793 White working class is dying off. Students demand removal of Woodrow Wilson & Cecil Rhodes monuments

White working class is dying off. Students demand removal of Woodrow
Wilson & Cecil Rhodes monuments

Newsletter published on 17 January 2016

(1) Rhodes scholars demand Oxford University remove statue of Cecil Rhodes
(2) Black students demand removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from buildings
(3) Socialist Worker Trots admit they’re behind Political Correctness
(4) White working class is dying off; and voting Trump - Fareed Zakaria
(5) America’s white working class is a dying breed
(6) Trump's book: special interests and lobbyists dictate our laws, but
I can’t be bought
(7) Soros buys Hillary
(8) Trump holding Elite responsible for destroying US economy - Fingleton
(9) Trump irks Jewish donors - "less subservient" on Foreign Policy
(10) Trump irks Jewish Donors with comments on Mideast Peace. "I don’t
want your money"
(11) Los Angeles becoming Hispanic
(12) Shark attacks increase, because Great Whites are protected and
Shark Quotas limit catches by Fishermen

(1) Rhodes scholars demand Oxford University remove statue of Cecil Rhodes

http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/protesters-claim-oxford-university-institutionally-racist/

Protesters claim Oxford University is institutionally racist

Jan 14, 2016 2 Comments

Oxford University Chancellor Chris Patten has dismissed calls from
student campaigners to remove a statue of colonial-era politician Cecil
Rhodes from of the university’s Oriel College as an attempt to rewrite
history.

Patten, whose role at the university is largely ceremonial, said in a
speech Wednesday: "Our history is not a blank page on which we can write
our own version of what it should have been, according to our
contemporary views and prejudices.

"Because we value tolerance … we have to listen to those who presume
they can rewrite history within the confines of their own notion of what
is politically, culturally and morally correct."

Patten’s comments come after the campaign to remove the statue by the
group "Rhodes Must Fall" made headlines in recent weeks. The campaign
was launched in May, shortly after a statue of Rhodes, who has been
described as the father of apartheid, was removed from the University of
Cape Town in South Africa following a mass campaign.

Commenting on Patten’s remarks, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, a PhD student at the
university and one of the founding members of Rhodes Must Fall, told
BBC’s Radio 4: "We think Oxford is institutionally racist and throughout
its history it has had significant biases towards black people. The
first black student was only accepted in 1938."

     The reaction of the leaders of Oxford University to the
#RhodesMustFall nonsense has been quite heartening. Yale and Princeton
take note.

     — Toby Young (@toadmeister) January 13, 2016

Oriel College has said it will hold a six-month consultation exercise
with students on what to do with the statue. The college has already
announced it plans to take down a Rhodes plaque on a property owned by
the college.

In a letter to the Guardian, a group of around 200 Rhodes scholars said
the scholarships won’t "buy their silence" about Rhodes’ problematic legacy.

"There is no hypocrisy in being a recipient of a Rhodes scholarship and
being publicly critical of Cecil Rhodes and his legacy," they wrote.

Rhodes, a diamond magnate and imperialist, played a central role in
Britain’s colonial expansion in Africa. After his death, Rhodes
bequeathed a part of his fortune to Oxford to establish the prestigious
Rhodes scholarship.

(2) Black students demand removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from buildings
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/23/princeton-woodrow-wilson-racism-students-remove-name

Princeton students demand removal of Woodrow Wilson's name from buildings

Black Justice League also asks for university to publicly acknowledge
former US and school president’s vocal support of racism and
segregationist policies

The university has pledged to consider renaming buildings dedicated to
former US and school president Woodrow Wilson. Photograph: Dominick
Reuter/Reuters

Ellen Brait in New York

Tuesday 24 November 2015 10.35 AEDT Last modified on Wednesday 25
November 2015 03.41 AEDT

Students at Princeton University have called for the removal of Woodrow
Wilson’s name from the School of Public and International Affairs, the
latest development in a growing trend across American campuses as
students home in on historical figures and their past intolerance.

The Black Justice League, an African American civil rights group at
Princeton, orchestrated a walkout by approximately 200 students and
staged a sit-in last week at the office of the university president,
Christopher L Eisgruber.

Ozioma Obi-Onuoha, a senior studying politics at Princeton and a member
of the Black Justice League, said she initially joined the group to help
with "shedding light on how structural racism exists and operates on
campus".

"This university is charged to educate students," Obi-Onuoha said. "And
without having these standards, without ensuring that all students are
treated with the same amount of respect and humanity, and without
showing robust commitment to elevating the contributions, histories and
experiences of black folks and other people of color, Princeton (and
many other universities) are failing to thoroughly educate students."

The Black Justice League presented a list of demands, which included
renaming the public policy school and residential college, mandatory
training for staff and faculty on cultural competency, the inclusion of
classes on the history of marginalized people in distribution
requirements, and "a cultural space on campus dedicated specifically to
black students". They also asked that the university "publicly
acknowledge the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson".

A counterpetition on Change.org – titled Protect Plurality, Historical
Perspective and Academic Speech at Princeton – argued that "any steps to
purge this campus of its Wilsonian legacy creates a dangerous precedent
and slippery slope that will be cited by future students who seek to
purge the past of those who fail to live up to modern standards of
morality".

Wilson was US president from 1913 to 1921 and led the country during the
first world war. He also oversaw the resegregation of multiple agencies
of the federal government and was a vocal advocate for the Ku Klux Klan.

Protesters have seized on the fact that he did not admit any black
students to Princeton during his tenure as president of the school –
despite Harvard and Yale having admitted them decades prior – and wrote:
"The whole temper and tradition of the place are such that no Negro has
ever applied."

"We wanted to draw attention not only to the fact that he was, even for
that time, extremely racist, but that his racist legacy is never
acknowledged explicitly and publicly on campus, although he is touted
and applauded for his contributions," Obi-Onuoha said. "Additionally, we
don’t believe that removing his name is a form of erasure, because we’re
also asking for his history to be acknowledged permanently by the
university, in its entirety."

Eisgruber agreed to start discussions with trustees about the students’
demands a day after the protests last week. He also said he would push
for the removal of a mural of the former president from the residential
college’s dining room.

The protest held by Princeton students is the most recent in a string of
similar occurrences at college campuses across the United States. On 14
November, the current president of Georgetown University announced that
the school is renaming two buildings on campus because their namesakes,
former presidents of the school, helped pay off campus debt in the 1830s
by organizing the sale of Jesuit-owned slaves.

Thomas Jefferson next?

Statues of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States,
have also been targeted at the University of Missouri at Columbia and
the College of William and Mary, according to Inside Higher Ed. The
statues have been covered with yellow sticky notes, calling Jefferson a
"rapist", "racist" and "slave owner". No group has stepped forward and
claimed responsibility for the notes at William and Mary but the school
is not treating the incident as vandalism.

"A university setting is the very place where civil conversations about
difficult and important issues should occur," a spokesperson told Inside
Higher Ed. "Nondestructive sticky notes are a form of expression
compatible with our tradition of free expression."

The University of Missouri saw its Jefferson statue receive attention
following rising tensions last month after black students cited
incidents of racial harassment and cultural issues on campus. A debate
arose about the prominence of the Jefferson statue on campus, with those
asking for the statue to be removed placing notes on its surface and
creating a change.org petition. A counter-protest resulted, in which
students draped the statue in an American flag and posted the hashtag
#StandWithJefferson on Twitter.

"I personally think that the conversations that have ignited at
universities were inevitable," Obi-Onuoha said. "As a student at a
predominantly white institution, feeling as though I have to convince
people of discrimination and fight to be seen as human is tiring and
frustrating. At a certain point, students will respond to this feeling,
especially when they’re affirmed by archival history, and even more so
when they feel as though institutions don’t (or won’t) respond fast
enough to reasonable change."

(3) Socialist Worker Trots admit they’re behind Political Correctness
http://socialistworker.org/2015/12/08/the-crusade-against-political-correctness

The crusade against "political correctness"

Lance Selfa, author of The Democrats: A Critical History looks back at
the well-planned and well-funded origins of the right's campaign against
"political correctness."

December 8, 2015

IT'S BECOME a ritual by now. As soon as news of a campus protest against
racism or sexism emerges, you can count on the media filling up with
outraged commentaries against "political correctness" run amok.

Rather than address the substance of the protests themselves, well-paid
pundits fulminate against "coddled" students who can't accept a little
real-world unpleasantness and who want to police everyone else's "free
speech."

Of course, you can always count on the likes of Bill O'Reilly and his
cohorts at Fox News to denounce this creeping "totalitarianism" on
campus. But the media now have their go-to liberals like Jonathan Chait
or Michelle Goldberg to wag their fingers at today's protesters.

The rhetoric against "political correctness" has found its way into the
Republican primaries, with racists like Donald Trump wearing it as a
badge of honor. Trump calls Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers
and says the government should register Muslims in a database. And when
anyone objects, Trump congratulates himself for his courage to dish out
insults at oppressed people rather than cave to the conventions of
"political correctness." […]

BEFORE THE anti-PC crusade, the term "political correctness" had been
part of the jargon of the left. It took on a number of meanings, from
assuming an "orthodox" position on all political questions, to
conforming one's personal and interpersonal behavior to one's political
ideals.

Max Elbaum's description of the late 1960s-early 1970s Maoist-influenced
"new communist movement" gives a feel for the time:

     Their high level of commitment made movement cadre willing to
engage in self-criticism, not only to learn better organizing skills but
to unlearn conduct that reflected narrow individualism or race, class or
(less frequently) gender privilege. Self-transformation was seen as an
integral, if subordinate, aspect of social transformation.

New York Times columnist William Safire, the conservative who for years
wrote a column on English language usage, cited Black feminist Toni Cade
Bambara, who wrote in 1970's The Black Woman: An Anthology that "a man
cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist, too."

Later, as the New Left movements declined, the term took on a more
ironic tone, as activists poked fun at what they perceived as their
comrades' overly zealous or dogmatic stances or wondered if it was
"politically correct" to make certain career or personal decisions.

Whatever its exact origin or shortcomings, "political correctness"
emerged from a milieu of people and groups dedicated to changing the
world and fighting oppression. The term was definitely not used, as it
is today, to excuse racist or sexist behavior.

UNTIL THE mainstream media began to promote the anti-PC crusade, it
generally had been the concern of right-wing ideologues like University
of Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom. One of the opening shots of the PC
war, Bloom's 1987 best seller The Closing of the American Mind blamed
1960s radical movements for undermining the quality of scholarship and
university life.

Then in 1989, William Bennett, the Reagan administration's former
Education Secretary and the Bush Administration's "drug czar," gave
Bloom's ideas concrete expression when he attacked Stanford University
for revising its core reading list for freshmen.

Suddenly, right-wing academics and pundits were vying with one another
to condemn "multiculturalism" and to report tales of anti-imperialist
and anti-European bias on campus.

A steady stream of books and articles, funded by conservative think
tanks such as the Olin Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and
the Scaife Foundation, pounded away at these themes. One of these, Roger
Kimball's 1990 Tenured Radicals, proclaimed, "What we have witnessed is
nothing less than the occupation of the center by a new academic
establishment, the establishment of tenured radicals." […]

LOOKING BACK over this history in light of recent controversies on
campus, it becomes clear just how successful the anti-PC crusade was.
Not only does the "political correctness" canard emerge just about every
time a campus mobilizes against racism or sexism, but now liberals like
Chait try to beat conservatives into print. […]

(4) White working class is dying off; and voting Trump - Fareed Zakaria
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-self-destructive-whites/2015/12/31/5017f958-afdc-11e5-9ab0-884d1cc4b33e_story.html

America’s self-destructive whites

By Fareed Zakaria

December 31, 2015

Why is Middle America killing itself? The fact itself is probably the
most important social science finding in years. It is already reshaping
American politics. The Post’s Jeff Guo notes that the people who make up
this cohort are "largely responsible for Donald Trump’s lead in the race
for the Republican nomination for president." The key question is why,
and exploring it provides answers that suggest that the rage dominating
U.S. politics will only get worse.

For decades, people in rich countries have lived longer. But in a
well-known paper, economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case found that over
the past 15 years, one group — middle-age whites in the United States —
constitutes an alarming trend. They are dying in increasing numbers. And
things look much worse for those with just a high school diploma or
less. There are concerns about the calculations, but even a leading
critic of the paper has acknowledged that, however measured, "the change
compared to other countries and groups is huge."

The main causes of death are as striking as the fact itself: suicide,
alcoholism, and overdoses of prescription and illegal drugs. "People
seem to be killing themselves, slowly or quickly," Deaton told me. These
circumstances are usually caused by stress, depression and despair. The
only comparable spike in deaths in an industrialized country took place
among Russian males after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when rates
of alcoholism skyrocketed.

[America’s white working class is a dying breed ]

A conventional explanation for this middle-class stress and anxiety is
that globalization and technological change have placed increasing
pressures on the average worker in industrialized nations. But the trend
is absent in any other Western country — it’s an exclusively American
phenomenon. And the United States is actually relatively insulated from
the pressures of globalization, having a vast, self-contained internal
market. Trade makes up only 23 percent of the U.S. economy, compared
with 71 percent in Germany and 45 percent in France.

Deaton speculated to me that perhaps Europe’s more generous welfare
state might ease some of the fears associated with the rapid change.
Certainly he believes that in the United States, doctors and drug
companies are far too eager to deal with physical and psychological pain
by prescribing drugs, including powerful and addictive opioids. The
introduction of drugs such as Oxycontin, a heroin-like prescription
painkiller, coincides with the rise in deaths.

But why don’t we see the trend among other American ethnic groups? While
mortality rates for middle-age whites have stayed flat or risen, the
rates for Hispanics and blacks have continued to decline significantly.
These groups live in the same country and face greater economic
pressures than whites. Why are they not in similar despair?

The answer might lie in expectations. Princeton anthropologist Carolyn
Rouse suggested, in an email exchange, that other groups might not
expect that their income, standard of living and social status are
destined to steadily improve. They don’t have the same confidence that
if they work hard, they will surely get ahead. In fact, Rouse said that
after hundreds of years of slavery, segregation and racism, blacks have
developed ways to cope with disappointment and the unfairness of life:
through family, art, protest speech and, above all, religion.

"You have been the veterans of creative suffering," Martin Luther King
Jr. told African Americans in his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963:
"Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive."
Writing in 1960, King explained the issue in personal terms: "As my
sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could
respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to
transform the suffering into a creative force. .?.?. So like the Apostle
Paul I can now humbly yet proudly say, ‘I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus.’ " The Hispanic and immigrant experiences in the United
States are different, of course. But again, few in these groups have
believed that their place in society is assured. Minorities, by
definition, are on the margins. They do not assume that the system is
set up for them. They try hard and hope to succeed, but they do not
expect it as the norm.

The United States is going through a great power shift. Working-class
whites don’t think of themselves as an elite group. But, in a sense,
they have been, certainly compared with blacks, Hispanics, Native
Americans and most immigrants. They were central to America’s economy,
its society, indeed its very identity. They are not anymore. Donald
Trump has promised that he will change this and make them win again. But
he can’t. No one can. And deep down, they know it.

(5) America’s white working class is a dying breed

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-working-class-is-a-dying-breed/2015/11/04/f2220170-8323-11e5-a7ca-6ab6ec20f839_story.html

Donald Trump signs copies of his new book, "Crippled America," on Nov. 3
in New York. (Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

By Harold Meyerson

November 4, 2015
The news this week that the death rate of middle-aged American whites —
more particularly, working-class middle-aged American whites — is
rising, while that of all other Americans continues to fall, is
appalling. But it should come as no surprise.

A study released Monday by Princeton economists Angus Deaton (the 2015
Nobel laureate in economics) and Anne Case documented that the number of
deaths by suicide, alcohol use and drug use among working-class whites
ages 45 to 54 has risen precipitously since 1999 — so precipitously that
the overall death rate for this group increased by 22?percent. Death
rate increases in the modern world are so rare that economists and
public health scholars have been groping for equivalent instances. "Only
HIV/AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this," Deaton told
the New York Times. A closer parallel might be the increased death rates
of Russians, particularly by alcohol, after the collapse of the Soviet
Union and its economy — not only because the instrument of death was the
same for both the Russians and our white working class, but also because
the real cause in each instance was the end of a world that had
sustained them.

There was a time when the white working class was the subject of happier
tales. Like the yeoman farmer in the 19th?century, the white worker of
the mid-20th century was the protagonist of the American saga. Members
of the white working class were the linchpin of the New Deal coalition,
the guys who fought and won World War II (well, if you ignored those
Americans shunted to the all-black units), the Riveting Rosies who built
those guys’ armaments, the postwar factory workers who made the goods we
sold to the world at the height of U.S. economic power and, in
consequence of their high levels of unionization, the world’s most
affluent and economically secure working class from the 1950s through
the 1970s.

In recent decades, however, the stories of the white working class have
grown relentlessly grimmer. The offshoring of U.S. manufacturing and the
increasing substitution of machines for humans in the production process
took a huge toll. As Andrew J. Cherlin points out in "Labor’s Love
Lost," his study of the disintegration of the working-class white
family, the share of blue-collar jobs in the U.S. economy declined from
28 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2010. Work in the service or retail
sectors was no bargain, either: As research by Valerie Wilson of the
Economic Policy Institute demonstrates, the real median hourly wage for
white men with no more than a high school diploma declined from $19.76
in 1979 to $17.50 in 2014.

The white working class’s loss of jobs and incomes was spurred by its
loss of power: The nearly complete deunionization of the private sector
left those workers with no way to bargain for better pensions or pay.
The doctrine of maximizing shareholder value, which corporations began
to adopt in the ’80s, most commonly meant minimizing worker pay and
benefits, hiring from temp agencies and eliminating programs to increase
employee skills.

With the demise of stable, remunerative employment came the decline of
stable, two-parent families. Between 1980 and 2010, the percentage of
white mothers who were single rose from 18 to 30 percent for those with
no college degree, but only from 6 to 9 percent for college graduates.

The decline of the white working class has been demographic as well. In
1940, as Ruy Teixeira and Alan Abramowitz have documented, 82 percent of
Americans 25 and older were whites with no more than a high school
education; by 2007, that figure had dwindled to 29 percent. Beginning in
the 1960s, the Democrats put greater emphasis on mitigating the very
real injuries of race and gender than they did on the very real injuries
of class, which would have upset corporate America far more. This helped
fuel a racial and nativist backlash that has driven much of the white
working class (particularly in the South) into Republican ranks.

The rising rate of death is just one of two stories about a major share
of the white working class that are making news these days. The other is
the unexpected success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump
draws his support chiefly from working-class Republicans, who are
attracted to his opposition to trade deals, his support for Social
Security and Medicare, and his vilification of immigrants — a program
similar to that of other nations’ right-wing racist-populist parties
with working-class support, such as France’s National Front.

The rising death rates and the support for Trump are two very different
stories about the white working class, but — without in any way equating
them — they share some common roots: a sense of abandonment, betrayal
and misdirected rage.

(6) Trump's book: special interests and lobbyists dictate our laws, but
I can’t be bought
http://www.amazon.com/Crippled-America-Make-Great-Again/dp/1501137964

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again Hardcover – Abridged,
November 3, 2015

by Donald J. Trump (Author)

Look at the state of the world right now. It’s a terrible mess, and
that’s putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time.
The politicians and special interests in Washington, DC, are directly
responsible for the mess we are in. So why should we continue listening
to them?

It’s time to bring America back to its rightful owners—the American people.

I’m not going to play the same game politicians have been playing for
decades—all talk, no action, while special interests and lobbyists
dictate our laws. I am shaking up the establishment on both sides of the
political aisle because I can’t be bought. I want to bring America back,
to make it great and prosperous again, and to be sure we are respected
by our allies and feared by our adversaries.

It’s time for action. Americans are fed up with politics as usual. And
they should be! In this book, I outline my vision to make America great
again, including: how to fix our failing economy; how to reform health
care so it is more efficient, cost-effective, and doesn’t alienate both
doctors and patients; how to rebuild our military and start winning
wars—instead of watching our enemies take over—while keeping our
promises to our great veterans; how to ensure that our education system
offers the resources that allow our students to compete internationally,
so tomorrow’s jobseekers have the tools they need to succeed; and how to
immediately bring jobs back to America by closing our doors to illegal
immigrants, and pressuring businesses to produce their goods at home.

This book is my blueprint for how to Make America Great Again. It’s not
hard. We just need someone with the courage to say what needs to be
said. We won’t find that in Washington, DC.

(7) Soros buys Hillary

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-01/george-soros-regrets-supporting-obama-eagerly-awaits-president-hillary

George Soros Regrets Supporting Obama, Eagerly Awaits President Hillary

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/01/2016 11:30 –0500

Several weeks ago, we presented a list of CEOs and corporations who have
had the highest number of direct visits to the White House and, by
implication, president Obama. As we said, these are the corporations
(and CEOs) who own the White House, and the US presidency.

One name oddly missing was that of George Soros: the billionaire liberal
donor whose fundraising efforts have been critical for the Democratic
party in recent years. Which is surprising considering the substantial
backing, mostly financial, Soros provided in 2007 and 2008 to a then
largely unknown Senator from Illinois.

Or perhaps it is not surprising: a 2012 New Yorker profile of the
relationship between the US president and one of the left's most
generous donors reveals stormy clouds:

"although he still supports Obama, Soros has been disappointed by him,
both politically and personally. Small slights can loom large with
wealthy donors. When Soros wanted to meet with Obama in Washington to
discuss global economic problems, Obama’s staff failed to respond.
Eventually, they arranged not a White House interview but, rather, a
low-profile, private meeting in New York, when the President was in town
for other business. Soros found this back-door treatment confounding.
"He feels hurt," a Democratic donor says."

Fast forward to December 31, when in the pre-New Year's lull, the State
Department released its latest dump of Hillary Clinton emails, amounting
to some 5,500 pages, a move Trump promptly slammed.

And while it will take the media a few days to parse through all the
emails, one already stands out: one revealing not only the relationship
between Soros and Obama, but more importantly, Soros and the person who
will likely be America's next president.

As the following excerpt reveals, the abovementioned George Soros told a
close Hillary Clinton ally in 2012 that he regretted supporting Barack
Obama over her in the 2008 primaries and praised Clinton for giving him
an open door to discuss policy, according to emails released Thursday by
the State Department.

As first reported by Politico, in an email to Clinton, Neera Tanden,
head of the Center for American Progress, recounted a conversation she
had while seated next to Soros at a dinner sponsored by the liberal
major donor club called Democracy Alliance.

After Tanden informed Soros that she had worked for Clinton during her
bitter 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination against Obama, Tanden
wrote that Soros "said he's been impressed that he can always call/meet
with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn't met with the President
ever (though I thought he had). He then said he regretted his decision
in the primary - he likes to admit mistakes when he makes them and that
was one of them. He then extolled his work with you from your time as
First Lady on."

The full email below:

Going back to the NY Mag 2012 article, it added that according to a
source, although "Soros might have contributed far more money to Obama
if the Administration had engaged with him more intently, he said, "Part
of me respects Obama for not spending more time with him. This President
doesn’t want to spend a lot of time with donors. You have to admire that.""

Actually he does, as the chart up top shows it. However, for some odd
reason Obama simply did not want to spend a lot of time with George Soros.

The time of snubbing Soros, however, is at an end, as Hillary is
well-known for having no qualms about spending "a lot of time with
donors", especially since virtually every entity on Wall Street is a
donor either directly or to the Clinton Foundation.

Which means that as Obama's time in the White House runs out, and as
Hillary prepares to take over the throne (barring some Republican
miracle), Soros is about to rectify his mistake from 8 years ago and
make sure that the special interest puppet in charge of the U.S., is
precisely the one he wanted all along. […]

(8) Trump holding Elite responsible for destroying US economy - Fingleton
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2015/12/27/why-trump-is-winning-the-strange-case-of-americas-russian-made-rockets/

Dec 27, 2015 @ 10:50 AM

Why Trump Is Winning: The Strange Case of America's Russian-Made Rocket
Engines

Eamonn Fingleton

What is driving Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s stunning success?
The answer can be summed up in four words: "Make America Great Again!"

The slogan is emblazoned on every lectern he speaks from. It adorns
millions of tee-shirts, baseball caps, and bumper stickers. And it
resonates with virtually every American voter.

For establishment Republicans and Democrats, it’s Game Over. They can no
longer hide the reality that their globalist policies have made a pig’s
ear of what was once the greatest economy in world history. A stunning
illustration of how low the United States has sunk (and how incompetent
the mass media are in providing timely information on the reality of
American decline) emerged the other day with news that the U.S. space
program has now become heavily dependent on Russia for rocket engines.
Click here for details.

There could hardly be a clearer illustration of the contradictions of
American policy. Russia, after all, is supposed to be a U.S. adversary,
and the United States is supposed to be the world leader in advanced
technology. So why does the world leader in advanced technology have to
go abroad at all, let alone to an adversary, for sophisticated products
that are so closely bound up with national security? The answer, of
course, is the United States is no longer a world leader in advanced
technology and hasn’t been for decades.

Silicon Valley is no substitute. Most companies there merely create
internet applications and related software – products and services that
are easy for foreign rivals such as China’s Alibaba and Japan’s Softbank
to reverse engineer. Silicon Valley moreover employs only a relative
handful of workers – a tiny fraction of the number of Americans engaged
in advanced manufacturing half a century ago.

The United States has been losing altitude in advanced technology for
decades. The process began as far back as the 1950s. In those days,
corporate America led the world in virtually every significant
manufacturing technology. Equipped with both the best machinery and the
best production knowhow, American workers were by far the world’s most
productive – three to five times as productive as their counterparts in
Western Europe and Japan. Recommended by Forbes

Then, with the strong encouragement of the U.S. government, American
corporations began transferring their most advanced production
technologies abroad. The earliest big beneficiary was Japan. Soon South
Korea and Taiwan joined the party, and the Europeans, particularly the
Germans, also benefited.

Increasingly as American corporations began to have second thoughts
about the trend, they were subjected to coercion. In order to sell in
Japan, for instance, they were told that they had to manufacture there
and bring their best production technologies. IBM was the most visible
victim. The aggression with which Japanese officials pursued their
technology acquisition program made a mockery of assurances that Japan
was "America’s closest ally bar none." Japanese policies also stood in
blatant breach of numerous trade agreements under which Japan was
supposed to open its markets to American exports on a reciprocal basis.
Washington rarely tried to enforce such agreements and virtually never
succeeded.  One result is that nearly half a century after Japan began
promising to open its car market, that market remains virtually entirely
closed (not only to American-made cars, which were once the world
leaders, but to European-made cars as well).

Let’s get back to America’s Russian-made rockets. How come the Russians
are so far ahead?  The answer is they aren’t – not particularly, anyway.
Although they no doubt know a lot about rocketry, they rely heavily on
other nations for key inputs. Who their suppliers are is not public but
we can make some inferences. Most of the electronic components in
rockets these days come from Japan or, in descending order of
sophistication, from South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Then there are such
vital materials as titanium and carbon fiber, which are highly prized in
the aerospace industry because they are not only remarkably light but
remarkably strong. Japan is the dominant supplier of both (the wings of
Boeing’s 787, the world’s most advanced passenger jet, are made in Japan
using Japanese carbon-fiber). The betting is that the Russians have been
increasing their sourcing of both materials from Japan. Meanwhile China
plays a leading role in mining so-called rare earths, which are needed
in a host of high-technology applications (an iconic example is
neodymium which is the key metal in many ultra-strong, often tiny
magnets used in countless high-technology applications). The U.S. used
to dominate all aspects of the rare earths business but, under policies
initiated by the Reagan administration, rapidly lost the lead — to the
point where today it is an also-ran behind not only China but Japan,
Korea, and Germany (these latter nations are where many key rare-earth
processing plants are located).

Let’s sum up. The average Trump supporter may not have a detailed
understanding of how America’s technological lead was lost. But he or
she knows that America today is a shadow of what it was even thirty
years ago, let alone at the peak of American technological leadership in
the immediate aftermath of World War II.

The reason America lost its lead was no fault of ordinary workers.
Rather the blame lies entirely with a small elite that Trump now so
insistently — to the glee of countless ordinary voters — is holding to
account.

(9) Trump irks Jewish donors - "less subservient" on Foreign Policy

Trump: "Not having to sell himself body and soul, he appears ... less
abjectly subservient"

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics and Engineering Physics)"
<sadanand@ccsu.edu> Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2015 09:57:17 -0500 Subject: Trump
irks Jewish donors

Comment by John Whitbeck:

Unlike all his competitors for the Republican presidential nomination,
Donald Trump occasionally says something intelligent. Notably, he has
said that the world would be a better place if the United States and its
friends had never attacked Iraq and Libya and overthrown Saddam Hussein
and Muammar Qaddafi – a blindingly self-evident truth which no other
presidential candidate, Republican or Democratic, has had the courage to
admit grasping.

Yesterday, according to the Associated Press report transmitted below,
Trump went before the Republican Jewish Coalition, the largest grouping
of his party’s wealthy Jewish donors, and, buoyed by his own vast wealth
and to the astonishment of the assembled throng anticipating a
unanimous, non-nuanced group grovel, did NOT tell them precisely what
they wanted to hear.

Notwithstanding Trump’s being a whacky and tasteless showman who spouts
a great deal of stream-of-consciousness nonsense, I have to admit that I
find him less frightening than  his three truly terrifying principal
competitors for the Republican nomination – Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and
Ted Cruz.

Not having to sell himself body and soul, he appears, on the whole, less
abjectly subservient to the three pillars of the Permanent Government
(the military-industrial-intelligence-surveillance-homeland-security
complex, the uniformed military and the Israel-First Lobby) and less
gung-ho to disburse even more of America’s financial, moral and
reputational capital on unnecessary and unwinnable wars (both current
and additional) than his fellow Republican candidates or Hillary Clinton.

It is even conceivable that, if elected, he would put American interests
ahead of Israeli desires – a revolutionary change in American governance.

As an American who has lived abroad for almost 40 years, my principal
concern in American presidential contests has always been, as it would
be for anyone else who does not live in the United States, American
"foreign (now mostly military) policy" – i.e., what America does in and
to the rest of the world. Still, it is a sad commentary on the appalling
state of American politics and politicians that I could seriously
contemplate Donald Trump as potentially the least awful and scary choice
in November 2016.

(10) Trump irks Jewish Donors with comments on Mideast Peace. "I don’t
want your money"

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/192abb107c0844f5bf4c956c17a86684/casino-magnate-adelson-draws-gop-field-jewish-conference

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/366030/trump-irks-jewish-donors-with-comments-on-mideast-peace.html

Trump Irks Jewish Donors With Comments On Mideast Peace

by JULIE BYKOWICZ and STEVE PEOPLES

Thursday, December 3rd, 2015 11:00 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Jewish donors gathered Thursday had two demands of
the Republican presidential candidates who’d come to speak to them:
unambiguous support for Israel and respect.

Donald Trump seemed to fail at both.

The party’s 2016 front-runner openly questioned Israel’s commitment to
the Mideast peace process in his remarks to the Republican Jewish
Coalition, echoing comments he made the night before in an interview
with The Associated Press. He drew boos after refusing to endorse
Jerusalem as the nation’s undivided capital. And he suggested to the
influential group simply wanted to install a puppet in the White House.

"You’re not going to support me even though you know I’m the best thing
that could happen to Israel," Trump said. "I know why you’re not going
to support me — because I don’t want your money. You want to control
your own politician."

It was an extraordinary speech to a group used to deferential treatment.
And Trump’s comments on Israel — particularly the billionaire
businessman’s repeated questioning of its commitment to making a peace
deal with the Palestinians — sparked an aggressive backlash from his
Republican rivals.

"Some in our own party — in the news today — have actually questioned
Israel’s commitment to peace," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told the crowd.
"Some in our own party actually call for more sacrifice from the Israeli
people. They are dead wrong, and they don’t understand the enduring bond
between Israel and America."

The primary benefactor of the Republican Jewish Coalition is casino
magnate Sheldon Adelson, who spent more on the 2012 federal elections
than any other donor. Adelson’s willingness to make a huge political
investment helps explain why his signature group attracted all of the
major GOP presidential candidates to its forum in Washington — even
though the man himself wasn’t among the hundreds in attendance.

On the eve of the event, Trump weighed in on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in an interview with The Associated Press. He questioned for
the first time both sides’ commitment to peace, adding that he would
know within six months of being elected president whether he could
broker an elusive peace accord.

He doubled down on those comments Thursday in an auditorium packed with
Israel’s most loyal supporters.

"I don’t know that Israel has the commitment to make it, and I don’t
know the other side has the commitment to make it," Trump said.

The comment drew murmurs of disapproval. Later, a smattering of boos
broke out after he refused to say whether Jerusalem should serve as the
undivided capital of Israel, a priority for many in America’s pro-Israel
lobby.

Trump shrugged off the criticism. "Do me a favor, just relax," he told
one of the people booing. Perhaps more than any other candidate, he can
afford to.

The billionaire frequently calls himself a "self-funded" candidate.
Compared to his rivals, he has raised — and spent — dramatically less,
depending largely on free publicity to drive his campaign. He began his
candidacy by loaning his campaign almost $2 million and has suggested a
willingness to spend much more of his own money.

Yet he hasn’t ignored donors altogether. Fundraising records show that
supporters have handed over $4 million, enough to cover his presidential
efforts in recent months.

Regardless of his relationship with donors, Trump’s comments mark a
sharp contrast from his Republican rivals who pledged unconditional
allegiance to Israel. Several candidates blasted him from the stage.

"This is not a real estate deal with two sides arguing over money" Rubio
said. "It’s a struggle to safeguard the future of Israel."

Said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, "We need a president who will stand
unapologetically with the nation of Israel."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee seemed to target Trump when he
mentioned that some in his party support the "head-scratching" proposal
that Mideast peace is possible only if Israel and the Palestinians both
come to the table.

"I want to say where have you been for the last 70 years?" Huckabee charged.

Trump’s comments also fell flat among many Thursday’s crowd.

Michael Leventoff, a New York businessman and member of the Republican
Jewish Coalition, said Trump questioning Israel’s commitment to the
peace process is another example of him "just getting it wrong."

"There’s plenty of evidence of Israel’s repeated attempts at peace," he
said. "This is exactly why Trump is what I like to call a brilliant
idiot. He should know better, and probably does."

Trump told RJC members that while he doesn’t want their money, he does
want their support. He noted he has won several awards from Jewish
groups and recently said he has "a very good relationship" with Adelson.

The casino magnate has yet to make up his mind how who he’ll support in
the GOP primary, said Adelson’s political adviser, Andy Abboud.

Each of the candidates is strong on the issues that concern Adelson the
most, chief among them protection of Israel, he said. "The Adelsons are
generally pleased with all of the Republican candidates and feel that
the primary process will work its way out."

(11) Los Angeles becoming Hispanic

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1044766/pg1

Finally saw the full effect of Illegal Immigration in Los Angeles. We're
in trouble. page: 1

BatheInTheFountain

posted on Dec, 1 2014 @ 06:11 PM

I'm born and raised in Los Angeles, 40 years old. Went to public schools
here in the LAUSD system.

When I was younger growing up here Illegal Immigration was nowhere near
this. As a kid a "Mexican" or Honduran or Salvadoran was sort of a rare
sight. A few neighborhoods were, but overall it was Whites, Blacks,
Asians...for the most.

Around the 90s when I was in high school the waves starting coming after
Reagan, Bush, Clintonm Nafta, etc. Since then it has been a steady
increase every year on almost every ethnicity, but specifically
Hispanics. Within the past 10 years I just resigned to the fact that
California and Los Angeles will be taken over, and that it can't be
stopped with our current politicians here.

I've accepted it because it can't be fought. I go around town to many
places and I am, as a White man, a stranger here. That is how it is.
When you are White here you are a minority. It's not the minority part I
mind, it's that we as a country and California as a State are being
bombarded at a level that is unseen and unreported in history. It's
WORSE than thought and I am seeing it full steam now.

Last week I had a medical emergency because I ate a toxin and got severe
hives. I was nowhere near a good ER room so I had to be L.A. County
hospital. I was there in the daytime and parking was almost impossible
to find, as I went myself. I got into the ER and the TV's I noticed were
tuned to Spanish stations. But it didn't end there. I was guided to the
triage nurse who could barely speak English and had to point to a sign
on the wall in English for me to understand "Heart Rate". She was making
errors from the get go.

Flash to me talking to a medical billing person who handed me a slip of
paper written in Spanish, with a short pencil. While waiting for the
second nurse I looked around at all the people. All Hispanic. Maybe one
"other than" there, a black dude. NOBODY in the waiting room spoke
English. Noobody. The nurses who were seeing other people had to call in
interpreters regularly as not all of them spoke Spanish. The look on
their faces was pure frustration. In fact they seemed to be relieved I
spoke English.

When I was on my way out and ready to pick up my pills, I saw the
billing agent coming in and asking questions to about half of the other
"outgoing" patients about personal things that they all had trouble
answering. They all spoke Spanish to an interpreter and were writing
down numbers on pieces of papers. I speak enough Spanish to get by and I
knew they were having trouble with payments because they were NOT
citizens. Either that or they had emergency Medical (which Illegals
qualify for)

These were NOT Americans that just spoke bad English. When you grow up
in Los Angeles you know what the deal is when someone is older than 30
and can't speak a LICK of English.

I went down to the pharmacy which is in a huge lobby area where you can
overlook hundreds of people in lines. I looked and noticed there was
only maybe 2 "other than Hispanic" people out of I would say 200 people.
I went down to get in line and overhead the conversations. A lot were
ABOUT legality and "home" and "insurance" and "can I do this". It was
surreal

Days later I had another referral appointment in Olive View Hospital. It
was the SAME exact experience.

I have no clue what's going on but the media is ignoring or are not
aware of something huge and I think fraudulent. If anyone would have
seen what I saw, my words can't even describe it. It was like being in
another country and witnessing a whole underground economy.

I didn't know it was this bad. I suspected things were bad but all the
way into our Medical system this deep? Possibly involving
Medical/Medicaid numbers and other things. We have been invaded by
something much larger than reported. I won't even get into the other
makeups of Illegals here like the Koreans, Armenians, Filipinos, Etc.
This experience was enough to know that something dark is going on here
in California and I am afraid it's just going to get worse.

I don't know how an economy can survive like this. And with the latest
actions on Illegal Immigration I think now is the final tipping point.
As an L.A. Native born and raised, I barely recognize this city, this
State. I only wish I had the funds to document it and make a film but
I'm too busy with my own survival.

edit on 1-12-2014 by BatheInTheFountain because: (no reason given)

(12) Shark attacks increase, because Great Whites are protected and
Shark Quotas limit catches by Fishermen

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9506359/Australia-shark-attacks-prompt-calls-for-ban-of-killing-great-whites.html

Australia shark attacks prompt calls for ban of killing great whites

A series of shark attacks along Australia’s west coast - including the
mauling of a big-wave surfer - has prompted authorities to consider
overturning a ban on killing great whites and easing restrictions on
shark fishing.

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney

3:34PM BST 29 Aug 2012

The latest attack occurred off a remote surfing spot named Red Bluff,
about 650 miles north of Perth, where a 34-year-old surfer, Jonathan
Hines, was dragged to safety by a fellow surfer after being bitten on
the abdomen. Mr Hines, who was also bitten on the arm while trying to
fend off the shark, was flown to Perth and is in a stable condition.

"From what I hear he had to fight it off and it came back and had
another go and that’s when it got him on the arm," a local surfing
instructor, Josh Palmateer, who was at the beach, told the PerthNow
website. "He’s a lucky boy."

The attack follows a string of shark attacks along the west coast which
have led to the deaths of five people in the past 12 months and
increased pressure on local authorities to try to address the threat.
The cause of the growing number of attacks remains a mystery, but
experts believe the shark numbers may be increasing and have also
pointed out that more people are using the beaches. The state is at the
centre of Australia’s recent mining boom and has had the country’s
largest population growth, up by 14 per cent to more than 2.2 million
people in the past five years.

Federal authorities recently agreed to review the protected status of
the great white shark after a recent request by the West Australian

Tony Burke, the federal environment minister, said scientists would
assess the great white shark population to examine whether numbers have
recovered since the species was listed as protected in the late 1990s.

Animal welfare groups believe the shark is vulnerable and have urged the
government to preserve the ban.

However, the state’s premier, Colin Barnett, said shark numbers had
risen and it was time to consider measures such as allowing professional
fisherman to catch more sharks or culling large great whites around
swimming areas.

However, he noted that most of the attacks had occurred in remote
locations and that popular beaches were closely monitored and remained safe.

"I think that’s where we’ve got to give people absolute confidence: when
you swim on a beach between the flags, you’re safe," he said. The
state’s opposition rejected calls for a shark cull, saying authorities
should create more safe swimming areas at beaches.