One Love Manchester benefit concert, June 4, 2017.
More:
“Why ‘Over the Rainbow’ was the perfect closer for Ariana Grande’s Manchester tribute,” Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post
_____________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-q0A
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
A father and son outside the Bataclan Theater (Le Petit Journal / Canal +.).
___________________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-mtq
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
Last Friday evening in Paris, 80,000 people watched France play Germany in a friendly soccer match at the Stade de France. Spectators included French President François Hollande and his guests, relatives of people who died in a German plane crash in the French Alps in March. 15 minutes into the game, President Hollande left to take a phone call and learned that a loud noise outside the stadium was caused when a man, stopped as he tried to enter the packed Stade de France, exploded his suicide vest. M. Hollande consulted the Interior Minister and a sports official and decided to keep the news from other spectators, avoiding panic and mass injuries. Elsewhere in Paris, as the game continued, over a hundred people were shot to death as they sat in cafes and restaurants and at a concert.
While French midfielder Lassana Diarra ran up and down the pitch his cousin Asta Diakite was killed in one of the fusillades. “She was like a big sister to me,” he later tweeted. His teammate on Les Bleus, striker Antoine Griezmann, later learned that his sister was one of the hostages who escaped from the Bataclan theater, where 89 people died. Neither man learned about their family members until hours later, early Saturday morning.
By the second half most spectators had learned about the terror attacks through social media, and players on both teams were informed at end of the match and asked to remain in the heavily guarded stadium instead of venturing onto the streets. Mattresses were found, and players and coaches slept at the Stade de France until a team bus arrived for Germany’s Die Mannschaft at about 2 AM.
Oh, France beat Germany 2 to 0.
On April 16th, 21-year-old Dylann Roof was allowed to purchase a 45 caliber Glock handgun from retailer Shooter’s Choice of West Columbia SC, despite his arrest, indictment, and his pending trial for felony possession of a narcotic prescription drug. Why was this sale permitted? The FBI is taking the blame for an incomplete background check, but the purchase went through because of the gentleman pictured above, former Congressman George W. Gekas, who represented Pennsylvania’s 17th District for 20 years.
When the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was on the House floor in 1993, Rep. Gekas (R, PA-17) introduced Amendment 390, requiring a technologically impossible “instant background check” and, if the FBI couldn’t clear the purchaser within five days (later 3 days) then the sale could go through. This “Gekas Loophole” or “default proceed sale” provision was added, the bill passed, and President Clinton signed it into law.
Today, explains the New York Times‘ Michael S. Schmidt:
“Many major gun retailers, like Walmart, will not sell a weapon if they do not have an answer from the F.B.I., because of the fear of public criticism if the gun is used in a crime. The marginal sale of one gun means little to the bottom line of a large dealer, which is not the case for smaller stores like the one that sold Mr. Roof his gun.”
A long-anticipated real estate deal is about to put eight prime parcels of tropical paradise on the market. White House press secretary Josh Earnest blabbed that the Obama Administration is finally ready to close down the Guantánamo Bay concentration camps detention centers on the sunny island of Cuba.
The canny Mr. Obama teased the deal back in 2009, but waited for the Cuban real estate market to take off, and it’s muy caliente after US normalization of relations with the island nation. There are already deals in the works for a dozen new luxury golf courses, and tourists from as far away as China are waiting for tee times.
The “Gitmo” detention centers now hold 116 inmates guests at a cost of more than $100 million (possibly $454 million) a year, so it’s plainly time to cash out and recoup costs during Cuba’s current resort development boom. The deal would look better without sitting tenants and since 106 of those 116 guests have never been charged or convicted of anything, it’s time to find them other accommodations. And why host the remaining 10 guests at an annual cost of at least $10 million each when the Government Accountability Office has found many alternatives?
On November 9, 1938 Germany and Austria saw their worst pogrom in centuries. Streets were littered with glass shards from the shattered windows of stores with Jewish owners on what became called Kristallnacht, the night of crystal. Synagogues were burned, Jewish shops and homes ransacked, a thousand German Jews beaten and killed, 30,000 rounded up and sent to isolation centers. The nations of the world did what most German Christians did: Nothing. Today Germans marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
More:
“Kristallnacht still casts a long shadow on Europe,” Abraham Cooper, Washington Post blog
“Kristallnacht,” America and the Holocaust, PBS
“Bearing Witness To Nazis’ Life-Shattering Kristallnacht,” Esme Nicholson, NPR
The Honorable The Congress-Clown representing the Piney Woods of East Texas, Louie Gohmert (R, TX-1), claims that fellow Republican Senator John McCain (R-AZ) supports al Qaeda terrorists. You may recall that Senator McCain flew a Navy jet during the Vietnam Conflict and was shot down and held as a prisoner of war for 6 years in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison. Mr. Gohmert is also a distinguished veteran, having gallantly served as a peace-time defense lawyer at Fort Benning in the perilous jungles of Columbus, Georgia.
Senator McCain had, in fact, traveled to Syria and met with rebels, but they were the U.S.-backed Northern Storm Brigade, a faction often attacked by al Qaeda affiliated groups. Not that facts have ever concerned Louie Gohmert.
“Obama Says No Talks While GOP ‘Threatening To Harm Women and Children,’” Noah Rayman, TIME Magazine blog
“Obama: GOP tactics hold middle class ‘hostage,'” David Jackson, USA Today
“Five Reasons Not To Hold Obamacare Hostage In The Government Shutdown,” Carolyn McClanahan, Forbes
“Republicans Aren’t Hostage Takers, They’re Political Terrorists,” Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast
“Carney: Republicans are ‘irresponsible and reckless,’ using ‘threat and extortion,'” Jennifer Epstein, Politico
“Stocks drop amid fears of federal government shutdown,” Andrew Tangel, Los Angeles Times
“The GOP flunks Hostage Taking 101,” Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post
“The GOP’s Suicide Squeeze,” John Dickerson, Slate
“GOP’s ‘Mass psychosis’ holds country hostage, says Dem congressman,” Jessica Taylor, MSNBC
“Dumbest extortion attempt ever: Republican scheme’s perverse logic,” Brian Beutler, Salon
“The Anti-Obamacare Hostage Taking Will Damage Future Policymaking,” Keith Humphreys, Washington Monthly blog
“Governing by Blackmail,” Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times
_________________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-hud
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
For years now we’ve told you, and told you, and told you yet again about a persistent threat to America’s infrastructure. Now that the New York Times has caught up, maybe now you’ll listen.
This year there have been stealth attacks on the electric power grid in Virginia, Illinois, Delaware, Virginia, Oregon, Ohio, Maryland, and dozens of places across the country, and they continue. These attacks on electrical substations are predictable and avoidable, yet nothing is done to avert them. Perhaps if we claim they are caused by Iranian hackers we can get relief.
More:
“Squirrel Power!” Jon Mooallem, New York Times
“Squirrels and electricity: A shocking problem,” Bruce Kennedy, MSN Money
“How squirrels are screwing with America’s power grid,” Katie Drummond, The Verge
____________________________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-hsm
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
Many air travelers have been concerned about airport scanning machines. Not about radiation the gizmos might emit, but because they think that TSA personnel can see them naked. As if anyone would want to see them naked.
Apparently TSA can’t fight this fear, so it’s removing those “invasive,” “naked image” scanners and replacing them with less “explicit” models. The whole scanner charade is “security theater,” anyway. The only reason airports have those things is because TSA is part of Homeland Security and that agency’s ex-boss shills for a scanner company.
______________________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-fEW
Image (“Leonardo’s Scanner”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here.Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
NotionsCapital 