Monday, December 31, 2018

What will be the punishment for the y'uff who battered the man vs the punishment the victim will carry for the rest of his life?

Roaming mob of 'urban youth' terrorized Chicago's 'Magnificent Mile' in below-freezing weather, sent Asian bystander to the hospital


Cold weather no longer is acting as a deterrent to the marauding mobs of teenagers (of no particular demographic characteristic, according to Chicago mainstream media) roaming through Chicago's showcase shopping district along Upper Michigan Avenue around the Water Tower.  News of the attack could not be ignored, because the famous Water Tower Place Mall had to be closed and because the mob sent an innocent bystander waiting on a subway platform to the hospital.
CWB Chicago, the feisty neighborhood blog that does not shy away from facing Chicago's descent toward anarchy, reports:
At least four people were injured and CTA Red Line traffic was snarled as large groups of teens and young adults brought havoc to the Magnificent Mile on Saturday evening.  One arrest was made.
Alderman Brian Hopkins (2nd) tweeted at 7:47 p.m. that "Water Tower Place will be closing at 8 p.m. tonight due to mob action by large crowds of juveniles."
The latest Mag Mile mob scene began around 5 p.m. when a victim reported being battered near the Red Line station at State and Chicago.  A man was arrested in connection with that attack.


Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/roaming_mob_of_urban_youth_terrorized_chicagos_magnificent_mile_in_belowfreezing_weather_sent_asian_bystander_to_the_hospital.html#ixzz5bHl3DGyG
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The bond between the left and Islamic terrorism is there for everyone to see

 
New York City's political elites would like to remind you that they have not only completely lost touch with the events of September 11, but will do everything possible to celebrate Islamic terrorism using an iconic New York moment.
Slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s editor at The Washington Post Karen Attiah will be one of several guests in Times Square New Year’s Eve as the ball drop event celebrates press freedom. 
Jamal Khashoggi's journalism consisted of serving as a Jihadist propagandist in Afghanistan, glamorizing Osama bin Laden, whose death he mourne on Twitter, followed by a stint of pushing Qatari propaganda in the pages of the Washington Post.
Here's a reminder of his thoughts on September 11.
Americans want unconditional condemnation of the horrible attacks that happened in their skies and on their land. They also want total cooperation in their fight against terror according to their own definition of what terrorism is and exactly who the terrorists are. But Saudi Arabia will not give in to such demands.
Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy. But unfortunately such rationalisation is still not part of the American reality.
This is what the Times Square bigwigs have decided to endorse.
In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden.
“We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.”
The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting. 
Why not just parade Osama bin Laden's corpse through Times Square and have done with it?

THE DEMOCRATS’ BIGGEST EXPERT ACCUSING REPUBLICANS OF RUSSIAN TROLLING WAS A RUSSIAN TROLL

THE DEMOCRATS’ BIGGEST EXPERT ACCUSING REPUBLICANS OF RUSSIAN TROLLING WAS A RUSSIAN TROLL


They invented the Russian conspiracy, then they faked the crimes. 

 
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
When the Democrats and the media wanted to prove that Russian trolls were everywhere, and supporting Republicans, they turned to Jonathon Morgan and Renee DiResta.
Morgan and DiResta had originally been part of Obama’s futile effort to fight ISIS on social media, before discovering a much more lucrative field. ISIS was losing on the battlefield and the Democrats were losing elections. The Hillary campaign had hatched a conspiracy theory blaming its loss on Russian trolls. And Morgan and DiResta soon became the experts providing the data linking Republicans to Russian trolls.
Every time there was a story on Russian election interference, Morgan would show up on CNN or NBC. And his message was the same, the Russian bots were everywhere and they were a major threat.
Morgan and DiResta soon had a company name, New Knowledge, and were brought on board by the Senate Intelligence Committee to produce a report on Russian influence operations in the 2016 election. Despite the fact that a second report found that most of the Russian trolling efforts had been directed at African-Americans, the New Knowledge report claimed that this was a Russian conspiracy to aid Trump.
The New York Times, which frequently promoted and published New Knowledge conspiracy theories, all but credited DiResta for having exposed the whole Russian-Republican troll conspiracy, and wrote that, “Senate and House staff members, who knew of DiResta's expertise through her public reports and her previous work advising the Obama administration on disinformation campaigns, had reached out to her and others to help them prepare for the hearings.” They seemingly included Senator Warner’s office.
And it wasn’t just the 2016 election. Morgan, who made no secret of his loathing for conservatives, claimed that the Russian bots were everything and aiding Republicans.
When the #ReleasetheMemo hashtag went viral, Morgan, now running his own company, New Knowledge, was there suggesting it might be Russian bots. The debates about gun control after the Parkland school massacre? More Russian bots. The migrant caravan? Obviously a fake news conspiracy.
"That whole news cycle was dominated by this type of conspiratorial fear-mongering," Morgan sniffed, even though his current career is based around conspiratorial lefty fear-mongering.
And the midterm elections?
"Russians Meddling in the Midterms? Here’s the Data," Morgan and Ryan Fox, a New Knowledge employee, warned. “Our company is currently detecting more overall activity in real time from continuing Russian online influence operations targeting the midterm elections than has been disclosed by social media platforms or detected by researchers during the same period before the election in 2016.”
The Russians were even going all the way into Alabama. “Russian trolls tracked by #Hamilton68 are taking an interest in the AL Senate race. What a surprise,” Morgan tweeted.
It wouldn’t have been much of a surprise to him because the “Russian trolls” supporting Roy Moore in Alabama were actually his trolls.
New York Times story was forced to reveal that Morgan had participated in what a report described as, “an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet” thereby “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal”
The goal was to “enrage and energize Democrats” and “depress turnout” among Republicans.
The bots used Cyrillic letters and pictures of celebrities. Just in case anyone still didn’t get the message, they included, “I love Russia” in their profiles. When the Moore campaign accused the Democrats of being behind the dirty trick, the Jones campaign doubled down on the Russia smear, declaring, "Maybe Moore should check with Vladimir Putin, who shares his views on depriving people of their civil rights."
But Moore had been telling the truth. It had been a Democrat operation. The media’s greatest expert on Russian trolling had not only falsely claimed that Russian trolls were backing Moore, he was involved.
Morgan, the New York Times and the Washington Post attempted to spin this as an experiment, but influencing an actual election is not an experiment. When Morgan’s people faked Russian bot support for a Republican candidate, and Morgan then helped spread the allegations, that’s not an experiment, it’s a dirty trick. And it raises serious questions about the Democrat’s entire Russian troll narrative.
How can we know that an Alabama special election was the only time that Democrats tried to frame Republicans with false flag operations meant to portray them as traitors and tools of foreign interests?
The Alabama project may have been an experiment, but not an abstract academic one. Its funding allegedly came from LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman who has poured millions of dollars into ventures to harness “Silicon Valley” smarts to help Democrats win. Hoffman had previously been caught backing another slimy Facebook effort targeting conservatives and Trump supporters.
An internet disinformation campaign headed by a disinformation expert would be very “Silicon Valley”.
Hoffman had teamed up with Mark Pincus, the co-founder of Zynga, a slimy Facebook firm  whose unofficial motto was allegedly, “Do Evil”, on WTF, to explore new strategies.  New Knowledge also had backing from French-Iranian billionaire Pierre Omidyar who had made his fortune with eBay. Silicon Valley lefties have been pouring money into new tech efforts for the Left.
It’s worth asking whether some of the dot com billionaires who backed Morgan, New Knowledge or similar efforts to push regulation of Facebook had a plan for profiting from its fall.
The Alabama project’s success could have been used to convince Hoffman and other lefty dot com donors to back similar false flag campaigns targeting Republicans around the country.
Alabama likely was an experiment in tactics. Morgan’s exposure won’t make it go away.
Hillary’s Russian conspiracy theory has evolved into a Cloward-Piven strategy aimed at free speech on the internet in which disinformation is used to attribute conservative speech to a Russian conspiracy requiring immediate regulation of Facebook and other social media companies to avert the crisis.
And if the Russians won’t cooperate, the Russian bots will be lefty hipsters funded by Silicon Valley.
Jonathon Morgan had tweeted, “Facebook and the other social media companies should not be trusted to police themselves. The self-serving attempts to undermine the credibility of those holding these companies accountable are reprehensible.”
New Knowledge's Director of Research, Renee DiResta, had written an editorial titled, “Why Facebook and Twitter Can’t Be Trusted to Police Themselves”.
After years of demanding that regulators force Facebook to crack down on Russian fake news trolls, Morgan finally got what he wanted when Facebook suspended his account over Russian trolling.
Russian election interference was a crisis that the Democrats had manufactured and that their media echo chamber had amplified. Morgan is accused of manufacturing it in the most explicit way possible.
But we can’t really know to what extent Morgan’s experiment has already been replicated. What we know about Russian election interference has largely come from experts like Morgan and New Knowledge. The internet is a shadowy realm and it’s not hard for actors to impersonate one another.
The Russians may have started out by impersonating Americans, only to have Americans impersonate Russians. When public trust in institutions fails, conspiracy theories and conspirators thrive. Morgan’s dirty tricks arose from the same paranoid atmosphere of conspiracy theories weaponized into investigations, opposition research transformed into armed raids, research being secretly planted into the DOJ, and national emergencies being declared over Facebook memes, in which he thrived.
The Russian conspiracy theory had given Democrat outrage form, substance and an agenda. Having invented the conspiracy theory, they also had to invent the crimes that made it real.
To paraphrase Pogo, the Democrats had finally found the Russian troll enemy and he is us.

Obama-era standard that held businesses liable for contractors, franchisees, was too broad says federal appeals court



An Obama-era standard that maintained companies are liable for illegal labor practices by their contractors or franchisees was too broad, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The ruling spelled a victory for business groups that have worked to get the standard overturned.

What was the ruling? 

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stated that a 2015 National Labor Relations Board decision did not properly define the criteria for reclassifying contract or franchise workers as so-called joint employers.
According to Reuters, joint employers must bargain with contract workers' unions and can be "held liable for violating those workers' rights under federal labor law."
Business groups have made it a priority to get the 2015 standard overturned, according to the report. That included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby. The organization maintained that the Obama-era standard "threatened to upend supply chains and the franchise model," the report stated.
The current NLRB board has a majority that was appointed by President Donald Trump. In September, the board proposed a rule that would restore an earlier standard for determining when a company is considered a joint employer, the report states. The board expects to adopt a final rule by June.
Under the proposal, companies would be considered joint employers with their contractors or franchisees only if they can directly control issues such as hiring and firing workers and setting wages, according to Reuters.

What is the background?

In 2015, the NLRB maintained that more indirect control over – such as how is performed – was enough to establish joint employment. 
The NLRB rejected that standard in a December 2017. But two months later, the decision was nixed because a board member appointed by Trump reportedly had a conflict of interest, the report states.

Monty Python taxi

Australian cane toads hitch a lift on python's back after storm

Media captionCane toads ride on python's back after thunderstorm
Some called it the Outback Uber - 10 cane toads have been caught riding a python.
Paul Mock, of Kununurra in the far north of Western Australia, filmed the bizarre sight after a heavy thunderstorm on Sunday night. 
The animals were trying to escape an overflowing dam on the Mocks' property when the toads came up with the novel form of transport.
Mr Mock sent the images to his brother Andrew, who then posted them online.
Presentational white space
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Mock explains he had ventured out after a bad thunderstorm that dropped close to 7cm (2.7in) of rain on Kununurra in the space of an hour.
"I went out and the lake had overflowed," he says, and realised the toads, who nested around its edge, were fleeing the rising waters.
"Thousands of toads were all trying to find somewhere to go," he says. "And then I saw Monty our local python with a bunch of hitchhikers on his back."

China’s new antenna is five Times the size of New York City, but some fear it could be a cancer risk.

China’s new antenna is five Times the size of New York City, but some fear it could be a cancer risk

Work to build facility was 13 years in the making, but some researchers have expressed concern about exposure to extremely low frequency waves

  • Project WEM will be able to communicate with submarines under the water, reducing need for them to surface
PUBLISHED : Monday, 31 December, 2018, 10:41am
UPDATED : Monday, 31 December, 2018, 8:16pm
China has built a giant experimental radio antenna on a piece of land almost five times the size of New York City, according to researchers involved in the highly controversial project.
The Wireless Electromagnetic Method (WEM) project took 13 years to build but researchers said it was finally ready to emit extremely low frequency radio waves, also known as ELF waves.
Although the project has civilian applications – officially it will be used for earthquake and mineral detection and forms part of China’s 11th five-year plan – it could also play a crucial role in military communications.
Scientists said its transmissions could be picked up by a submarine lurking hundreds of metres below the sea, thereby reducing the risk of having to resurface to pick up transmissions.
The project follows the construction of China’s first military-grade Super Low Frequency transmission station in 2009.
The next year, a Chinese nuclear submarine successfully communicated with the station from deep water – making China the third country in the world to have established such a submarine communication system after the United States and Russia.
But the Chinese navy is eager to expand its capacity and has been pouring resources into the more advanced ELF radio technology, which allows submarines to communicate with the command centre from a greater depth and is harder to disrupt.
The Chinese government, however, has played down the importance of the facility, which occupies some 3,700 sq km (1,400 square miles) of land, in information released to the public.
Apart from the need to protect an important strategic asset, some researchers said the secrecy was to avoid causing public alarm.
The antenna would emit ELF signals with a frequency of between 0.1 to 300 hertz, the researchers said.

The exact site of the facility has not been disclosed, but information available in Chinese research journals suggests it is in the Huazhong region, an area in central China that includes Hubei, Henan and Hunan provinces and is home to more than 230 million people – greater than the population of Brazil.
Project WEM’s main surface structure is a pair of high voltage power supply lines stretching from north to south, east to west on steel lattice towers, which form a cross that is 60km (37 miles) wide and 80km to 100km long.
At the end of each power line, thick copper wire goes underground through a deep borehole. Two power stations generate strong currents and electrify the ground in slow, repeating pulses, turning the earth underfoot into an active source of electromagnetic radiation.
The radio pulses not only pass through the atmosphere, but travel through the Earth’s crust as well, with a range of up to 3,500km, according to the project scientists.
A sensitive receiver within that range, which is roughly the distance between China and Singapore or Guam, would be able to pick up these signals.
The closer to the power source, the stronger the pulses.
The radar will be difficult for spy satellites to detect because it will appear no different to an ordinary power grid, although a radar expert said it might be possible to detect its emissions and use those to determine the location.
The inland location of the new facility would also make it harder for an enemy to attack compared with a facility located on the coast.
Though I am involved in the project I have no idea where it is
CHEN XIAOBIN, RESEARCHER AT CHINA EARTHQUAKE ADMINISTRATION
Chen Xiaobin, a researcher with the Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, has been working on the project and said he did not know its exact location because that information needed a high level of security clearance.
“This facility will have important military uses if a war breaks out … Though I am involved in the project, I have no idea where it is. It should be up and running by now,” he said on Wednesday.
Lu Jianxun, the chief scientist on the project, also leads a key communication programme at the PLA Naval Command, according to information on Chinese government websites.
The construction work was led by 724 Research Institute under the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, which is a major supplier of communications and electronic warfare equipment to the Chinese navy.
Hu Wenmin, president of the corporation, visited the emission site in May last year, according to a statement on the state-owned company’s website.
Hu “expressed his appreciation for the construction of the WEM project and put forward opinions and requirements for the follow-up development of the project and the technical application in related fields”, the statement said.
But the project has caused concern among some academics who are worried about the possible impact on public health.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation, previously warned that ELF waves were “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.
Numerous epidemiological and experimental studies conducted by researchers around the world have linked long-term ELF exposure to an increased risk of childhood leukaemia.
In a 500-page report constantly updated since 2007, the WHO has documented a large number of academic investigations linking ELF radiation to a range of illnesses including delusions, sleep deprivation, stress, depression, breast and brain tumours, miscarriages and suicide.
Though many results remain inconclusive, the WHO said the implementation of precautionary procedures to reduce exposure was “reasonable and warranted”.
Chen declined to comment on the impact the facility would have on residents’ health.

But some researchers said China’s environmental authorities have concerns about the project.
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment, for instance, asked for a comprehensive review on its environmental impact – a request that has not been granted.
“The money came from civilian budgets, but the military has intervened and muted the ministry’s complaint,” said a Beijing-based researcher, who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
According to one calculation by the Chinese navy, a person standing on the emission site will be subject to ELF radiation no greater than 10 watts, enough to power up several LED light bulbs.
But Qiao Fengshou, a researcher with the navy’s Ship Communication Research Institute in Wuhan, who made the estimate, said there was nothing to worry about.
According to China’s safety standards, only radiation greater than 300 watts is considered harmful, so the project will cause “no harm to staff and residents in surrounding areas, it is not necessary to build extra facilities for the purpose of health protection”, Qiao wrote in an article in Chinese-language research journal Ship Science and Technology in 2016.
Qiao also said the project would be given an “exemption from supervision” by the environmental authorities.
Xi Jilou, a researcher with the Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, who was informed of but not directly involved in the project, said relevant authorities had recently conducted final checks on the emission site and concluded it was ready for operation.
“There should be some devices monitoring the environment on the site for the protection of public health,” Xi said.
“China is not the first country doing this. Other countries conducted similar projects long ago.”
In 1968, the US Navy proposed Project Sanguine, a giant ELF antenna that would have covered two-fifths of the state of Wisconsin to enable undersea communications with submarines.
There should be some devices monitoring the environment on the site
XI JILOU, RESEARCHER AT INSTITUTE OF EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING
The project was terminated due to massive protest by residents.
The US Navy built a smaller transmitter, the Wisconsin Test Facility, with two 45km power lines in the Clam Lake area, a place with a low population density. The station emitted ELF waves at 76 hertz and was decommissioned over a decade ago.
In the 1980s the Soviet Union constructed Zevs, a considerably more powerful facility on the Kola Peninsula inside the Arctic Circle.
The Zevs antenna was powered by two 60km electric lines and had a main frequency turned at 82 hertz. The radio waves it produced were believed powerful enough to reach Russian nuclear submarines hidden deep under the Arctic ice cap.
Russia has since provided technical support to China as it started building its own systems, which may include other ELF stations in coastal areas.
According to the WHO, an ELF field can affect human nerve fibres and stimulate synaptic transmissions in neural networks.
It can also affect retina cells, generating a sporadic flash of light in people’s eyes.
Animals can use low frequency signals to detect threats or changes in surrounding environments, an ability critical for survival in nature, according to some biologists, and experiments suggest that ELF radiation could also have an effect on cattle.
Huang Zhiwei, professor with the department of electrical engineering at Nanhua University in Hengyang, Hunan, said the ELF radio was unlikely to cause acute damage to the human body due to its enormous wavelength, which could stretch over thousands of kilometres, but it might interfere with the sensory organs.
“If the frequency caused a resonance with our sensors it could be a nightmare,” said Huang, who was concerned because he and his family live in the region.
Some previous studies had shown that wounds healed more slowly when exposed to ELF radio waves several times a day, Huang added.
Huang, who has taken part in numerous military research projects, said the environmental impact of defence-related facilities was usually not scrutinised as much as civilian projects.
“The matter must be handled with extreme caution, or it can easily lead to public panic,” he said.
Huang said the authorities in charge of project WEM should recruit a large number of volunteers for comparison studies.
The sample size must be sufficiently large because of variations in environment and timing or the individuals involved could produce different results.
“Some people are more sensitive. They can see or hear things other people can’t. They may be more vulnerable to the impact,” Huang said.
Researchers also said the facility would also have a peacetime application and be used to detect mineral and oil deposits.
Ground stations with special equipment can pick up signals to survey underground structures to an unprecedented depth.
The ELF waves will also be able to detect rock deformations, which could help in studying precursors for major earthquakes.
In 2013, China’s state media reported that the PLA Navy had completed the development of the world’s most powerful and sensitivity low-frequency communication system for nuclear submarines.
The reports described the technology as having the world’s largest communication distance and deepest communication depth, according to the official report.
The US Navy shut down its Wisconsin transmitter in 2004, saying it no longer needed to rely on ELF radio.
Instead, US nuclear submarine fleets use very low frequency or VLF radio waves, with a frequency ranging from 3 to 30 kilohertz, for long-distance communication.
The VLF radio waves can carry more information than ELF signals because of this higher frequency, and can penetrate seawater to a depth of up to 40 metres (130 feet).