for healthy water. Speaking by phone, Beach wouldn't comment on whether a more effective system could have saved the life of Lauren Seitz, 18, of Westerville, Ohio.

The whitewater center closed its whitewater rafting and kayaking operations on June 24. The fast-water channels will be drained, dried and scrubbed to kill any vestiges of the amoeba, the non-profit said on its web site.

The center didn't indicate when the rapids course might reopen and a spokesman declined to comment Friday on the CDC findings.

Seitz died June 19, just three weeks after graduating from high school and more than a week after returning home to suburban Columbus, Ohio, from a trip that included a visit to the whitewater center about 15 miles west of Charlotte.

"Lauren and I have known each other since we were four," friend Katie Busch told CBS affiliate WBNS after Seitz's death. "I don't have anything but good memories of her."

Busch said Seitz wanted to share her musical gifts, so she joined the youth choir of her Westerville church on a trip to sing in nursing homes and other churches. One stop made by the 32 teens on that trip changed everything.

Colin Evans sat next to Seitz on the bus and shared a raft with her the day health officials believe Seitz contracted the brain-eating amoeba.

"I was lucky enough to have her in the boat with me. We went around three times," Evans told WBNS. "Everybody fell out. It was fun. We both fell out at the same spot both times. We helped each other back in."

Seitz's only known underwater exposure was thought to be when her raft overturned at the whitewater center.

She planned to study music and environmental science at Denison University in Ohio, according to an obituary posted by the funeral home handling arrangements. A celebration of her life is scheduled Saturday. Her family didn't return a telephone call seeking comment.

The center held Olympic qualifying trials for U.S. canoe and kayak competitors in April and also hosted the qualifying races before the 2012 and 2008 Olympics, said Aaron Mann, a spokesman for USA Canoe/Kayak. American Olympians haven't used the Charlotte course in recent weeks because they've been competing in Europe ahead of a training camp in France leading up to the Rio de Janeiro games, he said.

The amoeba is very common in lakes and other kinds of warm, fresh water, yet it's very rare that it will make anyone sick, said Dr. Thomas Kerkering, chief of infectious diseases cat Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, Virginia. The amoeba won't infect a person who drinks or swallows water containing it, and must enter the body through the nose to cause harm.

"Where most people get it is when they wipe out waterskiing and the water goes up their nose," Kerkering said.

The odds that the organism will cause the dangerous, brain-eating disease are just about chance, Kerkering said, since some people jumping into the water might contract the illness while most others don't.

Only 138 people nationwide have been stricken by the disease between 1962 and 2015, according to the CDC. Florida and Texas have had the most cases with 34 each in that time. North Carolina had four cases prior to Seitz, none of them involving the whitewater center, while Ohio is one of 32 states without a recorded case over the five-decade span. All five cases last year were fatal. They were in California, Oklahoma, Arizona, and two in Texas. The most recent was in Texas last August.

Initial symptoms showing up on average five days after exposure may include headache, fever or vomiting and worsen to include stiff neck, confusion, seizures and hallucinations.

The deadly amoeba was found in all 11 water samples taken from the National Whitewater Center's fast-flowing whitewater channel, said Dr. Stephen Keener, Mecklenburg County's medical director. Four samples from the neighboring Catawba River didn't find the organism, but it was found in one sample of the river's sediment, Keener said Thursday.

Water for the center's courses comes from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg municipal system, two water wells and rain, the operator said.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba

Amoeba
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photograph -- Chaos carolinense

An amoeba (/əˈmiːbə/; rarely spelled amœba, US English commonly ameba; plural am(o)ebas or am(o)ebae /əˈmiːbiː/),[1] often called amoeboid, is a type of cell or organism which has the ability to alter its shape, primarily by extending and retracting pseudopods.[2] Amoebas do not form a single taxonomic group; instead, they are found in every major lineage of eukaryotic organisms. Amoeboid cells occur not only among the protozoa, but also in fungi, algae, and animals.[3][4][5][6][7]

Microbiologists often use the terms "amoeboid" and "amoeba" interchangeably for any organism that exhibits amoeboid movement.[8][9]

In older classification systems, most amoebas were placed in the class or subphylum Sarcodina, a grouping of single-celled organisms that possess pseudopods or move by protoplasmic flow. However, molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that Sarcodina is not a monophyletic group whose members share common descent. Consequently, amoeboid organisms are no longer classified together in one group.[10]

The best known amoeboid protists are the "Giant Amoebae" Chaos carolinense and Amoeba proteus, both of which are widely cultivated and studied in classrooms and laboratories. Other well known species include the so-called "brain-eating amoeba" Naegleria fowleri, the intestinal parasite Entamoeba histolytica, which causes amoebic dysentery, and the multicellular "social amoeba" Dictyostelium discoideum.

Shape, movement and nutrition[edit]

Foraminifera have reticulose (net-like) pseudopods

Amoebae move and feed by using pseudopods, which are bulges of cytoplasm formed by the coordinated action of actin microfilaments pushing out the plasma membrane that surrounds the cell.[11]

The appearance and internal structure of pseudopods are used to distinguish groups of amoebae from one another. …. Free-living amoebae may be "testate" (enclosed within a hard shell), or "naked" (lacking any hard covering). The shells of testate amoebae may be composed of various substances, including calcium, silica, chitin, or agglutinations of found materials like small grains of sand and the frustules of diatoms.[13]

A "naked" Amoebozoan

To regulate osmotic pressure, most freshwater amoebae have a contractile vacuole which expels excess water from the cell.[14] This organelle is necessary because freshwater has a lower concentration of solutes (such as salt) than the amoeba's own internal fluids (cytosol). Because the surrounding water is hypotonic with respect to the contents of the cell, water is transferred across the amoeba's cell membrane by osmosis. Without a contractile vacuole, the cell would fill with excess water and, eventually, burst.

Marine amoebae do not usually possess a contractile vacuole, because the concentration of solutes within the cell are in balance with the tonicity of the surrounding water.[15]

Amoeba phagocytosis

The food sources of amoebae vary. Some amoebae are predatory and live by consuming bacteria and other protists. Some are detritivores and eat dead organic material.

Amoebae typically ingest their food by phagocytosis, extending pseudopods to encircle and engulf live prey or particles of scavenged material. Amoeboid cells do not have a mouth or cytostome, and there is no fixed place on the cell at which phagocytosis normally occurs.[16]

Some amoebae also feed by pinocytosis, imbibing dissolved nutrients through vesicles formed within the cell membrane .[17]

Amoebae as specialized cells and life cycle stages[edit]

Some multicellular organisms have amoeboid cells only in certain phases of life, or use amoeboid movements for specialized functions. In the immune system of humans and other animals, amoeboid white blood cells pursue invading organisms, such as bacteria and pathogenic protists, and engulf them by phagocytosis.[18]

Amoeboid stages also occur in the multicellular fungus-like protists, the so-called slime molds. Both the plasmodial slime molds, currently classified in the class Myxogastria, and the cellular slime molds of the groups Acrasida and Dictyosteliida, live as amoebae during their feeding stage. The amoeboid cells of the former combine to form a giant multinucleate organism,[19] while the cells of the latter live separately until food runs out, at which time the amoebae aggregate to form a multicellular migrating "slug" which functions as a single organism.[8]

Other organisms may also present amoeboid cells during certain life-cycle stages, e.g., the gametes of some green algae (Zygnematophyceae),[20] of pennate diatoms,[21] of some foraminiferans,[22] the spores (or dispersal phases) of some Mesomycetozoea,[23][24] the sporoplasm stage of Myxozoa and of Ascetosporea.[25]


Excerpt -- CBS -- "It's kind of a murky water," said Beach, the CDC's associate director for healthy water. Speaking by phone, Beach wouldn't comment on whether a more effective system could have saved the life of Lauren Seitz, 18, of Westerville, Ohio. The whitewater center closed its whitewater rafting and kayaking operations on June 24. The fast-water channels will be drained, dried and scrubbed to kill any vestiges of the amoeba, the non-profit said on its website. …. "Lauren and I have known each other since we were four," friend Katie Busch told CBS affiliate WBNS after Seitz's death. "I don't have anything but good memories of her." Busch said Seitz wanted to share her musical gifts, so she joined the youth choir of her Westerville church on a trip to sing in nursing homes and other churches. One stop made by the 32 teens on that trip changed everything. …. The amoeba is very common in lakes and other kinds of warm, fresh water, yet it's very rare that it will make anyone sick, said Dr. Thomas Kerkering, chief of infectious diseases cat Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine in Roanoke, Virginia. The amoeba won't infect a person who drinks or swallows water containing it, and must enter the body through the nose to cause harm. "Where most people get it is when they wipe out waterskiing and the water goes up their nose," Kerkering said. The odds that the organism will cause the dangerous, brain-eating disease are just about chance, Kerkering said, since some people jumping into the water might contract the illness while most others don't.”


Excerpt -- “Initial symptoms showing up on average five days after exposure may include headache, fever or vomiting and worsen to include stiff neck, confusion, seizures and hallucinations.” I’ve seen descriptions of some dangerous viral illnesses with these first four symptoms – polio and rabies come to my mind. In rabies an early symptom is also a sore throat. Others, from Google, include meningitis, strep throat, and mononucleosis. While a headache alone will probably go away with some analgesic medication and a nap, a collection of symptoms like this should send you to a doctor ASAP. Personally I have never been comfortable swimming in pond water, as it is USUALLY murky looking, and often the bottom is “slimy” under the feet. My reaction to all that is just “YUCK!” Several times there have been warnings on the local news here in Jacksonville not to swim in the water, between coliform bacteria and the “red tide” organism, both of which are serious problems.

I am so sorry to hear that this promising and attractive young woman died by this strange disease. I have heard of it before. Anything described as “brain eating” or in the case of another one, “flesh eating,” is really shocking. It’s like a couple of horror movies I ran across down through the years. We must understand that we are surrounded by bacteria and protozoa, which unfortunately aren’t visible to the naked eye, and we are usually immune to them. They won’t make us sick. Thence the daily ritual of hand washing is usually enough. We also have millions of them living harmlessly inside us, and in a good many cases our biology is actually dependent on their presence. Sometimes, though, an alien interloper like this one which infects us only when it enters by the nose (there must be a connection to the brain from there, but I don’t know where it is) does it cause this really terrible disease ending in death.

I have known for many years of the “gut” amoeba found in tropical waters which causes an often deadly form of dysentery. And I have personally met amoebas in my life. My parents gave me a wonderful Christmas gift when I was a young teen, a microscope. It wasn’t a large laboratory model, but it worked quite well. I looked at rocks, soil, sea water, stagnant water, etc., and they all include a small world within a half teaspoonful. One of my “pets” was indeed an amoeba. They are very interesting. Nearly all other animals use some form of “swimming” but these give the appearance of “flowing.”

Wikipedia’s discussion also gives me the impression that amoeba may be one of the earliest life forms, since I think protoplasm probably preceded cells and from cells to multicellular. Something like a naked amoeba might have been one of the earliest forms. Some amoebalike functions are in fact included in some multicellular life forms, including the “white corpuscles” that make up most of our germ killing immunity system. So they not only live in us as their environment, but perform basic functions for us. From reading the Wikipedia article below I know that my pond water amoeba was of the “naked” variety -- which was the way I had thought until now that all amoebas are -- but there are quite a few others as well with a hard shell covering.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-fbi-email-investigation-election-2016/

Hillary Clinton interviewed by FBI on email server
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
July 2, 2016, 12:37 PM

Play VIDEO -- Why didn't AG step out of Clinton email probe entirely?


Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton met with FBI officials Saturday about her private email server that has sparked a federal investigation, her campaign said.

"Secretary Clinton gave a voluntary interview this morning about her email arrangements while she was Secretary," Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email Saturday afternoon. "She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion. Out of respect for the investigative process, she will not comment further on her interview."

Sources confirm to CBS News that the investigation is in its final phase and interviewing Clinton was one of the last steps before concluding the investigation and submitting recommendations on whether charges should be filed.

The meeting, which lasted approximately three-and-a-half hours, took place at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., according to a campaign aide.

Federal investigators have already interviewed close aides to the former secretary of state, including Huma Abedin, who faced questioning in April at the FBI's Washington field office.

In May, Clinton told CBS News that she expected a quick conclusion to the FBI probe into whether she mishandled classified information on her server, which Clinton used exclusively to send and receive State Department correspondence.

"I always took classified material seriously," she told "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson. "There was never any material marked classified that was sent or received by me. And I look forward to this being wrapped up."

The news comes just as increased scrutiny has been turned on the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch after the nation's top law enforcement officer had a spontaneous half-hour-long meeting with former President Clinton earlier this week.

In an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival Friday, Lynch confirmed that she would be accepting the recommendations of the career prosecutors in the email case, though the attorney general stopped short of formally recusing herself from the matter.



Excerpt -- "She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion. Out of respect for the investigative process, she will not comment further on her interview." Sources confirm to CBS News that the investigation is in its final phase and interviewing Clinton was one of the last steps before concluding the investigation and submitting recommendations on whether charges should be filed. …. "I always took classified material seriously," she told "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson. "There was never any material marked classified that was sent or received by me. And I look forward to this being wrapped up." …. Lynch confirmed that she would be accepting the recommendations of the career prosecutors in the email case, though the attorney general stopped short of formally recusing herself from the matter.”


The Republicans have several times hinted the Clinton SHOULD have known a given email SHOULD have been marked classified, and may perhaps either carelessly or knowingly misused it – sent it to the wrong person. Some of the Republicans who have gone through her thousands of emails have discovered a small handful of them that to them were suspicious enough that she shouldn’t have sent it on. So far, however, there is no sign that she committed treason. It can be concluded, probably that the government server should have been used. Several other Secretaries of State have been known to use private email for government purposes, but not, I don’t think, a personal encrypted server located at her home like she did.

Personally I think she did it out of a certain amount of paranoia. The Feds are known to sometimes spy on people, and the market for actionable information about both of the Clintons has been brisk, I am sure. Every now and then a story about Bill’s misdeeds still comes out in the conservative press. Though I wish she hadn’t done this unwise thing, I don’t think she has jeopardized the workings of our government in this way. I’m still for Sanders as the presidential candidate, but I do feel sorry for Hillary. The “conservatives” have hated her and Bill since they first made the political scene. They were clearly a “power couple” and she openly declared that she “didn’t bake cookies.” Not only were they liberal and frighteningly popular, she wasn’t the “right kind” of woman.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/elie-wiesel-holocaust-survivor-and-nobel-laureate-dead-at-87/

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, dead at 87
CBS/AP
July 2, 2016, 4:15 PM

Photograph -- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, leaves after introducing President Obama at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum April 23, 2012, in Washington, D.C. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES


NEW YORK -- Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born Holocaust survivor whose classic "Night" became a landmark testament to the Nazis' crimes and launched Wiesel's long career as one of the world's foremost witnesses and humanitarians, has died at age 87.

His death was announced Saturday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, of which Wiesel was a founding member. No other details were immediately available.

"When my life seems to be partly or wholly in ruins, I build on them. I may even use the ruins for the buildings. Second, I will never allow anyone to change my life or destroy what I have done with it," Wiesel told CBS News in 2009. "Somehow what I must keep in mind is what I think of myself."

The short, sad-eyed Wiesel, his face an ongoing reminder of one man's endurance of a shattering past, summed up his mission in 1986 when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize: "Whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

For more than a half-century, he voiced his passionate beliefs to world leaders, celebrities and general audiences in the name of victims of violence and oppression. He wrote more than 40 books, but his most influential by far was "Night," a classic ranked with Anne Frank's diary as standard reading about the Holocaust.

"Night" was his first book, and its journey to publication crossed both time and language. It began in the mid-1950s as an 800-page story in Yiddish, was trimmed to under 300 pages for an edition released in Argentina, cut again to under 200 pages for the French market and finally published in the United States, in 1960, at just over 100 pages.

"'Night' is the most devastating account of the Holocaust that I have ever read," wrote Ruth Franklin, a literary critic and author of "A Thousand Darknesses," a study of Holocaust literature that was published in 2010.

"There are no epiphanies in 'Night. There is no extraneous detail, no analysis, no speculation. There is only a story: Eliezer's account of what happened, spoken in his voice."

Wiesel began working on "Night" just a decade after the end of World War II, when memories were too raw for many survivors to even try telling their stories. Frank's diary had been an accidental success, a book discovered after her death, and its entries end before Frank and her family was captured and deported. Wiesel's book was among the first popular accounts written by a witness to the very worst, and it documented what Frank could hardly have imagined.

"Night" was so bleak that publishers doubted it would appeal to readers. In a 2002 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Wiesel recalled that the book attracted little notice at first. "The English translation came out in 1960, and the first printing was 3,000 copies. And it took three years to sell them. Now, I get 100 letters a month from children about the book. And there are many, many million copies in print."

In one especially haunting passage, Wiesel sums up his feelings upon arrival in Auschwitz:

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. ... Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

"Night" was based directly on his experiences, but structured like a novel, leading to an ongoing debate over how to categorize it. Alfred Kazin was among the critics who expressed early doubts about the book's accuracy, doubts that Wiesel denounced as "a mortal sin in the historical sense." Wiesel's publisher called the book a memoir even as some reviewers called it fiction. An Amazon editorial review labeled the book "technically a novel," albeit so close to Wiesel's life that "it's generally - and not inaccurately - read as an autobiography."

In 2006, a new translation returned "Night" to the best-seller lists after it was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. But the choice also revived questions about how to categorize the book. Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, both of which had listed "Night" as fiction, switched it to nonfiction. Wiesel, meanwhile, acknowledged in a new introduction that he had changed the narrator's age from "not quite 15" to Wiesel's real age at the time, 15.

"Unfortunately, 'Night' is an imperfect ambassador for the infallibility of the memoir," Franklin wrote, "owing to the fact that it has been treated very often as a novel."

Wiesel's prolific stream of speeches, essays and books, including two sequels to "Night" and more than 40 books overall of fiction and nonfiction, emerged from the helplessness of a teenager deported from Hungary, which had annexed his native Romanian town of Sighet, to Auschwitz. Tattooed with the number A-7713, he was freed in 1945 - but only after his mother, father and one sister had all died in Nazi camps. Two other sisters survived.

After the liberation of Buchenwald, in April 1945, Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage, then landed in Paris. He studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne, and then became a journalist, writing for the French newspaper L'Arche and Israel's Yediot Ahronot.

French author Francois Mauriac, winner of the 1952 Nobel in literature, encouraged Wiesel to break his vowed silence about the concentration camps and start sharing his experiences.

In 1956, Wiesel traveled on a journalistic assignment to New York to cover the United Nations. While there, he was struck by a car and confined to a wheelchair for a year. He became a lifetime New Yorker, continuing in journalism writing for the Yiddish-language newspaper, the Forward. His contact with the city's many Holocaust survivors shored up Wiesel's resolve to keep telling their stories.

Wiesel became a U.S. citizen in 1963. Six years later, he married Marion Rose, a fellow Holocaust survivor who translated some of his books into English. They had a son, Shlomo. Based in New York, Wiesel commuted to Boston University for almost three decades, teaching philosophy, literature and Judaic studies and giving a popular lecture series in the fall.

Wiesel also taught at Yale University and the City University of New York.

In 1978, he was chosen by President Carter to head the President's Commission on the Holocaust, and plan an American memorial museum to Holocaust victims. Wiesel wrote in a report to the president that the museum must include denying the Nazis a posthumous victory, honoring the victims' last wishes to tell their stories. He said that although all the victims of the Holocaust were not Jewish, all Jews were victims. Wiesel advocated that the museum emphasize the annihilation of the Jews, while still remembering the others; today the exhibits and archives reflects that.

Among his most memorable spoken words came in 1985, when he received a Congressional Gold Medal from President Ronald Reagan and asked the president not to make a planned trip to a cemetery in Germany that contained graves of Adolf Hitler's personal guards.

"We have met four or five times, and each time I came away enriched, for I know of your commitment to humanity," Wiesel said, as Reagan looked on. "May I, Mr. President, if it's possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site. That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims."

Reagan visited the cemetery, in Bitburg, despite international protests.

Wiesel also spoke at the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1993. His words are now carved in stone at its entrance: "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

Wiesel defended Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, victims of African famine and victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Wiesel was a longtime supporter of Israel although he was criticized at times for his closeness to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu. When Netanhayu gave a highly controversial address to Congress in 2015, denouncing President Obama's efforts to reach a nuclear treaty with Iran, Wiesel was among the guests of honor.

"What were you doing there, Elie Wiesel?" Haaretz columnist Roger Alpher wrote at the time. "Netanyahu is my prime minister. You are not an Israeli citizen. You do not live here. The Iranian threat to destroy Israel does not apply to you. You are a Jew who lives in America. This is not your problem."

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which he established in 1988, explored the problems of hatred and ethnic conflicts around the world. But like a number of other well-known charities in the Jewish community, the foundation fell victim to Bernard Madoff, the financier who was arrested in late 2008 and accused of running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Wiesel said he ended up losing $15.2 million in foundation funds, plus his and his wife's own personal investments. At a panel discussion in February 2009, Wiesel admitted he bought into the Madoff mystique, "a myth that he created around him that everything was so special, so unique, that it had to be secret." He called Madoff "a crook, a thief, a scoundrel."

Despite Wiesel's mission to remind the world of past mistakes, the greatest disappointment of his life was that "nothing changed," he said in an interview.

"Human nature remained what it was. Society remained what it was. Too much indifference in the world, to the Other, his pain, and anguish, and hope."

But personally, he never gave up - as reflected in his novel "The Town Beyond the Wall."

Wiesel's Jewish protagonist, Michael, returns to his native town in now-communist Hungary to find out why his neighbors had given him up to the Nazis. Suspected as a Western spy, he lands in prison along with a young man whose insanity has left him catatonic.

The protagonist takes on the challenge of "awakening" the youth by any means, from talking to forcing his mouth open - a task as wrenching as Wiesel's humanitarian missions.

"The day when the boy suddenly began sketching arabesques in the air was one of the happiest of Michael's life. ... Now he talked more, as if wishing to store ideas and values in the boy for his moments of awakening. Michael compared himself to a farmer: months separated the planting from the harvest. For the moment, he was planting."



http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/thousands-march-europe-reverse-brexit-vote-n602996

NEWS BREXIT REFERENDUM GALLERY 9 PHOTOS
JUL 2 2016, 5:24 PM ET
Thousands 'March For Europe' to Reverse Brexit Vote
Tens of thousands of EU supporters sang, danced and marched down the streets of London on Saturday to protest the UK's Brexit vote.

There is no text story, but go to the website and look at the photos. It looks like a Bernie Sanders rally.

July 1, 2016


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bangladesh-hindu-temple-worker-hacked-fatal-slashing-attack-islamic-extremists/

Man hacked to death while picking flowers for morning prayers
AP July 1, 2016, 9:03 AM

Photograph -- Bangladeshi activists hold the photos of activists, writers and bloggers (L-R) Niloy Neel, Humayun Azad, Ananta Bijoy Das, Avijit Roy, Faisal Arefin Dipan, Nazimuddin Samad, Ahmed Rajib Haider and Oyasiqur Rhaman) who were murdered by unidentified assassins in the last few years, in Dhaka, June 15, 2016. GETTY
Photograph -- bangladeshap289345931513.jpg, A Bangladeshi policeman stands guard at the spot where three motorcycle-riding assailants hacked a student activist, Nazimuddin Samad, to death as he walked with a friend, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 7, 2016. AP


DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A Hindu temple worker was hacked to death in southwest Bangladesh early Friday in the latest attack blamed on radical Islamists, police said.

At least three assailants on a motorbike fled after hacking Shyamonando Das with sharp weapons as he was plucking flowers for his morning prayers near the temple, local police chief Hasan Hafizur Rahman said.

The attack happened in Jhenaidah district, 120 miles southwest of Dhaka. The worker died on the spot, Rahman said.

Police had no immediate clues about who was behind the latest killing, but they suspected that Islamist militant groups could be responsible as the pattern of the attack fits previous ones. No group has claimed responsibility.

At least 18 people, including atheist bloggers, foreign aid workers and religious minorities, have been killed in attacks over the last two years. Police launched a crackdown that led to the arrests of some 12,000 people, mostly petty criminals and opposition supporters.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, but authorities have denied it has a presence in the country.

The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina says homegrown groups are responsible for the killings and want to create chaos in the country.

Meanwhile, police said Friday they have arrested the suspected mastermind of an attempted murder of a Hindu college teacher, Ripon Chakravarty, two weeks ago in Madaripur district.

Chakravary was critically injured by sharp weapons, and residents chased the attackers and caught one of them. The suspect, Golam Faizullah Fahim, was later killed in the crossfire after he led police to a hideout of radical Islamists.

Police said Fahim, 18, was a member of the banned Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir. His parents said he went missing a few days before the attack and they didn't know that he was a member of the group.



“At least three assailants on a motorbike fled after hacking Shyamonando Das with sharp weapons as he was plucking flowers for his morning prayers near the temple, local police chief Hasan Hafizur Rahman said. …. At least 18 people, including atheist bloggers, foreign aid workers and religious minorities, have been killed in attacks over the last two years. Police launched a crackdown that led to the arrests of some 12,000 people, mostly petty criminals and opposition supporters. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, but authorities have denied it has a presence in the country. …. Meanwhile, police said Friday they have arrested the suspected mastermind of an attempted murder of a Hindu college teacher, Ripon Chakravarty, two weeks ago in Madaripur district. Chakravary was critically injured by sharp weapons, and residents chased the attackers and caught one of them. The suspect, Golam Faizullah Fahim, was later killed in the crossfire after he led police to a hideout of radical Islamists. Police said Fahim, 18, was a member of the banned Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir. His parents said he went missing a few days before the attack and they didn't know that he was a member of the group.”



An illegal Islamic organization called Hizbut Tahrir has been blamed for this Hindu man’s death. A belief that killing anyone, especially a mainly helpful group like foreign aid workers, and doing it by hacking them up in this way, has to be due to insanity. I’ve said before and will say it again, the more Fundamentalist and radical a group is, the more a really sane person cannot, will not become one of its’ members. Believing things “on faith” is good only when the teachings are good.

Religion at its’ best can be ennobling if it increases deeper thought, but at its’ most hysterical and bizarre, it produces true evil. I don’t want ANY religion to be sponsored as a State Religion and membership in it mandated, anywhere, and especially in the US. That’s one of the main things that our forefathers ran away from in the 1600s from Europe. Unfortunately, we carried the seeds of the same tree with us when we came here.

I Googled Bangladesh for general information. It has a widely divergent population, mainly Muslim, but there are in the range of half a dozen other religions mentioned in Wikipedia, also. Scan the Wikipedia article below. Some religious killings, especially against Hindus, are mentioned there. In the restaurant the “derailed youths” were said to be chanting "Allahu Akbar" during the attack and were provided with both firearms and bombs.


MORE NEWS ON BANGLADESH – POSSIBLY RELATED TO THE BRUTAL KILLING ABOVE

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bangladesh-attack-gunmen-hostages-diplomatic-zone-restaurant/

Bangladesh attack: Gunmen take hostages in deadly assault at Dhaka restaurant
CBS/AP
July 1, 2016, 1:36 PM

Photograph -- Bangladeshi security personnel stand guard near a restaurant that was attacked by gunmen in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 1, 2016. AP PHOTO


DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A group of as many as nine gunmen attacked a restaurant popular with foreigners in a diplomatic zone of the Bangladeshi capital on Friday night, taking hostages and exchanging gunfire with security forces, authorities said.

CBS News confirmed that a police officer was killed in the attack and at least 12 people were injured.

The head of the elite anti-crime force, Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, told reporters Friday night that they were working to save the lives of the people trapped inside the Holey Artisan Bakery. Some foreigners are believed to be among the hostages.

"Some derailed youths have entered the restaurant and launched the attack," Benazir Ahmed said. "We have talked to some of the people who fled the restaurant after the attack. We want to resolve this peacefully. We are trying to talk to the attackers, we want to listen to them about what they want."

A huge contingent of security guards cordoned off the area around the restaurant, trading gunfire with the attackers who set off bombs and exchanged gunfire with the security forces.

"Some of our people have been injured. Our first priority is to save the lives of the people trapped inside," Ahmed said. He would not say how many people were trapped inside.

Sumon Reza, a kitchen staffer who escaped the attack at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka's Gulshan area, told reporters that the attackers were armed with firearms and bombs as they entered the restaurant around 9:20 p.m. Friday and took customers and staffers hostage at gunpoint.

Jamuna Television, quoting Reza, said the attackers chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) as they launched the attack.

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters: "We are aware of reports of what appears to a hostage situation in the Gulshan neighborhood of Dhaka."

Kirby said no Americans were involved in the situation.

He said it was too early to say who was involved in the assault and their motivation.

On Twitter, the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka advised people to shelter in place.

Follow
U.S. Embassy Dhaka @usembassydhaka
Reports of shooting and hostage situation in Gulshan 2, Dhaka. Please shelter in place and monitor news.
12:54 PM - 1 Jul 2016
575 575 Retweets 141 141 likes

Bangladesh, a traditionally moderate Muslim-majority nation, has recently seen an upsurge in militant violence. Nearly two dozen atheist writers, publishers, members of religious minorities, social activists and foreign aid workers have been slain since 2013 by attackers. The frequency of attacks has increased in recent months. On Friday, a Hindu temple worker was hacked to death in southwest Bangladesh.

The attacks have raised fears that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in the country, despite its traditions of secularism and tolerance.

On Thursday, the State Department officially designated al Qaeda's affiliate in Bangladesh, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, as a foreign terrorist organization. The group has claimed responsibility for the killings of U.S. citizen Avijit Roy and U.S. Embassy worker Xulhaz Manna, who was hacked to death, according to the department.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has cracked down on domestic radical Islamists. It has accused local terrorists and opposition political parties - especially the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami - of orchestrating the violence in order to destabilize the nation, which both parties deny.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and al Qaeda affiliates have claimed responsibility for many of the attacks but the government denies that either group has a presence in the country.



Religion in Bangladesh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bangladesh is constitutionally a secular country. Although removed from the constitution once, it was later reinstated. But the constitution recognises Islam as the state religion of Bangladesh.[1] Islam is the largest religion of Bangladesh; Muslims constitute over 90% of the population, while Hindus and Buddhists are most significant minorities of the country. Christians, Sikhs, animists and atheists form the the miniscule remainders.[2][self-published source] A survey in late 2003 confirmed that religion is the first choice by a citizen for self-identification. Bangladesh only recognises Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.[3]

The Muslim community in the Bengal region developed independent of the dominant Islamic trends in India. Features of Bangladeshi Hinduism, which differed in some respects from Hinduism in other parts of South Asia, influenced both the practices and the social structure of the Bangladeshi Muslim community. In spite of the general personal commitment to Islam by the Muslims of Bangladesh, observance of Islamic rituals and tenets varies according to social position, locale, and personal considerations. In rural regions, some beliefs and practices tend to incorporate elements that differ from and often conflict with orthodox Islam.

Persecution of minorities[edit]

See also: 2014 Bangladesh anti-Hindu violence, 2012 Ramu violence, and Persecution of Biharis in Bangladesh

There have been several instances of violence against the religious minorities in Bangladesh. Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have come under widespread attacks by Islamist extremists during communal riots, elections and post-poll violence. However, most of these violences are perpetrated primarily against Hindus, the largest minority of the country, who are particularly vulnerable in a period of rising violence and extremism, whether motivated by religious, political or criminal factors, or some combination. Bangladesh has been rocked by several anti-Hindu riots in 1992, 2001, 2013 and 2014. These violences included attacking and killing Hindus, looting and burning of Hindu-owned properties and businesses, abduction and rape of women, desecrating and destroying Hindu temples by the extremist Muslim mobs. There are also alleged discrimination against Hindus by the administration in the form of Vested Property Act by which over 40% of Hindu-owned lands and houses have been confiscated, intimidation during elections and revoking their names from electoral rolls. Since the rising of Islamist political parties during 1990s, large number of Hindu families have migrated from Bangladesh to India due to a sense of insecurity and economic necessity. These factors combined with lower birth rates of minorities have resulted in a dwindling Hindu population in the country. The Bihari ethnic minority in Bangladesh has been subject to persecution during and after 1971 Liberation War. Due to their pro-Pakistan stance, many Biharis were forcefully repatriated to Pakistan and those who stayed back were not granted citizenship and voting rights by Bangladesh government.



TPP – PRESIDENTIAL ARM TWISTING?

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/30/backers-sanders-mobilize-overthrow-dnc-platforms-pro-tpp-stance

Published onThursday, June 30, 2016
By Common Dreams
Backers of Sanders Mobilize to Overthrow DNC Platform's Pro-TPP Stance

Opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party,' declares progressive advocacy group. So why is it?

By Jon Queally, staff writer

Photograph -- A group of demonstrators protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership gather at the Federal Buileing in San Francisco, California June 9, 2015. The proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty would include 12 nations throughout the Asia Pacific region that have participated in negotiations. (Photo: Robert Galbraith/Reuters)


Before the Democratic Party's platform is finalized at a meeting late next week, Bernie Sanders and his progressive allies are mobilizing to ensure that opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—described by its critics as a global corporate power grab—is made the party's official stance.

Though President Obama continues to lobby hard on behalf of the controversial deal, and despite a proposal to include such language being voted down during a drafting session last weekend in St. Louis, Sanders and his supporters are making their case into a rallying cry about the future of the Democratic Party.

On Wednesday, both the Sanders campaign and Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy group, launched petitions calling on the platform committee to include the anti-TPP language in the final version.

"The Democratic Platform includes a number of very important initiatives that we have been fighting to achieve during this campaign," reads the petition from the Sanders campaign. "But one big item is missing: preventing the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal from ever coming up for a vote in Congress."

In addition to citing the publicly stated opposition of both Sanders and Clinton, the Sanders petition points out how the TPP is also opposed by key Democratic voting blocs—including "virtually every labor union, environmental group, and even major religious groups." The party as a whole, the petition argues, should now "go on record in opposition to holding a vote on the TPP during the lame duck session of Congress and beyond."

According to DFA's petition, "opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party: Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigned against the TPP during this year's presidential primary."

Though many have questioned just how resolute Clinton will be in her opposition to the TPP, others are willing to take her at her word and argue that it is Obama and other pro-TPP forces within the Democratic Party who undermine her campaign by not falling in line. Either way, outside progressive [sic] forces have remained vigilant against the corporate-friendly agreement even as Obama steadfastly argues on its behalf.

Meanwhile, in a op-ed in the New York Times this week, Sanders warned the Democratic leadership they needed to "wake up" when it comes to recognizing just how frustrated working people and the poor are when it comes to an economic system that is so clearly rigged against them.

Killing the Messenger

While the 15-member committee voted down the measure in St. Louis by a 10-5 vote—with the five Sanders-appointed members voting in favor and all the Clinton- and DNC-appointed members voting against—the split offers a window into how Sanders and the millions of voters inspired by his campaign hope to influence the party in the weeks and months ahead. In turn, the battle over TPP—as well as similar fights related to the minimum wage, climate action, and universal healthcare—will reveal much about how the party establishment, currently transitioning its leadership from Obama to Clinton, will respond to the groundswells from below.

As the Washington Post reports Thursday, members of the platform panel who voted to reject the anti-TPP proposal said it was influence coming from the White House, not their own feelings on TPP, which most impacted their decision.

Citing "people with knowledge of the platform negotiations," the newspaper reports how Sanders used his post-primary meeting with the president to say he would push for the party to officially oppose the TPP. The president said he would now allow it. And since then, the White House has leaned on key Democrats to make sure that the platform did not include a rebuke.

This is how Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), co-chair of the platform committee, explained his vote: "We have one president, and I have listened to him argue his case many times, and I know that he truly believes this. He really does. I disagree with him, but I don't want to do anything, as he ends his term, to undercut the president. I'm just not going to do it. In his last six months? I'm not gonna do that."

Sanders, however, appears very willing to challenge the president on the issue which he believes will so negatively impact the planet, people, and communities for generations to come.

"Well, I don’t want to embarrass the president either. He’s a friend," Sanders told USA Today in an interview this week. "But in a Democratic society, people can have disagreements."

And in a series of tweets that began Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, he made it clear that the fight over TPP is among the foremost issues on his mind:

Bernie Sanders
✔ ‎@BernieSanders
Our job is to do everything we can to rally support for an amendment to the platform in strong opposition to the TPP. #StopTPP
5:24 PM - 29 Jun 2016

Bernie Sanders
✔ ‎@BernieSanders
Tell the DNC: We have gotta strongly oppose bad trade agreements like the TPP in the Party Platform. #StopTPPhttps://go.berniesanders.com/page/s/dnc-tpp?source=tw20160629-pm
7:25 PM - 29 Jun 2016

Bernie Sanders
✔ ‎@BernieSanders
The TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities all over this country. #StopTPP
9:01 PM - 29 Jun 2016

Bernie Sanders
✔ ‎@BernieSanders
We need trade policies that benefit American workers, not just corporate CEOs. Democrats must do all they can to defeat the TPP. #StopTPP
9:34 AM - 30 Jun 2016

Bernie Sanders
✔ ‎@BernieSanders
Trade is a good thing but it has to be fair. And the TPP is anything but fair. We must ensure the TPP doesn't come up for a vote. #StopTPP
11:12 AM - 30 Jun 2016

The question, however, remains. If a majority of the Democrats on the panel oppose the TPP and the presumptive nominee opposes the TPP and the challenging candidate who won 22 primary contests by stirring the hopes of millions of voters opposes the TPP, why can't the leadership of the DNC take this opportunity to recalibrate the trajectory of the party on this seminal issue?

The full Democratic Platform Committee will meet in Orlando on July 8th and 9th to approve the final draft of the platform.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License



The DNC as a whole, including the White House, is obviously pressurizing those members who will give in to pushing through some Platform goals that primarily benefit Big Money, undoubtedly because Big Money is pressurizing them. It’s the only way I can explain this. I do hope Bernie will continue to fight on, because if he doesn’t, our hopes of achieving -- within the party -- a return to truly progressive politics is not going to happen this year. We may be in for a major split in the party’s membership soon becoming a fact and not a threat. I’m looking for it after November this year. I’m actually in favor of it, because we do need a purification or, if not that, a viable path in the right direction within the framework of a new Progressive Party. It isn’t a disaster. It’s like the division of a cell producing another, after which both live on to propagate the species. The two parties could work together sometimes, and not in others.



http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/286206-biden-spills-beans-sanders-will-endorse-clinton

Biden spills beans: Sanders will endorse Clinton
By Ben Kamisar
June 30, 2016, 06:06 pm

Photographs – Sanders, Clinton and Biden


Vice President Biden says Bernie Sanders will endorse his Democratic primary opponent, Hillary Clinton.

"I've talked to Bernie, Bernie's going to endorse her, this is going to work out," Biden said in an interview with NPR's "Weekend Edition" to air Sunday. "The Democrats are coalescing even before this occurs."

Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, would not confirm or deny the vice president's assertion.

“We are in the process of talking” with the Clinton campaign, he said, and noted that the candidates met earlier this month to talk about next steps.

Sanders has been withholding his endorsement for weeks since primary season ended on June 14.

Clinton is seen as the party's likely nominee, having secured enough delegates to win the party's nomination at the July convention.

While Sanders has repeatedly promised he’ll do what he can to stop presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump from winning the White House, he's turned down numerous chances to endorse Clinton and has instead shifted his campaign's focus toward winning policy and platform concessions at the convention.

It's not the first time that Biden, who will campaign with Clinton next week in Pennsylvania, got out ahead of the news cycle. His surprise endorsement of same-sex marriage, before President Obama came out in support of the policy, prompted Obama to announce his support soon after.

Biden will hit the campaign trail with Clinton next Friday in Scranton, Pa. He told NPR that vouching for Clinton to voters back home is the best way to support her.

"I understand the hardest thing to do is not writing the check. The hardest thing is vouching. When you vouch for them you say, 'I'm putting my reputation on the line, I believe this person is a good person, has character," Biden said. "You're putting your rep on the line. You're saying, 'I think this person has character,' and that's what I'm prepared to do for Hillary."

In an interview on MSNBC later Thursday evening, Sanders wouldn't confirm or deny Biden's claim. He said he's hopeful he'll be able to give an endorsement but that "we're not there quite yet."

Updated at 9:20 p.m.



Excerpt -- “Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, would not confirm or deny the vice president's assertion. “We are in the process of talking” with the Clinton campaign, he said, and noted that the candidates met earlier this month to talk about next steps.”


Same song, second verse …. Does Biden actually have a promise from Sanders, or is he simply putting more public pressure on him to give up? That game is getting old. It appears to me that Sanders is maintaining the same stance that he’s always had, and will continue his role as “the loyal opposition” in order to change the Dems back to the party of the people.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-convention_us_5773f0f4e4b0352fed3e97f7

Bernie Sanders’ Endgame Is Increasingly Bewildering To Team Clinton
The Vermont senator is raising the possibility of some convention disruptions.

Sam Stein
Senior Politics Editor, The Huffington Post
06/29/2016 01:30 pm ET | Updated 1 day ago

Photograph -- MIKE GROLL/ASSOCIATED PRESS, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said he will vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton but won’t endorse her. This hasn’t gone over completely well among Democrats.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sanders’ push for a Democratic platform cast in his image faces pushback from both Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.


Democrats have for weeks treated the still-operational presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with a mix of deference and caution, worrying about too strongly pushing the occasionally irascible senator and his legion of devoted followers.

But as time has passed and the party’s convention nears, supporters of Hillary Clinton really want to know what Sanders’ endgame actually is.

The question has been prompted by some recent muddled messaging from Sanders himself. The senator has said he’ll vote for Clinton, but is declining to actually endorse her candidacy. On Tuesday, he raised the specter of convention disorder over the nuts and bolts of the party platform, all while insisting he will do everything in his power to ensure that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump loses.

The Democratic Party is eager to see that loss, but has begun wondering whether ideological disputes and bruised egos may get in the way.

“So far [Sanders] has been riding a wave of good feelings in the sense he ran an incredible campaign,” said former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who served with Sanders and Clinton but has endorsed the latter.

“But that has a pretty short shelf life and then people start looking at you through a different lens, and that lens is: Are you a team player and do you have the larger picture in mind or are you just focused on yourself?” Conrad said. “At some point, pretty soon, he crosses the threshold. He may have already crossed it.”

Sanders’ campaign did not return requests for comment. But those who know the senator say that the simplest explanation for his current pursuits is, in his typical fashion, the right one: He wants to change the Democratic Party, from the way it nominates its candidates to the policies it pursues.

“Bernie is trying to do exactly what he says he is trying to do. It’s in every one of his statements. He is making sure the concerns he has raised are taken into account for the future of the Democratic Party,” said former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), who worked with Sanders for a short period of time.

“The easiest answer with Bernie is to listen what he says because what he says is what he means,” he added. “It is remarkable working with him. You didn’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out what he was saying or what he meant. It was a pleasure being around him.”

And Sanders has been around. Since voting in the Democratic primary concluded, he hasn’t receded far from the spotlight. The stadium-sized rallies are over, but he has campaigned for like-minded progressives, sent fundraising emails to elect allies, pushed for platform changes through his delegates and, lately, has taken to the op-ed pages of the major newspapers.

The senator delivered his latest missive on Wednesday morning: He sent a warning shot to Democrats via The New York Times, writing that Britain’s vote to exit the European Union exposed an underappreciated anger in the electorate over income inequality and trade deals.

At some point, pretty soon, he crosses the threshold. He may have already crossed it.

Former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) on whether Sanders is playing a productive or destructive role by remaining in the race

That Sanders remains a player in the party is clearly not in dispute. The question Democrats — especially those in the Clinton universe — are grappling with, is to what end?

“I’m confused by it,” conceded Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a longtime Clinton ally. “If he wants to speak in primetime at the convention, then he has to suspend his campaign. If I was leading the movement and I wanted to convince the American people that the movement was correct, then I’d want to speak in primetime. But apparently he must not want to because he hasn’t thrown in the towel.”

With weeks to go before the party convenes in Philadelphia, Sanders’ role in that coronation of Clinton remains a mystery. He said Tuesday on MSNBC that he was taking his campaign to the convention floor in an effort to affect the platform.

“Politics is not a baseball game with winners or losers,” Sanders said at the time. “What politics is about is whether we protect the needs of millions of people in this country who are hurting.”

But changing the platform with the dramatic stripes that would satisfy the senator and his supporters seems unlikely. The party, for example, will be hard-pressed to formally disavow trade deals that its leader (President Barack Obama, not Clinton) still supports.

“You can’t have a platform that will embarrass the president,” said one prominent Democratic National Committee official.

Sanders’ leverage seems limited in other ways as well. The portion of the liberal base that is withholding its support for Clinton has decreased in recent polls. That’s been aided in part by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsing the former secretary of state — although the Clinton camp believes that 10 percent to 15 percent of Sanders’ supporters were never Democrats to begin with and won’t vote for Clinton simply because other progressives are on board.

Many of Sanders’ prominent endorsers have switched their support to Clinton as well. And according to Democratic sources, the Clinton campaign has been working behind the scenes to try to limit the prospects of convention chaos: Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook has spoken repeatedly with Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver, in addition to meeting with Sanders’ delegates in Vermont in an attempt to earn their support.

Rendell, who is chairing the convention, said he has also been working with the Sanders campaign to ensure that it has access for a march through the city and a convenient spot to host a rally and demonstration. But even then, he wasn’t optimistic that the party was gearing up for a serene week.

“My guess is it won’t be totally peaceful,” Rendell said. “But it will be more peaceful than [the Republican convention in] Cleveland. Total low bar, I know.”

Sanders’ close colleagues say he’s fully aware of the delicate role he will play at the convention.

“He has clearly thought this thing through,” said one lawmaker who has worked with him. And they insist that he is sincere in his desire to see Trump lose. That he has not stuck to a timeline that pleases all Clinton supporters is not an act of ego, they argue, but of legitimate policy pursuits and, in some ways, political finesse.

“He can’t just snap a finger and the people who have all the passion and support suddenly get up and have an epiphany and support Hillary Clinton,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), one of the few members of Congress who endorsed Sanders. “It is not going to work like that. Part of it will happen if Bernie walks us in that direction.”


Excerpt -- “But those who know the senator say that the simplest explanation for his current pursuits is, in his typical fashion, the right one: He wants to change the Democratic Party, from the way it nominates its candidates to the policies it pursues. “Bernie is trying to do exactly what he says he is trying to do. It’s in every one of his statements. He is making sure the concerns he has raised are taken into account for the future of the Democratic Party,” said former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), who worked with Sanders for a short period of time. “The easiest answer with Bernie is to listen what he says because what he says is what he means,” he added. “It is remarkable working with him. You didn’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out what he was saying or what he meant. It was a pleasure being around him.”


“Are you a team player and do you have the larger picture in mind or are you just focused on yourself?” My main problem with “team players” is that they simply cannot remain honest and courageous in that kind of endeavor. All of their hands are dirty. The ideal goal, in my view, is for all elected representatives to work for the basic interests of the people who have elected them for the purpose of improving the lives of those least able to defend themselves in this war we call politics.

In recent years Democrats have been all about “Rah! Rah!” rather than substance, and here comes Bernie chock full of substance. He’s an honest and courageous man. It isn’t that he’s “just focused on himself,” but that he wants to reform the Party status quo into a principled endeavor. He is a leader and not a sheep. The statement above by Ed Rendell, “’If he wants to speak in primetime at the convention, then he has to suspend his campaign. If I was leading the movement and I wanted to convince the American people that the movement was correct, then I’d want to speak in primetime. But apparently he must not want to because he hasn’t thrown in the towel.’”

That statement is nothing but another threat to intimidate Sanders. They are all failing to acknowledge that Sanders is likely to put on more of a show of force at the Convention than they are going to want to see going out uncensored over the TV screens across the country, and to get down to hardball, many of us plan to resign from the Democratic Party if they don’t concede more than they have so far. I could be wrong, but I think they must go back to siding with Unions and the poor rather than the 1% if they want to keep their party together.

If Clinton were to offer the Vice Presidency to Sanders, that would be good progress, and would meet the approval of the largest number of Democrats – 35% according to NBC below -- but instead she is still in the photo op/hand holding stage. She wants to see Sanders disabled before she does that, just in case he does go through on his promise to make a huge fight on the Convention floor. She had better, also, be alert to the possibility that many registered Democrats may well be abruptly leaving the party. Sanders warned the Dems of this: “The senator delivered his latest missive on Wednesday morning: He sent a warning shot to Democrats via The New York Times, writing that Britain’s vote to exit the European Union exposed an underappreciated anger in the electorate over income inequality and trade deals.”


http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/elizabeth-warren-most-likely-vp-pick-get-dems-pony-clinton-n601251

POLITICS JUN 29 2016, 3:32 PM ET
Elizabeth Warren Most Likely VP Pick to Get Dems to Pony Up for Clinton
by ALEX SEITZ-WALD

The smart money may be on Hillary Clinton making a safe, Tim Kaine-ish choice for her running mate, but Democratic voters would be more eager to chip in their own money to support Clinton if she picks Elizabeth Warren, according to a new survey shared with NBC News.

Small-dollar donations to a candidate are one sign of voter enthusiasm. So Iowa-based polling firm RABA Research asked Democratic and Republican voters which potential vice presidential candidates would make them more likely to donate $5 to Clinton or Donald Trump's campaign.

Bernie Sanders was the top choice for Democrats, with 35 percent picking him, but there's no indication Clinton is actually considering her primary rival for the spot. Warren, who NBC News has confirmed is being vetted by the Clinton campaign, was a close second choice at 30 percent.

The Massachusetts senator was followed by others said to be on Clinton's menu of choices: New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (16 percent), Housing Secretary Julian Castro (14 percent), Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (11 percent), Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (10 percent), Labor Secretary Tom Perez (9 percent) and California Rep. Xavier Becerra (6 percent). Respondents could select multiple options.