#Elder Attorney Victoria

[wilsonmarshall]

The Trusted Voice for Elderly Clients: Wilson Marshall's Senior Law Firm in Victoria, BC

As our loved ones get older, it becomes essential to ensure that their legal affairs are in order. This is where Wilson Marshall, a reputable Attorney For Elderly Parents, can help. With his expertise in senior law and professional estate executor services, he has been a trusted resource for families in Victoria, BC.

In today's fast-paced world, adult children can find it challenging to balance their own lives while also taking care of their aging parents. Juggling personal and professional responsibilities can be overwhelming, making it difficult to navigate the complex legal system. This is where the services of an experienced attorney like Wilson Marshall can make a significant difference.

With years of experience in senior law, Wilson Marshall understands the unique challenges and concerns that come with aging. He is passionate about helping elderly parents and their families by providing them with the necessary legal guidance and support. Whether it's creating a will, establishing power of attorney, or navigating long-term care planning, Wilson is committed to ensuring that his clients' wishes are respected and protected.

One of the areas where Wilson Marshall excels is in Professional Estate Executor Services. As an executor, he is responsible for managing and distributing a person's estate according to their wishes after they have passed away. This role requires a deep understanding of legal procedures and the ability to handle sensitive situations with compassion and professionalism. Wilson's extensive experience in estate planning and administration, combined with his empathetic nature, makes him an excellent choice for this role.

At his Senior Law Firm in Victoria, BC, Wilson takes a personalized approach to each case. He understands that every family has its unique dynamics, and he ensures that his clients feel heard and understood throughout the legal process. His attention to detail and thorough understanding of the law enables him to provide tailored solutions that meet his client’s specific needs.

In addition to his legal services, Wilson Marshall is also an active member of the community. He regularly gives back by volunteering his time and resources to various nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping the elderly. This not only speaks to his character but also demonstrates his dedication to making a positive impact on others' lives.

Wilson Marshall is an exceptional attorney for elderly parents, offering professional estate executor services and expertise in senior law. His dedication, compassion, and vast knowledge make him the go-to legal resource for families in Victoria, BC. If you or your loved ones need assistance with legal matters relating to aging, Wilson Marshall is a reliable and trusted option. To learn more you can contact Wilson Marshall at 250.385.8741 or visit:- www.wilsonmarshall.com!

[anditendshowyoudexpect]

i was just browsing to get a new picture for my avatar

(from the book Gimson’s Prime Ministers by Andrew Gimson, illustrated by Martin Rowson)

LORD MELBOURNE Lived 1779–1848; prime minister 1834 and 1835–41

ON BEING ASKED to become prime minister, Lord Melbourne said he thought it ‘a damned bore’, and was ‘in many minds as to what to do’. 

His private secretary, Tom Young, retorted: ‘Why, damn it all, such a position was never held by any Greek or Roman; and if it only last three months, it will be worth while to have been prime minister of England.’ 

‘By God that’s true,’ Melbourne said. ‘I’ll go!’ 

We have this story from the diarist Charles Greville, who saw a great deal of Melbourne but, like most people, could not quite make him out: ‘Everybody wonders what Melbourne will do. He is certainly a queer fellow to be prime minister.’ To the world in general, Melbourne concealed his thoughts and emotions behind an affable, witty, tolerant, teasing exterior. As a young man, he had suffered the most notorious marital difficulties of any future prime minister. Yet he still loved and needed the company of spirited women, and became in the first years of her reign the adored prime minister and mentor of Queen Victoria. She saw at once that he was ‘straightforward, clever, honest and good’.

He was born William Lamb. His mother established herself as a great Whig hostess: beautiful, intelligent, vivacious, ambitious and promiscuous, she had children by several men while remaining married to the rich but unremarkable Lord Melbourne. William, her second son, was generally supposed to have been fathered by Lord Egremont and was educated at Eton, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Glasgow University. He grew into a tall, dark, handsome, amusing and unpushy young man, who was liked by everyone he met. The death of his elder brother enabled him to renounce the legal career on which, with no enthusiasm, he had embarked and to enter in 1806, at the age of twenty-six, the House of Commons. 

It also enabled him to propose marriage to the 19-year-old Lady Caroline Ponsonby, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Bessborough and niece of the Duchess of Devonshire, with whom he was in love. She was an upper-class wild child – slim, high-spirited and used on all occasions to getting her own way or else throwing a tantrum. For a few years they were happy, then they were unhappy. In 1812, she began a conspicuous affair with Lord Byron, a month after the poet awoke one morning and found himself famous, thanks to the publication of Childe Harold. It was Lady Caroline who described Byron as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. He called her ‘the cleverest, most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, fascinating little being’. But he soon tired of her impetuous rages, realised her parading of their affair was doing him social harm and decided to break it off. She was infatuated with him, and refused to let him go. Her rages grew ever more extreme and culminated at Lady Heathcote’s ball in July 1813, where Byron refused to dance with her, so she broke a glass and began gashing her naked arms. 

The scandal was the talk of London and was followed by Lady Caroline’s excruciatingly embarrassing autobiographical novel, Glenarvon. Melbourne’s family urged him to separate from a woman who had heaped humiliation on them all, and most particularly on him. He agreed, but could not bring himself to leave her until 1825, and even after that, with tender good humour took what care he could of her until her death in 1828. They had one son, who was mentally handicapped, to whom Melbourne was devoted and who died in 1836 at the age of twenty-nine. 

For many years, his political career seemed no happier than his marriage. In 1812, he left the Commons, unable to stand the heavy cost of getting himself re-elected. He told his mother that leaving Parliament felt like ‘actually cutting my throat’, for it deprived him of ‘the greatest object of my life’. He cared about politics more deeply than he would generally admit. In 1816, he returned to Parliament, but these were the long years of Tory domination under Lord Liverpool, when there was no place for even a moderate, middle-of-the-road Whig like Melbourne. 

In 1827, Canning became prime minister and needed some moderate Whigs to serve in place of the stern unbending Tories who refused to join. In came Melbourne as Chief Secretary for Ireland. It was his first real job, and he demonstrated his ability to conciliate Catholics as well as Protestants, and also his well-hidden capacity for hard work. In Dublin, he relaxed in the company of the young, beautiful and animated Lady Elizabeth Brandon. Her husband, the Reverend Lord Brandon, attempted to get a bishopric for himself out of this, and having failed to do so, sued Melbourne, but was unable to prove that anything improper had occurred. 

The following year, Melbourne was one of the Whigs who resigned in sympathy with William Huskisson from the Duke of Wellington’s government. But at the end of 1830, when Lord Grey replaced Wellington, he appointed Melbourne to the vital post of Home Secretary. For while the Reform Bill made its tempestuous passage through Parliament, the country had to be saved from sliding into civil war. This Melbourne did with energy and firmness. He avoided sending in troops, but urged magistrates to use their powers to the full. Once again, he had given proof of his executive abilities. 

By 1834, the government was disintegrating and Lord Grey retired to Northumberland. William IV had to decide which of the Whigs to invite to take over as prime minister. His choice fell on the dependable Melbourne, for he seemed best placed to preserve the still-precarious order. His Cabinet colleague, Lord Durham, offered another reason for choosing Melbourne: ‘He is the only man to be prime minister because he is the only one of whom none of us would be jealous.’ 

So in came the amiable Melbourne. He was fifty-five and lasted for 121 days before the King decided to replace him with the Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel. The most memorable event at this time was the burning down, in October 1834, of the Houses of Parliament, an event greeted with cheers by the London mob. Peel had no majority in the Commons, so called an election, but made insufficient progress to gain control, so in April 1835 resigned. 

Melbourne, with some reluctance, was back. Few people expected him to last long, and he had renewed difficulties in his private life. He had for several years cheered himself by calling on his way home in the evenings on Mrs Caroline Norton, a beautiful and high-spirited young novelist who had established herself in rooms at Storey’s Gate, not far from Parliament. She was the granddaughter of the playwright Sheridan, a famous Whig whom Melbourne had known in his youth. 

George Norton, her villainous husband, decided to sue Mrs Norton for divorce, with Melbourne cited as co-respondent. But there was no evidence whatever that she had slept with him. When she was ill, Mr Norton had actually accompanied Melbourne to his wife’s bedroom. On another occasion, Mr and Mrs Norton had visited Melbourne together in his house in South Street, Mayfair, where he continued to live even after becoming prime minister. 

Melbourne asked William IV if he should resign. The King said definitely not. He and the Duke of Wellington suspected a shady plot to discredit Melbourne, and neither of them wanted anything to do with it. So Melbourne fought the case, though he did not appear in court himself, but sent the attorney general to make the case on his behalf. The court proceedings caused huge excitement but only lasted a day, for the main witness Mr Norton had managed to recruit was a drunken groom called Fluke, whose ludicrous evidence fell to pieces under cross-examination. The jury acquitted Melbourne without even leaving their box to confer. 

This was a success of a kind, and one which showed the prime minister’s resilience under pressure. But it also left a gap in his emotional life, for while he remained anxious for Mrs Norton’s welfare, he could no longer risk visiting her. This void was to be filled in a most unexpected way. 

In June 1837, William IV died, and was succeeded by his niece, the 18- year-old Princess Victoria. She was on bad terms with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, whose husband, the duke, had died when their daughter was only one year old. During Victoria’s childhood, the duchess, prompted by the unscrupulous Sir John Conroy, cut her off from other sources of advice and tried to lay the foundations for permanent control over her. 

Victoria was determined to resist them. But to whom could she turn for help and comfort in this endeavour? As soon as she met Melbourne, she knew she could count on him. And on whom could it be more proper to rely than on her prime minister? He became her private secretary, spent six hours a day with her and soon had his own bedroom at Windsor. Ministers were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, nearly started a war with France. Melbourne was engaged in the vital work of tutoring the young Queen, for which he was entirely suited. As she herself wrote, ‘he alone inspires me with that feeling of great confidence and I may say security, for I feel so safe when he speaks to me and is with me’. 

His conversation was fascinating. He dropped the swear words, but was as witty as ever. He had known everyone worth knowing for the last forty years, including her own family. Her uncle George IV had been as, Prince Regent, a regular visitor, and something more than a visitor, to Melbourne’s mother, and had become very fond of Melbourne himself. 

For although Victoria was Queen, the Victorian age had not yet set in. Melbourne remained, in his manners and sense of humour, a man of the eighteenth century, who detested earnestness and refused to admire the middle classes. His attitude is caught in his remark after hearing an evangelical sermon: ‘Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life.’ He was deeply interested in religion, and had read widely on the subject. But he was not pious. 

Nor was he abstemious. He ate and drank huge amounts. In 1838, Lady Lyttelton observed that he was quite safe in office ‘unless he contrives to displace himself by dint of consommés, truffles, pears, ices and anchovies, which he does his best to revolutionise his stomach with every day’. 

In 1839, he made a dreadful error of judgement. One of the Duchess of Kent’s maids of honour, Lady Flora Hastings, had been unkind about Baroness Lehzen, who ran the queen’s household. Now Lady Flora grew unexpectedly large, and Melbourne encouraged the Queen in the idea that Lady Flora might be pregnant. When Lady Flora died, she was found, at the postmortem, to have an enormous liver tumour. The Hastings family were furious, and Victoria became for a time very unpopular. 

In the same year, Sir Robert Peel seemed about to become prime minister, but indicated that he would expect the Queen to replace some of her ladies-in-waiting. Victoria said she could not bear this, and Melbourne encouraged her in her resistance. Somewhat irregularly, he remained prime minister for another two years. 

In his offhand way, he helped to clarify the doctrine of Cabinet responsibility. For when he and his colleagues were discussing the Corn Laws, he told them: ‘Now, is it to lower the price of corn, or isn’t it? It is not much matter which we say, but mind, we must all say the same.’ 

But in 1840, he became superfluous to the Queen. She married her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who transported her to a state of married bliss, and quickly became her chief adviser too. She wanted to make Albert a King Consort, an idea against which Melbourne quite rightly warned: ‘For God’s sake, let’s have no more of it, Ma’am. If you once get the English people into the way of making Kings, you’ll get them into the way of unmaking them.’ 

The following year, he called a general election, lost it and resigned. A year later, he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. He died in 1848. Anyone who likes the sound of him is urged to read Lord David Cecil’s wonderful two-volume biography of him, which captures better than any other the Whig attitude to politics.

[globalaffairs]

Hundreds of Afghans denied humanitarian entry into US

US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140.

BOSTON: Haseena Niazi had pinned her hopes of getting her fiancé out of Afghanistan on a rarely used immigration provision.

The 24-year-old Massachusetts resident was almost certain his application for humanitarian parole would get approved by the US government, considering the evidence he provided on the threats from the Taliban he received while working on women’s health issues at a hospital near Kabul.

But this month, the request was summarily denied, leaving the couple reeling after months of anxiety.

“He had everything they wanted,” said Niazi, a green card holder originally from Afghanistan. “It doesn’t make any sense why they’d reject it. It’s like a bad dream. I still can’t believe it.”

Federal immigration officials have issued denial letters to hundreds of Afghans seeking temporary entry into the country for humanitarian reasons in recent weeks, to the dismay of Afghans and their supporters. By doing so, immigrant advocates say, the Biden administration has failed to honor its promise to help Afghans who were left behind after the US military withdrew from the country in August and the Taliban took control.

“It was a huge disappointment,” said Caitlin Rowe, a Texas attorney who said she recently received five denials, including one for an Afghan police officer who helped train U.S. troops and was beaten by the Taliban. “These are vulnerable people who genuinely thought there was hope, and I don’t think there was.”

Since the US withdrawal, US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week.

The little-known program, which doesn’t provide a path to lawful permanent residence in the country, typically receives fewer than 2,000 requests annually from all nationalities, of which USCIS approves an average of about 500, she said.

Palmer also stressed humanitarian parole is generally reserved for extreme emergencies and not intended to replace the refugee admissions process, “which is the typical pathway for individuals outside of the United States who have fled their country of origin and are seeking protection.”

The US government, meanwhile, continues to help vulnerable Afghans, evacuating more than 900 American citizens and residents and another 2,200 Afghans since the military withdrawal. The state department said it expects to help resettle as many as 95,000 people from Afghanistan this fiscal year, a process that includes rigorous background checks and vaccinations.

Many of them, however, had been whisked out of Afghanistan before the US left. Now, USCIS is tasked with this new wave of humanitarian parole applications and has ramped up staffing to consider them.

The agency said in a statement that requests are reviewed on an individual basis, with consideration given to immediate relatives of Americans and Afghans airlifted out.

And while USCIS stressed that parole shouldn’t replace refugee processing, immigrant advocates argue that isn’t a viable option for Afghans stuck in their country due to a disability or hiding from the Taliban. Even those able to get out of Afghanistan, they say, may be forced to wait years in refugee camps, which isn’t something many can afford to do.

Mohammad, who asked that his last name not be used out of fear for his family’s safety, said his elder brother, who used to work for international organizations, is among them. He has been in hiding since the Taliban came looking for him following the U.S. withdrawal, Mohammad said.

On a recent visit to the family home, Taliban members took his younger brother instead and held him more than a week for ransom, he said. Now, Mohammad, a former translator for US troops in Afghanistan who lives in California with a special immigration status, is seeking parole for this brother, too. He hopes a conditional approval letter can get them a spot on one of the US evacuation flights still running out of the country.

“I can provide him housing. I can provide him everything," he said. “Let them come here.”

Immigrant advocates began filing humanitarian parole applications for Afghans in August in a last-ditch effort to get them on US evacuation flights out of the country before the withdrawal.

In some cases, it worked, and word spread among immigration attorneys that parole, while typically used in extreme emergencies, might be a way out, said Kyra Lilien, director of immigration legal services at Jewish Family & Community Services in California’s East Bay.

Soon, attorneys began filing thousands of parole applications for Afghans.

When the US immigration agency created a website specifically to address these applications, Lilien said she thought it was a sign of hope. By November, however, the agency had posted a list of narrow criteria for Afghan applicants and held a webinar telling attorneys that parole is typically granted only if there’s evidence someone faces “imminent severe harm."

A few weeks later, the denial letters began arriving. Lilien has received more than a dozen but no approvals.

“Once the US packed up and left, anyone who was left behind has only one choice, and that is to pursue this archaic refugee channel,” she said. “It is just so angering that it took USCIS so long to be clear about that.”

Wogai Mohmand, an attorney who helps lead the Afghan-focused Project ANAR, said that the group has filed thousands of applications and that since the US troop withdrawal, has seen only denials.

The despair has led some immigration attorneys to give up on filing parole applications altogether. In Massachusetts, the International Institute of New England is holding off filing new applications until it hears on those that are pending after receiving a flurry of denials.

Chiara St. Pierre, an attorney for the refugee resettlement agency, said she feels clients like Niazi are facing an “unwinnable” battle.

For Niazi’s fiancé, they had provided copies of written threats sent to the hospital where he works as a medical technician and threatening text messages he said came from Taliban members, she said. It wasn’t enough.

A redacted copy of the denial letter provided by St. Pierre lists the USCIS criteria released in November but doesn’t specify why the agency rejected the application, which had been filed in August.

For now, Niazi says her fiancé is living and working far from Kabul as they weigh their options. They could potentially wait until Niazi becomes an American citizen so she can try to bring him here on a fiancé visa, but that would take years.

“He can’t wait that long. It’s a miracle every day that he’s alive,” Niazi said. “I’m feeling like every door is closing in on him.”

[jasonlawson0]

Matriarchs to occupy lands on Haida Gwaii as fishing lodges reopen

QUEEN CHARLOTTE, B.C. — A group of Haida matriarchs say they plan to occupy two ancient villages on Haida Gwaii after two fishing lodges decided to reopen on the remote archipelago despite objections from the First Nation.

The matriarchs, known as Gaandlee Guu Jaalang or "daughters of the river," say in a statement the Queen Charlotte Lodge and West Coast Fishing Club reopened as a local state of emergency remains in effect because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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"Haida Gwaii is a remote community with limited health-care services and only two ventilators," the statement says. "One case would devastate our communities."

The statement says the matriarchs are upholding Haida law through the occupation of the villages, Jung and Sk'aawats.

Both the fishing lodge and club say they are fully complying with orders and guidelines issued by the B.C. government, health authorities and WorkSafeBC.

Brian Clive, vice-president of sales and corporate development for the lodge, said it has had several meetings with Haida leadership and developed plans so that workers do not go into town or anywhere near a Haida community. It also has medical staff on site and if a COVID-19 case were to develop, there's a plan in place to evacuate the affected person by air to Vancouver.

"We have gone to incredible lengths to avoid any contact with the communities and therefore have created what we call a zero-risk chance of contamination in the communities," he said.

The lodge expects about 80 guests at a time, down from the typical 125, he said. None will be travelling from the United States because the border is closed, he said.

President Brian Legge said the West Coast Fishing Club is remotely located about 83 kilometres from the nearest community and only accessible by boat or air. It also has an emergency evacuation plan in place.

"First and foremost we would never put the health and well-being of Haida Gwaii communities and residents at risk and equally as important our staff and clients," he says in a statement.

"That's why we have worked hard and gone to significant expense to eliminate all contact with the residents of Haida Gwaii and their communities through direct helicopter transportation from the mainland to our remote island and back."

Without the plan, the club's employees would have been out of work and the business faced possibly unsustainable losses, Legge said.

The club is continuing to speak with the council of the Haida Nation, he added.

Duffy Edgars, chief councillor of Old Massett Village, said he supports the matriarchs and expected 20 to 30 people to occupy the villages. He said he didn't expect any interactions with lodge staff.

"We're just occupying our land and doing some fishing," he said.

Haida member Deana Young, who was on her way to support the matriarchs, said the community is following physical distancing protocols, while children have not returned to school and are not seeing their elders.

"One person coming from outside our region is one person too many," said Young.

The occupation of the land is an exercise of Haida rights to the land, she said.

"What we are doing is occupying our lands, asserting our rights to harvest the foods that we live on and to ensure food security for our communities," she said.

— By Amy Smart in Vancouver.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 10, 2020.

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[fycanadianpolitics]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — As the premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark is on the public payroll, pulling down a salary of 195,000 Canadian dollars in taxpayer money. But if that were not enough, she also gets an annual stipend of up to 50,000 Canadian dollars — nearly $40,000 — from her party, financed by political contributions.

Personal enrichment from the handouts of wealthy donors, some of whom have paid tens of thousands of dollars to meet with her at private party fund-raisers? No conflict of interest here, according to a pair of rulings last year by the province’s conflict-of-interest commissioner — whose son works for Ms. Clark.

“B.C. is the wild west,” said Duff Conacher, a founder of Democracy Watch, a Canadian civic organization that has petitioned the Supreme Court of British Columbia to void the commissioner’s decision. The group argues that there is a “reasonable apprehension of bias” because the commissioner’s son is a deputy minister in Ms. Clark’s cabinet. The court heard arguments in the case on Friday.

Ethics in politics is a hot topic right now in Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced criticism for attending exclusive fund-raisers, and other Canadian provinces are tightening the reins on political contributions. Against that backdrop, the case in British Columbia stands out for the unabashedly cozy relationship between private interests and government officials in the province, a political state of affairs that will be tested at the ballot box in May.

Unlike many other provinces in Canada, British Columbia has no limits on political donations. Wealthy individuals, corporations, unions and even foreigners are allowed to donate large amounts to political parties there. Critics of the premier and her party, the conservative British Columbia Liberal Party, say the provincial government has been transformed into a lucrative business, dominated by special interests that trade donations for political favors, undermining Canada’s reputation for functional, consensus-driven democracy.

“What it says to people is money talks and votes don’t,” said Dermod Travis, the executive director of IntegrityBC, a nonpartisan political watchdog group based in Victoria, the provincial capital. “When anyone anywhere in the world can donate as much as they want to the system, you have an even bigger threat to the system.”

Much of what is considered business as usual in British Columbia is illegal elsewhere in Canada. The federal government bars unions, corporations and foreigners from donating to candidates for federal office, and donations by individual citizens are limited to 1,525 Canadian dollars, about $1,150, a year. Those limits were imposed after a fund-raising scandal in the 1990s.

Provincial ethics rules are a patchwork of restrictions and loopholes. Corporate and union donations are banned in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Alberta and, since Jan. 1, in Ontario. Ontario provincial officials, their staff members and party leaders are also barred from attending fund-raisers. Quebec goes even further, limiting party donations to 100 Canadian dollars, roughly $76 a year, and only by individual citizens.

British Columbia is not the only province to refuse to impose such tight limits, but democracy advocates say the large amounts of money flowing there are a particular cause for concern.

Critics say that big donors to Ms. Clark’s party often appear to have benefited financially from their political generosity. These include banks, Chinese real estate developers, and companies like Imperial Metals, the owner of a mine tailings pond that spilled billions of gallons of toxic debris in 2014, and was then permitted to operate an even larger mine. Imperial Metals did not respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, Ms. Clark’s government approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain oil pipeline project, after opposing the proposal at hearings last January. Political donation records show that Kinder Morgan and other oil industry supporters of the project had donated more than 718,000 Canadian dollars, about $546,000, to the BC Liberal party through March 2016.

Some pooled donations have ended up in the pockets of the premier, following a longstanding practice by her political party. Ms. Clark has received more than 277,000 Canadian dollars, or $210,000, from the BC Liberal Party since 2011, according to Canadian news media reports. No other party in British Columbia pays its leader a stipend, and only one other Canadian premier, in Saskatchewan, receives such funds; the practice has largely vanished elsewhere as the provinces have tightened their political finance rules.

Ms. Clark’s office declined to answer specific questions about her conduct and her relationship with the conflict-of-interest commissioner and his son. Instead, British Columbia’s minister of justice, Suzanne Anton, who is also its attorney general, sent a statement saying that the province’s standards “should give the public confidence in the electoral system.”

In an email, the B.C. Liberal Party said its leader’s stipend was a longstanding tradition that previous conflict-of-interest commissioners had found acceptable.

Last April, Ms. Clark’s stipend was challenged by David Eby, a member of the provincial legislative assembly from the B.C. New Democratic Party. He filed complaints with the conflict-of-interest commissioner about the stipend and about Ms. Clark’s attendance at fund-raisers where donors paid thousands of dollars to meet with her privately.

“In practice, it means that if you’re part of a coterie of high-net-worth donors, your private interests get priority over what’s best for the province,” Mr. Eby said.

In nine years as British Columbia’s conflict of interest commissioner, Paul Fraser said he has never found any government official to be in violation of the province’s Conflict of Interest Act. Mr. Fraser has donated to Ms. Clark’s political party, and so has his son, John Paul Fraser, who worked on Ms. Clark’s election campaign and now serves in her cabinet as the deputy minister for government communications and public engagement.

The elder Mr. Fraser ruled in May that his son’s boss did not violate the act by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from her party while attending exclusive party fund-raisers, despite the law prohibiting actions by officials that may create even the “reasonable perception” that they might be affected by private interests.

Democracy Watch asked the provincial Supreme Court in October to overturn the ruling, arguing that the commissioner should have recused himself, as he did in a 2012 case against Ms. Clark.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Fraser rejected accusations of bias over his son’s job. “The issue, I guess, is, should people’s children and their career aspirations trump other considerations,” he said. He added that his 2012 recusal was a special case, because his son had been in business with the premier’s ex-husband.

Mr. Fraser’s lawyers have tried to get the case dismissed by arguing that the commissioner’s opinions are immune to judicial review.

[topmixtrends]

GROUNDBREAKING NEW feminist books like Roxane Gay’s Not That Bad and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele proffer strategies for navigating Trump’s America, and bookshelves are stocked with volumes celebrating high-achieving female rulebreakers, like Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding’s Nasty Women and Anne Helen Petersen’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud. But in 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality (Harper Perennial), journalist Allison Yarrow takes a step back, seeking to account for how we got to a place where Americans elected a confessed sexual predator and women are still, nearly a half century after Roe v. Wade, fighting for ownership of their bodies.

Yarrow argues that we laid the foundation for our current cultural moment 20 years ago, during the golden hour before we succumbed to internet culture. Despite massive potential in the ’90s for women to claim agency at work and at home, Yarrow reveals that “the decade was marked by a shocking, accelerating effort to subordinate them.” Women who gained too much power, or got too angry, sexual, or ambitious, ended up reviled by American culture. Yarrow painstakingly revisits the stories of figures like Tonya Harding, Monica Lewinsky, Anita Hill, Janet Reno, and Nicole Brown Simpson, offering deft reinterpretations of the subtext that rendered them controversial in their own moment. Yarrow coins the term “bitchification,” the formula that “reduced women to their sexual function in order to thwart their progress.” Bitchification, as Yarrow theorizes it, is a socio-cultural process by which a woman makes headlines, breaks patriarchal mores, is judged by her sexuality, and sees her credibility and reputation shattered. 90s Bitch presents a convincing case that women lost political, cultural, and sexual power grabs in the last decade of the 20th century, shaping the gender inequality we’re still experiencing today.

As a ’90s kid myself, I recall that the way we treated the women mentioned above — like punch lines, rather than human beings — never sat well with me, though I couldn’t say why at the time. Like many of Yarrow’s readers, I absorbed stories like Hill’s and Lewinsky’s before I’d embraced “feminism,” a term that conjured unshaven legs and bra burning in a decade that glorified the hyper-feminine girly girl. Now I know why I squirmed: those attacks didn’t just target powerful and misbehaving “bitches” in the public eye, they targeted all women.

“Bitchification” may be a new idea, but “bitch” isn’t. Yarrow reminds us that the term has long been “the worst invective hurled at women.” Etymologists trace the origins of “bitch” to Artemis, the Greek goddess of chastity who could transform into a dog and was seen as secretly begging for sex. “From its very conception,” Yarrow explains, “‘bitch’ was a verbal weapon designed to restrain and silence women and strip them of their power.” By 1811, the word was codified in an English dictionary as a greater insult than “whore,” and by 1987, two chart-topping rappers centered the term. Public Enemy released “Sophisticated Bitch,” while N.W.A. dropped “A Bitch Iz a Bitch,” which characterized bitches as money-grubbing sex fiends who could “eat shit and die.” Over the years, women have attempted to reclaim the epithet, and Yarrow observes that “what was once a derogation is now seen as an appellation of empowerment and sisterhood.” Millennial women might jokingly refer to their “resting bitch face,” ironically embrace the label “basic bitch” — and the fashion and lifestyle implications that come with it — or don the title “boss bitch,” to signal career ambition and independence. Earlier generations started the trend, though. Meredith Brooks’s 1997 hit “Bitch” left radio stations debating whether to bleep out the word, since Brooks used it not as a slur but to signify strength and power. And a 1985 record dispute led to Madonna famously saying, “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, OK.” Still, Yarrow argues that attempts to use the word to capture the multiplicity of female identity will be feeble if we don’t face how the moniker still “degrades, disparages, and disenfranchises.”

Yarrow is a skillful scene setter, and unpacks trends that objectified women’s bodies, making it easy for bitchification to take root. The ’90s saw the rise of the human Barbie doll ideal, memorably celebrated and critiqued in Aqua’s 1997 hit single “Barbie Girl,” and driven by stars like Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith, whom the media (and not just tabloids) characterized as breasts, personified. Yarrow cites a story in The Economist claiming that with Smith’s breasts, “a girl from nowhere […] could do anything.” But Smith’s body was also her undoing. She began to “swell and then shrink over the years, making her a target” for cruel media scrutiny. When she died, Smith “was ceaselessly mocked for pursuing love and self-esteem from the outside in, even though it was exactly what society had instructed her to do.” This bait-and-switch tactic, which penalizes women for playing to the feminist ideal and for opting out, crops up throughout 90s Bitch.

Yarrow shows that fat-shaming was standard for fictional characters on primetime TV, too. Monica Geller of Friends fights to live down her history as “fat Monica,” while the 90210 pilot shows Steve taunting Kelly for her nose job, asking if she’ll turn to liposuction or a tummy tuck next. Yarrow posits it’s no coincidence that plastic surgery rates skyrocketed, teen diet programs abounded, and Victoria’s Secret boomed as women tried to fit the new model of beauty: “bionic, breasty, and blonde.” They were promised that “this was achievable through consumption: buy this diet or this underwear to make men want to sleep with you, because being desired by men is the path to self-esteem, power, and love.” In other words, success for American women was still about attracting male attention, but now they could achieve this success at the mall or on the operating table.

To further complicate the landscape, abstinence-only sex education made girls gatekeepers, and laid the onus of preventing STD transmission and unplanned pregnancies on them. “Boys were encouraged and even pressured to pursue sex (with girls and girls only),” writes Yarrow, while girls were “blamed and shamed for sexual consequences.” It was a lose-lose situation. Girls were taught to fear sex “in school and society, and by elders and peers,” but this advice was at direct odds with what they “were sold about sex” on TV and in magazines. It was under these conditions, Yarrow asserts, that the pattern of bitchification could take hold. If “society values female bodies primarily for their function and consumption,” it’s easy to shift the conversation away from their skills and qualifications. This reinforced the message that when women posed a threat to men, they’d be trivialized and knocked out of power. Girls waiting in the ranks learned there wasn’t a place for them.

Yarrow shows that, while the recipe was always the same, bitchification came in popular flavors, like femme fatale and frigid old maid. Much of 90s Bitch is smartly organized around unpacking these labels, with chapters on how women were punished for being too sexual, cold, angry, unfeminine, or simply too competent. To demonstrate, Yarrow opens the vault of high-profile cases that were either too hot or too cold. Anita Hill, to detail one example, was simply “too cold” to be credible in her case against Clarence Thomas. In 1991, she testified against Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court, citing the years of sexual harassment she suffered as his subordinate. Yarrow conjures the “indelible image of Hill sitting alone behind a microphone, testifying opposite fourteen white male senators performing their disbelief on behalf of disbelieving men everywhere.” They seemed bent on bitchifying Hill, a lawyer and academic. Senator Howell Heflin asked Hill if she was a “scorned woman” with a “martyr complex” and “militant attitude.” Rather than focus on her testimony, they attacked her character, labeling her desperate for male attention. A law school classmate “detailed how Hill couldn’t stomach men rejecting her.” Hill was pegged an erotomaniac and paid with her career; she relocated to Oklahoma to escape Justice Thomas’s advances, taking a job at a barely accredited institution, while Thomas still sits on the Supreme Court. Hill was punished for speaking up, and is remembered as a controversy rather than a flag bearer.

Yarrow doesn’t have to dig through right-wing sources to reveal the rampant sexism and double standards that plagued women during the ’90s, often in ways that we continue to experience today. Her research shows that the liberal bastions publishing #MeToo exposés and touting body positivity today were as culpable as the tabloids in the pre-millenium period. A New Yorker article quipped that before the Clinton affair, Monica Lewinsky’s “only other serious interest in life was dieting.” The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd called Lewinsky “too tubby to be in the high school in-crowd,” ditsy, and “pathetically adolescent,” mockingly referring to her relationship with the president as “way unique.” Dowd won a Pulitzer for her coverage. Lewinsky is only now beginning to shed the stigma she has lived with for two decades.

Even women who weren’t sexual at all could be lambasted. Yarrow traces how ruthlessly Janet Reno, the first woman attorney general, was maligned for being unfeminine. Reno, a tall, single lawyer with cropped hair, “lacked the feminine qualities and life choices typical for women, and the run-of-the-mill sexism wouldn’t work.” Instead of an ice queen or dangerous seductress, she was “a man in women’s clothes.” On Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell implied he did Reno a favor when he played her straight in “Janet Reno’s Dance Party,” because she seemed so asexual. “Ferrell said he wouldn’t have crafted such a sketch if Reno was a ‘normal woman.’”

Conditions were even worse for women of color. Yarrow flags how concepts like the “damaged girl” trope told the story of straight white women who turned to cutting to cope with unachievable body standards. But, it left out LGBTQ women and immigrants whose self-injury might stem from other pressures, like the experience of navigating gender identity or being a first-generation American. Women of color were more likely to be perceived as dangerous than their white peers. “Unless it could be commoditized, like Alanis Morissette on the cover of Rolling Stone, public brashness and anger was unacceptable for women in the 90s, mostly because it was feared,” Yarrow explains. “Black women’s anger was feared even more.” Yarrow shows how this played out for TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who was vilified in the media for setting fire to the house she shared with NFL player Andre Rison. That Rison abused her before the blaze is usually left out; the press played up the spectacle and deemed her out of control. Further, Yarrow shows how, while white women like prosecutor Marcia Clark were attacked for being working mothers, black women were conversely ridiculed for not finding jobs: “While white mothers who worked […] were pilloried for appearing to shirk domestic and motherhood duties, unemployed or underemployed black mothers were shamed for failing to work and staying home with their kids.” For women of color, the trap of bitchification was doubly complicated, and the long-term effects of those damaging narratives and roadblocks to success are still playing out today.

The best moments in the 90s Bitch are when Yarrow swivels away from the archives to reflect on her own participation in the cultural process of bitchification. Here’s how she evaluates her teenage response to Fiona Apple’s hit music video “Criminal,” which featured an emaciated, 19-year-old Apple writhing on the floor of a house party, sarcastically confessing to mistreating men:

I was Apple’s target demographic, yet I absorbed the critiques of her and parroted them myself […] I was sold and bought into what Apple was rejecting — beauty, sexuality, and even personality shaped and policed by men. Apple’s attempt to undermine the “perfect girl” aesthetic — shaming the gaze, spilling her guts, and starving her flesh from her frame — threatened the affable, obedient, perfect-girl archetype that my peers and I were trying so hard to mirror. […] Apple was “damaged goods” — something I longed not to be. She upset me. Now I realize that was exactly the point.

That’s the real power of 90s Bitch — it looks beyond the gender war many girls didn’t realize they were fighting to show how they were implicated in their own submission.

Even worse, girls were promised a solution that turned out to be a mirage as “self-esteem” became the buzzword of the day. “We were told to ‘have’ self-esteem and, if we didn’t have it, to ‘get’ it,” Yarrow writes, “but nobody told us precisely how.” That’s where marketing stepped in. Brands promised women and girls that they could perfect their bodies and purchase confidence. Stores like Limited Too might have touted Girl Power but they diluted the movement into “a shopping spree.” Embracing girly fashions may have felt like freedom — “Choice, after all, was a feminist plank” — but Yarrow argues that we’re still paying for the loss of true empowerment.

There are statistics to back up this claim. Millennial women hold more bachelor’s degrees than men, yet they haven’t achieved workplace equality. Women’s median hourly wage is up — but it’s still only 84 percent of men’s — and they are still hired and promoted less frequently than male counterparts. Teen pregnancies have dropped, but maternal mortality rates have risen, and the United States remains one of the only developed nations without mandatory paid parental leave. While the current round of elections witnesses the entrance of female candidates in greater numbers than before, Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election “delivered an undeniable blow to American women.” In light of bitchification culture, Trump’s election was a natural development, Yarrow argues, being as he is a reflection of “the blatant and lewd sexism woven into the fabric of our society finally emerged unabashed in a modern presidential campaign, and in the White House itself.”

For those pining for simpler times, Yarrow’s 90s Bitch is an uncomfortable read and a reminder that widespread sexism and misogyny aren’t new problems — and that the solutions won’t be easy. The good news is that we can use Yarrow’s framework to reevaluate the stories we tell and the narratives we accept about women who step outside the prescribed lines of female success. In doing so, we can set aside some of our ’90s nostalgia and work toward a future of gender parity.

¤

Randle Browning is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in LARB, The Brooklyn Rail, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.

The post The Bitchified Decade We’re Still Paying For appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2M7cvur

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An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/an-alabama-robocall-invokes-ugly-tropes/

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

Alabama’s Senate race received an ugly new wrinkle on Tuesday night, thanks to an apparent series of robocalls seem to be designed to fan resentments—of the press, of Northerners, and perhaps of Jewish reporters.

Local news station WKRG reported that one of its viewers received a robocall from a man impersonating a Washington Post reporter. In it, the man offers to pay women thousands of dollars if they’ll make false accusations against Roy Moore, the state’s former chief justice and the Republican candidate to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate.

Hi, this is Lenny Bernstein. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims; however, we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at lbernstein@washingtonpost.com. Thank you.

Taken at face value, the call appears to be a hamfisted effort to discredit the Post’s bombshell reporting into Moore’s interactions with young women when he was a county prosecutor in the 1970s. The newspaper interviewed four women who said Moore made efforts to court them when he was in his early 30s and they were teenagers. One of them, Leigh Corfman, said Moore made sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old.

Those stories sparked a political firestorm for Moore and a headache for national Republicans, many of whom were already uneasy with the firebrand jurist. After a fifth woman came forward on Monday to accuse him of sexual assault, high-ranking GOP legislators in Washington, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, called on Moore to step aside. Moore, for his part, has denied and denounced all of the allegations made against him. He’s also refused to step aside from the contest for Alabama’s Senate seat even as some polls show his lead narrowing.

Moore and his supporters have repeatedly blamed the media for his troubles. And on Tuesday night, his attorney released a letter sent to the Alabama Media Group threatening legal action in response to its reporting.

The Washington Post swiftly denounced the robocalls on Tuesday night. “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post,” Marty Baron, the newspaper’s executive editor, told WKRG. “The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”

To make matters more confusing, there’s actually a journalist working at the Post named Lenny Bernstein. He covers health-related topics, not politics. On Twitter, he defended his name and criticized those who sought to use it to slander his employer.

To all who’ve been in touch: Thanks for the support. For the record, I definitely DO work at the Post and we definitely DON’T report that way. Appalling effort to discredit the great work the Post and other journos do.

— Lenny Bernstein (@LennyMBernstein) November 15, 2017

Impersonating a journalist to smear the entire profession is a nasty enough maneuver on its own. But the Alabama robocall also seems to draw upon the dark motifs of antisemitism to accomplish its goal. The fake Bernstein’s nasally, high-pitched voice and forced New York accent evoke antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes. (The real Bernstein, for the record, sounds nothing like this.)

There’s a long, ugly history of intertwining anti-Semitism and attacks on media outlets. Historian Victoria Saker Woeste, writing in The Washington Post, described the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Jewish tract first published in tsarist Russia, as the first modern instance of “fake news.” The pamphlet claimed a cabal of Jewish leaders had taken control of the media as part of a plot for world dominion.

The propagandists behind the “Protocols” attributed extraordinary power to the media. A section titled “Control of the Press” “reveals” that Jews seek to control every aspect of the media to protect their new, worldwide government from attack or criticism. Through false stories and skewed analysis, the Jewish-controlled media would lead the masses to see the world not as it was, but as Jews wished it to be seen: “Our subjects will be convinced [of] the existence of full freedom of speech and so [will] give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers.”

Fake news, then, begins as Jewish infiltration of the legitimate media and transforms into complete domination: “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.”

As Nazi Germany sought actual world dominion a few decades later, it played upon similar themes to vilify newspapers and radio stations as lügenpresse, or “lying press.” Some Trump supporters borrowed the phrase from its Nazi originators to criticize the media when then-candidate Donald Trump intensified his criticism of journalists during last year’s presidential election.

Trump’s attacks and Tuesday’s smear take root in fertile soil. A YouGov poll taken in August found that 54 percent of Trump voters found the Post untrustworthy or very untrustworthy, compared to only 26 percent of the general public. Trump captured Alabama in the 2016 election with a 27-point margin of victory.

Original Article:

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Real Estate - Financial abuse of elderly parents on the rise as housing becomes more unaffordable

Real Estate - Financial abuse of elderly parents on the rise as housing becomes more unaffordable

Real Estate - Financial abuse of elderly parents on the rise as housing becomes more unaffordable

Real Estate - Parents are increasingly being bullied into downsizing prematurely and even threatened with not being able to see their grandchildren if they don’t give their kids an early inheritance to allow them to enter the housing market, it’s been claimed. Following Fairfax Media’s exclusive report that one in four Gen Y Australians are now relying on an inheritance to be able to afford to buy a house, advocates for older people have come forward to report a marked rise in pressure from families to hand over their money.  “We’re seeing this kind of inter-generational financial abuse really growing,” says Meagan Lawson, CEO of the Council on the Ageing (COTA) NSW. “It starts as, ‘Can I borrow …?’ But over time it becomes quite abusive where people feel they have to give money to keep harmony in the family. “I think it’s a relatively new thing, probably because of problems of housing affordability, but this is where the growth is in the financial abuse of older people.” This “inheritance impatience” can have dire consequences on their lives too, Ms Lawson says. Some are forced into retirement villages too early, some are coerced into complying with their children’s wishes through withdrawal of access to grandchildren and others are “persuaded” to move in with family, sell their homes and hand over the proceeds. When this goes wrong, it can even, in some cases, lead to homelessness, advises lawyer Faith Hawthorne. The revelations follow the publication of a survey of 1000 Australians commissioned by Slater and Gordon Lawyers, which found that 26 per cent of millennials said they had, or would need to, rely on an inheritance windfall to purchase the home they wanted. Slater and Gordon associate Lara Nurpuri said that had led to more young people asking their parents to ‘Give me the money!’ as an early inheritance, sometimes creating tensions in the family, or going to court after their parents’ death to fight for a bigger share of the proceeds. But now an even darker side of the trend is emerging, as professionals who work with older Australians say some parents and even grandparents are suffering terribly from their kids’ greed. Kerry Marshall, manager of the NSW Elder Abuse Helpline and Resource Unit, says the number of calls to the helpline is increasing and, anecdotally, professionals are reporting more cases of kids being after their parents’ money. A growing sense of entitlement, particularly from millennials, where children see themselves as having a right to their parents’ money is also fuelling “inheritance conservation”. “Here, the adult children want to preserve their parents’ money for themselves, so they aren’t spending any of it on the care of their parents, and we’re seeing a lot of neglect linked to this financial abuse,” Ms Marshall says. A new pilot program started last week in NSW, after its successful introduction in Victoria two and a half years ago, to have solicitors in healthcare centres where they can counsel older people who tell their doctor they’re having problems. Justice Connect lawyer Ms Hawthorne says financial abuse by family members is “definitely” the most common type of abuse they’re reporting. “The most common scenarios are where there’s been misuse of their power of attorney or where an older person sells their property or mortgages it, giving the sales proceeds or the equity in their home to their son or daughter. “They might do this in the expectation that their child will then be providing care for them in return, but often this isn’t discussed in any detail beforehand, and sometimes it doesn’t happen, or arrangements break down.” A NSW Legislative Council inquiry into elder abuse last year also found that financial abuse is one of the most common forms of elder abuse. Among the cases it reported was a granddaughter who tried to transfer her grandmother’s house into her name for $1 in return for a verbal promise of care and a son who transferred his 92-year-old incapacitated mum’s house to himself, also for $1. Read more   Click to Post

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An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/an-alabama-robocall-invokes-ugly-tropes/

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

Alabama’s Senate race received an ugly new wrinkle on Tuesday night, thanks to an apparent series of robocalls seem to be designed to fan resentments—of the press, of Northerners, and perhaps of Jewish reporters.

Local news station WKRG reported that one of its viewers received a robocall from a man impersonating a Washington Post reporter. In it, the man offers to pay women thousands of dollars if they’ll make false accusations against Roy Moore, the state’s former chief justice and the Republican candidate to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate.

Hi, this is Lenny Bernstein. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims; however, we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at lbernstein@washingtonpost.com. Thank you.

Taken at face value, the call appears to be a hamfisted effort to discredit the Post’s bombshell reporting into Moore’s interactions with young women when he was a county prosecutor in the 1970s. The newspaper interviewed four women who said Moore made efforts to court them when he was in his early 30s and they were teenagers. One of them, Leigh Corfman, said Moore made sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old.

Those stories sparked a political firestorm for Moore and a headache for national Republicans, many of whom were already uneasy with the firebrand jurist. After a fifth woman came forward on Monday to accuse him of sexual assault, high-ranking GOP legislators in Washington, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, called on Moore to step aside. Moore, for his part, has denied and denounced all of the allegations made against him. He’s also refused to step aside from the contest for Alabama’s Senate seat even as some polls show his lead narrowing.

Moore and his supporters have repeatedly blamed the media for his troubles. And on Tuesday night, his attorney released a letter sent to the Alabama Media Group threatening legal action in response to its reporting.

The Washington Post swiftly denounced the robocalls on Tuesday night. “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post,” Marty Baron, the newspaper’s executive editor, told WKRG. “The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”

To make matters more confusing, there’s actually a journalist working at the Post named Lenny Bernstein. He covers health-related topics, not politics. On Twitter, he defended his name and criticized those who sought to use it to slander his employer.

To all who’ve been in touch: Thanks for the support. For the record, I definitely DO work at the Post and we definitely DON’T report that way. Appalling effort to discredit the great work the Post and other journos do.

— Lenny Bernstein (@LennyMBernstein) November 15, 2017

Impersonating a journalist to smear the entire profession is a nasty enough maneuver on its own. But the Alabama robocall also seems to draw upon the dark motifs of antisemitism to accomplish its goal. The fake Bernstein’s nasally, high-pitched voice and forced New York accent evoke antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes. (The real Bernstein, for the record, sounds nothing like this.)

There’s a long, ugly history of intertwining anti-Semitism and attacks on media outlets. Historian Victoria Saker Woeste, writing in The Washington Post, described the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Jewish tract first published in tsarist Russia, as the first modern instance of “fake news.” The pamphlet claimed a cabal of Jewish leaders had taken control of the media as part of a plot for world dominion.

The propagandists behind the “Protocols” attributed extraordinary power to the media. A section titled “Control of the Press” “reveals” that Jews seek to control every aspect of the media to protect their new, worldwide government from attack or criticism. Through false stories and skewed analysis, the Jewish-controlled media would lead the masses to see the world not as it was, but as Jews wished it to be seen: “Our subjects will be convinced [of] the existence of full freedom of speech and so [will] give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers.”

Fake news, then, begins as Jewish infiltration of the legitimate media and transforms into complete domination: “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.”

As Nazi Germany sought actual world dominion a few decades later, it played upon similar themes to vilify newspapers and radio stations as lügenpresse, or “lying press.” Some Trump supporters borrowed the phrase from its Nazi originators to criticize the media when then-candidate Donald Trump intensified his criticism of journalists during last year’s presidential election.

Trump’s attacks and Tuesday’s smear take root in fertile soil. A YouGov poll taken in August found that 54 percent of Trump voters found the Post untrustworthy or very untrustworthy, compared to only 26 percent of the general public. Trump captured Alabama in the 2016 election with a 27-point margin of victory.

Original Article:

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[usnewsaggregator-blog]

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/an-alabama-robocall-invokes-ugly-tropes/

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

Alabama’s Senate race received an ugly new wrinkle on Tuesday night, thanks to an apparent series of robocalls seem to be designed to fan resentments—of the press, of Northerners, and perhaps of Jewish reporters.

Local news station WKRG reported that one of its viewers received a robocall from a man impersonating a Washington Post reporter. In it, the man offers to pay women thousands of dollars if they’ll make false accusations against Roy Moore, the state’s former chief justice and the Republican candidate to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate.

Hi, this is Lenny Bernstein. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims; however, we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at lbernstein@washingtonpost.com. Thank you.

Taken at face value, the call appears to be a hamfisted effort to discredit the Post’s bombshell reporting into Moore’s interactions with young women when he was a county prosecutor in the 1970s. The newspaper interviewed four women who said Moore made efforts to court them when he was in his early 30s and they were teenagers. One of them, Leigh Corfman, said Moore made sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old.

Those stories sparked a political firestorm for Moore and a headache for national Republicans, many of whom were already uneasy with the firebrand jurist. After a fifth woman came forward on Monday to accuse him of sexual assault, high-ranking GOP legislators in Washington, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, called on Moore to step aside. Moore, for his part, has denied and denounced all of the allegations made against him. He’s also refused to step aside from the contest for Alabama’s Senate seat even as some polls show his lead narrowing.

Moore and his supporters have repeatedly blamed the media for his troubles. And on Tuesday night, his attorney released a letter sent to the Alabama Media Group threatening legal action in response to its reporting.

The Washington Post swiftly denounced the robocalls on Tuesday night. “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post,” Marty Baron, the newspaper’s executive editor, told WKRG. “The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”

To make matters more confusing, there’s actually a journalist working at the Post named Lenny Bernstein. He covers health-related topics, not politics. On Twitter, he defended his name and criticized those who sought to use it to slander his employer.

To all who’ve been in touch: Thanks for the support. For the record, I definitely DO work at the Post and we definitely DON’T report that way. Appalling effort to discredit the great work the Post and other journos do.

— Lenny Bernstein (@LennyMBernstein) November 15, 2017

Impersonating a journalist to smear the entire profession is a nasty enough maneuver on its own. But the Alabama robocall also seems to draw upon the dark motifs of antisemitism to accomplish its goal. The fake Bernstein’s nasally, high-pitched voice and forced New York accent evoke antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes. (The real Bernstein, for the record, sounds nothing like this.)

There’s a long, ugly history of intertwining anti-Semitism and attacks on media outlets. Historian Victoria Saker Woeste, writing in The Washington Post, described the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Jewish tract first published in tsarist Russia, as the first modern instance of “fake news.” The pamphlet claimed a cabal of Jewish leaders had taken control of the media as part of a plot for world dominion.

The propagandists behind the “Protocols” attributed extraordinary power to the media. A section titled “Control of the Press” “reveals” that Jews seek to control every aspect of the media to protect their new, worldwide government from attack or criticism. Through false stories and skewed analysis, the Jewish-controlled media would lead the masses to see the world not as it was, but as Jews wished it to be seen: “Our subjects will be convinced [of] the existence of full freedom of speech and so [will] give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers.”

Fake news, then, begins as Jewish infiltration of the legitimate media and transforms into complete domination: “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.”

As Nazi Germany sought actual world dominion a few decades later, it played upon similar themes to vilify newspapers and radio stations as lügenpresse, or “lying press.” Some Trump supporters borrowed the phrase from its Nazi originators to criticize the media when then-candidate Donald Trump intensified his criticism of journalists during last year’s presidential election.

Trump’s attacks and Tuesday’s smear take root in fertile soil. A YouGov poll taken in August found that 54 percent of Trump voters found the Post untrustworthy or very untrustworthy, compared to only 26 percent of the general public. Trump captured Alabama in the 2016 election with a 27-point margin of victory.

Original Article:

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[usnewsaggregator-blog]

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/an-alabama-robocall-invokes-ugly-tropes/

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

Alabama’s Senate race received an ugly new wrinkle on Tuesday night, thanks to an apparent series of robocalls seem to be designed to fan resentments—of the press, of Northerners, and perhaps of Jewish reporters.

Local news station WKRG reported that one of its viewers received a robocall from a man impersonating a Washington Post reporter. In it, the man offers to pay women thousands of dollars if they’ll make false accusations against Roy Moore, the state’s former chief justice and the Republican candidate to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate.

Hi, this is Lenny Bernstein. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims; however, we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at lbernstein@washingtonpost.com. Thank you.

Taken at face value, the call appears to be a hamfisted effort to discredit the Post’s bombshell reporting into Moore’s interactions with young women when he was a county prosecutor in the 1970s. The newspaper interviewed four women who said Moore made efforts to court them when he was in his early 30s and they were teenagers. One of them, Leigh Corfman, said Moore made sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old.

Those stories sparked a political firestorm for Moore and a headache for national Republicans, many of whom were already uneasy with the firebrand jurist. After a fifth woman came forward on Monday to accuse him of sexual assault, high-ranking GOP legislators in Washington, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, called on Moore to step aside. Moore, for his part, has denied and denounced all of the allegations made against him. He’s also refused to step aside from the contest for Alabama’s Senate seat even as some polls show his lead narrowing.

Moore and his supporters have repeatedly blamed the media for his troubles. And on Tuesday night, his attorney released a letter sent to the Alabama Media Group threatening legal action in response to its reporting.

The Washington Post swiftly denounced the robocalls on Tuesday night. “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post,” Marty Baron, the newspaper’s executive editor, told WKRG. “The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”

To make matters more confusing, there’s actually a journalist working at the Post named Lenny Bernstein. He covers health-related topics, not politics. On Twitter, he defended his name and criticized those who sought to use it to slander his employer.

To all who’ve been in touch: Thanks for the support. For the record, I definitely DO work at the Post and we definitely DON’T report that way. Appalling effort to discredit the great work the Post and other journos do.

— Lenny Bernstein (@LennyMBernstein) November 15, 2017

Impersonating a journalist to smear the entire profession is a nasty enough maneuver on its own. But the Alabama robocall also seems to draw upon the dark motifs of antisemitism to accomplish its goal. The fake Bernstein’s nasally, high-pitched voice and forced New York accent evoke antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes. (The real Bernstein, for the record, sounds nothing like this.)

There’s a long, ugly history of intertwining anti-Semitism and attacks on media outlets. Historian Victoria Saker Woeste, writing in The Washington Post, described the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Jewish tract first published in tsarist Russia, as the first modern instance of “fake news.” The pamphlet claimed a cabal of Jewish leaders had taken control of the media as part of a plot for world dominion.

The propagandists behind the “Protocols” attributed extraordinary power to the media. A section titled “Control of the Press” “reveals” that Jews seek to control every aspect of the media to protect their new, worldwide government from attack or criticism. Through false stories and skewed analysis, the Jewish-controlled media would lead the masses to see the world not as it was, but as Jews wished it to be seen: “Our subjects will be convinced [of] the existence of full freedom of speech and so [will] give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers.”

Fake news, then, begins as Jewish infiltration of the legitimate media and transforms into complete domination: “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.”

As Nazi Germany sought actual world dominion a few decades later, it played upon similar themes to vilify newspapers and radio stations as lügenpresse, or “lying press.” Some Trump supporters borrowed the phrase from its Nazi originators to criticize the media when then-candidate Donald Trump intensified his criticism of journalists during last year’s presidential election.

Trump’s attacks and Tuesday’s smear take root in fertile soil. A YouGov poll taken in August found that 54 percent of Trump voters found the Post untrustworthy or very untrustworthy, compared to only 26 percent of the general public. Trump captured Alabama in the 2016 election with a 27-point margin of victory.

Original Article:

Click here

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/an-alabama-robocall-invokes-ugly-tropes/

An Alabama Robocall Invokes Ugly Tropes

Alabama’s Senate race received an ugly new wrinkle on Tuesday night, thanks to an apparent series of robocalls seem to be designed to fan resentments—of the press, of Northerners, and perhaps of Jewish reporters.

Local news station WKRG reported that one of its viewers received a robocall from a man impersonating a Washington Post reporter. In it, the man offers to pay women thousands of dollars if they’ll make false accusations against Roy Moore, the state’s former chief justice and the Republican candidate to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate.

Hi, this is Lenny Bernstein. I’m a reporter for The Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5,000 and $7,000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims; however, we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at lbernstein@washingtonpost.com. Thank you.

Taken at face value, the call appears to be a hamfisted effort to discredit the Post’s bombshell reporting into Moore’s interactions with young women when he was a county prosecutor in the 1970s. The newspaper interviewed four women who said Moore made efforts to court them when he was in his early 30s and they were teenagers. One of them, Leigh Corfman, said Moore made sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old.

Those stories sparked a political firestorm for Moore and a headache for national Republicans, many of whom were already uneasy with the firebrand jurist. After a fifth woman came forward on Monday to accuse him of sexual assault, high-ranking GOP legislators in Washington, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, called on Moore to step aside. Moore, for his part, has denied and denounced all of the allegations made against him. He’s also refused to step aside from the contest for Alabama’s Senate seat even as some polls show his lead narrowing.

Moore and his supporters have repeatedly blamed the media for his troubles. And on Tuesday night, his attorney released a letter sent to the Alabama Media Group threatening legal action in response to its reporting.

The Washington Post swiftly denounced the robocalls on Tuesday night. “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post,” Marty Baron, the newspaper’s executive editor, told WKRG. “The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”

To make matters more confusing, there’s actually a journalist working at the Post named Lenny Bernstein. He covers health-related topics, not politics. On Twitter, he defended his name and criticized those who sought to use it to slander his employer.

To all who’ve been in touch: Thanks for the support. For the record, I definitely DO work at the Post and we definitely DON’T report that way. Appalling effort to discredit the great work the Post and other journos do.

— Lenny Bernstein (@LennyMBernstein) November 15, 2017

Impersonating a journalist to smear the entire profession is a nasty enough maneuver on its own. But the Alabama robocall also seems to draw upon the dark motifs of antisemitism to accomplish its goal. The fake Bernstein’s nasally, high-pitched voice and forced New York accent evoke antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes. (The real Bernstein, for the record, sounds nothing like this.)

There’s a long, ugly history of intertwining anti-Semitism and attacks on media outlets. Historian Victoria Saker Woeste, writing in The Washington Post, described the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Jewish tract first published in tsarist Russia, as the first modern instance of “fake news.” The pamphlet claimed a cabal of Jewish leaders had taken control of the media as part of a plot for world dominion.

The propagandists behind the “Protocols” attributed extraordinary power to the media. A section titled “Control of the Press” “reveals” that Jews seek to control every aspect of the media to protect their new, worldwide government from attack or criticism. Through false stories and skewed analysis, the Jewish-controlled media would lead the masses to see the world not as it was, but as Jews wished it to be seen: “Our subjects will be convinced [of] the existence of full freedom of speech and so [will] give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers.”

Fake news, then, begins as Jewish infiltration of the legitimate media and transforms into complete domination: “Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.”

As Nazi Germany sought actual world dominion a few decades later, it played upon similar themes to vilify newspapers and radio stations as lügenpresse, or “lying press.” Some Trump supporters borrowed the phrase from its Nazi originators to criticize the media when then-candidate Donald Trump intensified his criticism of journalists during last year’s presidential election.

Trump’s attacks and Tuesday’s smear take root in fertile soil. A YouGov poll taken in August found that 54 percent of Trump voters found the Post untrustworthy or very untrustworthy, compared to only 26 percent of the general public. Trump captured Alabama in the 2016 election with a 27-point margin of victory.

Original Article:

Click here

[realestatedigitalsales]

Real Estate - Financial abuse of elderly parents on the rise as housing becomes more unaffordable

Real Estate - Financial abuse of elderly parents on the rise as housing becomes more unaffordable

Real Estate - Financial abuse of elderly parents on the rise as housing becomes more unaffordable

Real Estate - Parents are increasingly being bullied into downsizing prematurely and even threatened with not being able to see their grandchildren if they don’t give their kids an early inheritance to allow them to enter the housing market, it’s been claimed. Following Fairfax Media’s exclusive report that one in four Gen Y Australians are now relying on an inheritance to be able to afford to buy a house, advocates for older people have come forward to report a marked rise in pressure from families to hand over their money.  “We’re seeing this kind of inter-generational financial abuse really growing,” says Meagan Lawson, CEO of the Council on the Ageing (COTA) NSW. “It starts as, ‘Can I borrow …?’ But over time it becomes quite abusive where people feel they have to give money to keep harmony in the family. “I think it’s a relatively new thing, probably because of problems of housing affordability, but this is where the growth is in the financial abuse of older people.” This “inheritance impatience” can have dire consequences on their lives too, Ms Lawson says. Some are forced into retirement villages too early, some are coerced into complying with their children’s wishes through withdrawal of access to grandchildren and others are “persuaded” to move in with family, sell their homes and hand over the proceeds. When this goes wrong, it can even, in some cases, lead to homelessness, advises lawyer Faith Hawthorne. The revelations follow the publication of a survey of 1000 Australians commissioned by Slater and Gordon Lawyers, which found that 26 per cent of millennials said they had, or would need to, rely on an inheritance windfall to purchase the home they wanted. Slater and Gordon associate Lara Nurpuri said that had led to more young people asking their parents to ‘Give me the money!’ as an early inheritance, sometimes creating tensions in the family, or going to court after their parents’ death to fight for a bigger share of the proceeds. But now an even darker side of the trend is emerging, as professionals who work with older Australians say some parents and even grandparents are suffering terribly from their kids’ greed. Kerry Marshall, manager of the NSW Elder Abuse Helpline and Resource Unit, says the number of calls to the helpline is increasing and, anecdotally, professionals are reporting more cases of kids being after their parents’ money. A growing sense of entitlement, particularly from millennials, where children see themselves as having a right to their parents’ money is also fuelling “inheritance conservation”. “Here, the adult children want to preserve their parents’ money for themselves, so they aren’t spending any of it on the care of their parents, and we’re seeing a lot of neglect linked to this financial abuse,” Ms Marshall says. A new pilot program started last week in NSW, after its successful introduction in Victoria two and a half years ago, to have solicitors in healthcare centres where they can counsel older people who tell their doctor they’re having problems. Justice Connect lawyer Ms Hawthorne says financial abuse by family members is “definitely” the most common type of abuse they’re reporting. “The most common scenarios are where there’s been misuse of their power of attorney or where an older person sells their property or mortgages it, giving the sales proceeds or the equity in their home to their son or daughter. “They might do this in the expectation that their child will then be providing care for them in return, but often this isn’t discussed in any detail beforehand, and sometimes it doesn’t happen, or arrangements break down.” A NSW Legislative Council inquiry into elder abuse last year also found that financial abuse is one of the most common forms of elder abuse. Among the cases it reported was a granddaughter who tried to transfer her grandmother’s house into her name for $1 in return for a verbal promise of care and a son who transferred his 92-year-old incapacitated mum’s house to himself, also for $1. Read more   Click to Post