#also. watch liberty media sell the rights in 5 years or so to the saudi funds

[chussyracing]

highly controversial opinion: i'm glad the application didn't go through YET because the current regs aren't ready for another team, let alone one building on a green field (unlike audi buying an existing team) and starting out with alpine slash renault power units wouldn't be beneficial either. now they can shift their focus to the 2026 f1 regulations and strenghten the relationship with general motors to enter the competition with them in 2028.

[takebackthedream]

As the World Watches Syria, Don’t Forget About Yemen by Richard Eskow

In the time it takes to read these words, a child under the age of five will probably die in Yemen.

And, as this is being written, the U.N. Security Council is meeting to discuss a gas attack in Syria. President Trump, with newly-appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton at his side, says he will decide on his course of action within 24 to 48 hours.

The Syrian people’s tragedy is enormous. So is the possibility for military confrontation between two nuclear powers.

But while the headlines focus on Syria, and as a multitude of voices call for increased military involvement there, don’t forget the tragedy in Yemen. We can save lives much more easily there. We don’t have to send troops or launch missiles.

All we have to do is leave.

Empathy and Intervention

Political scientists at the University of Toronto have linked empathy to left-leaning political views. Linguist George Lakoff associates the liberal personality with the “nurturant parent” model of the family. And the stereotypical American self-image, across the political spectrum, is that of someone who is willing to help others.

Interestingly, most Americans see other Americans as “selfish,” according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey.

Perhaps that’s why presidential candidate Bill Clinton used empathic language when he argued for US military action in Bosnia and Herzegovina – “because,” said candidate Clinton, “I’m horrified by what I’ve seen.”

That language reinforced what the New York Times called Clinton’s “aggressive tack” on the region.

Under President Clinton, NATO conducted years of bombing in the region and sent 60,000 troops to enforce the Dayton Accords. Clinton faced resistance from left and right. That conflict was, in the words of the New York Times Editorial Board, “not America’s war.” But Clinton and his team invoked the image of the US as the world’s leader – and the suffering of children – to make the case for intervention.

More Than Just a Place

In a 1995 speech announcing his decision to send peacekeeping troops, Clinton shrewdly leavened his liberal empathy (“In fulfilling this mission, we will have the chance to help stop the killing of innocent civilians, especially children”) with self-interest (“and at the same time, to bring stability to central Europe, a region of the world that is vital to our national interests.”)

Clinton then pivoted to the time-tested theme of the US as a uniquely generous and selfless military force. “America has always been more than just a place,” he said, adding:

America has embodied an idea that has become the ideal for billions of people throughout the world… America is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … America has done more than simply stand for these ideals. We have acted on them and sacrificed for them. Our people fought two world wars so that freedom could triumph over tyranny.

This is how liberal interventionism has always been packaged in American politics: with the notion that our highest ideals are best expressed, not through diplomacy, but through the projection of military force outside our borders. In this telling, history has ended. We are the indispensable nation. We alone must balance the war-torn world on our khaki-clad shoulders.

A “Humanitarian War”

Perhaps that’s why, as the Bosnian conflict escalated, the Clinton Administration and other world governments ignored the nonviolent independence movement taking place in nearby Kosovo. It was only after that conflict turned violent, with the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army, that the Administration responded.

When Clinton addressed the nation on Kosovo, he didn’t rely on empathy for other people’s children. He called intervention the best course for American children and their future – saying it, not once, but three times.

Liberals and leftists were divided on this intervention, as they had been with Bosnia and Herzegovina. But Susan Sontag made the case for military action in the New York Times Magazine. In the American Prospect, Paul Starr called the Kosovo intervention a “humanitarian war” and thought a land invasion would be more effective than airstrikes, but concluded:

“Those of us who believe that the United States ought to use its power to prevent genocide and other high crimes against human decency are going to have to work a lot harder to convince our neighbors.”

Notice the phrasing: “the United States ought to use its power …”

What happens when the best way to prevent a genocide is by ending the use of American power? That seems to be a harder case to make in American political culture.

The Forgotten Catastrophe

Yemen, a nation long renowned for its beauty, has become a place of almost unimaginable horror. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently declared it ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” and cited statistics that, once heard, should never be forgotten.

Here’s one such statistic: Every ten minutes, a child under five dies of preventable causes. (Based on the average reading speed, it should take ten minutes to read these words. That means a child is statistically likely to die while it is being read.)

Here are some more:

18 million people are food insecure, and 8.4 million Yemenis don’t know how they will obtain their next meal.

3 million acutely malnourished Yemenis are either children under 5, pregnant women, or nursing mothers.

Nearly half of all children aged between six months and 5 years old are chronically malnourished and stunted, conditions that will affect them for the rest of their lives.

Children are being forced to fight, or to work at very young ages. Many young girls are being forced into marriage before they are 18, or even 15, as a response to family debt and poverty.

Women and girls are at heightened risk of sexual and gender-based violence.

Millions have no access to safe drinking water.

1 million people suffered from watery diarrhea and cholera last year. There is a high risk of another cholera epidemic.

More than ten thousand civilians – perhaps many more – have been killed in the fighting.

Our Complicity

The problem isn’t that the US is standing by and doing nothing while this horror unfolds. It’s much worse than that. The US is actively working to cause these atrocities, by helping the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia in its relentless attack on Yemen.

Marjorie Ransom, a former diplomat in Yemen, writes of “direct U.S. military complicity in this long and pointless campaign,” adding:

“In addition to selling a vast arsenal of weapons to Saudi Arabia, our government’s military gave logistical guidance in the Saudi military headquarters in Riyadh and continues to provide intelligence to Saudi defense officials and aerial refueling during bombing runs.”

She concludes, “The Saudi-led coalition could not have conducted the two and a half years of bombing without the support of our military.”

How to Use Intelligence

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont joined with one of the Senate’s most conservative members, Mike Lee of Utah, as well as Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, to sponsor a resolution calling for an end to US involvement in Yemen.

44 senators voted for it, but 55 senators – including ten Democrats – voted against it. Some antiwar groups called it a step forward – but the war will not end.

Why haven’t progressives doing more to help the people of Yemen? Maybe it’s a problem of leadership. Nobody in a position of Democratic power is using their influence to end America’s involvement there. When the Clinton Administration was trying to build support for intervention in Yemen, it declassified intelligence photographs of the victims there and showed them to reluctant diplomats.

“It was an amazing example of how you can use intelligence,” Albright later reflected.

Why America Slept

Who in Washington’s national security establishment is handing out pictures of dying Yemenis? Nobody. It’s government policy under President Trump, just as it was under President Obama. In the last year of Obama’s presidency, in fact, the US government dropped more than 20,000 bombs on seven countries. (There’s a map.)

There’s a lot of money to be made in arms sales. President Trump has approved massive US arms sales to Saudi Arabia (Estimates of the deal’s value vary widely.) We’re told that there are no contracts in place, which places even more pressure on the American government to comply with the wishes of Mohammad bin Salman, or “MBS,” Saudi Arabia’s new dictator.

Not that this government needs any convincing. Trump’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries deserve much deeper scrutiny. So do those of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

But it is our country’s defense-industry ties have been driving that “special relationship” for decades, through Republican and Democratic governments alike.  Those ties also serve to promote military policies that involve the use of expensive weaponry all around the world.

As the New Yorker’s Nicholas Niarchos reports, one such weapon – a US-made bomb carrying 500 pounds of explosive – killed more than 140 mourners and injured 500 more during a Yemeni funeral in 2015. Among them was the mayor of Sana’a, who had been negotiating with several factions in an attempt to end the war

The bomb was manufactured by Raytheon.

Prince Not-So-Charming

But defense contractors aren’t the only powerful interest keeping us in Yemen. American oil corporations have benefited from the US-Saudi relationship for many decades.

Politicians have flattered and cajoled the country’s leadership all that time. So has the American media. With Mohammad bin Salman’s recent rise to power as “crown prince,” the self-interested servility of these elites is once again on display.

They call him “MBS,” as flattering pieces from the likes of Thomas Friedman affirm. Machiavelli wrote of princes like this a long time ago, saying “he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”

MBS appears to be a nasty piece of work, even by Saudi standards, given his youthful threats – reportedly including, according to one story, a bullet in an envelope – toward anyone who stood in the way of his advancement. Then there’s the matter of his recent detention and torture of anyone who poses a political or financial threat to his power.

To cover up his brutality and flatter the thuggish potentate, the mainstream media dwells on MBS’ mild social liberalizations, like letting women drive and easing up on rules regarding live entertainment.

Wilkinson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, says MBS’ social liberalizations were “designed to shift attention from this disastrous war.”

If so, it’s going well. While his opponents were undergoing incarceration and torture without warrant last November, albeit in a luxury hotel, Friedman wrote gushingly: “Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style.”

MBS may be a dictator, but in some people’s hearts he’s Number One – with a bullet.

Resistance Wanted

As MBS was dazzling Friedman, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna was working both sides of the aisle to end our involvement in Yemen. The Republican-led House “overwhelmingly” passed a resolution calling US involvement in that country “unauthorized.”

This year, 44 senators voted against continued this country’s support for Saudi attacks on Yemen. Two antiwar groups, Win Without War and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, celebrated them who voted against it. Those groups are right: the tide is turning.

But in the meantime, the war goes on, ten minutes at a time.

And as we listen to the debates in the UN, while we wait for more information out of Douma, as the generals appear on television to discuss military options, these Yemeni children are deliberately being starved by the Saudi military – every day, all day long.

Look at them. The morality of empathy demands that we care about these children as much as we care about children anywhere – including our own, here at home.

Where are the marchers, the silent vigils, the mass actions for them?

Syria is a terrible tragedy, too – a tragedy caused by American intervention. Now we’re being told that more intervention is the cure.

Liberal interventionism is seductive. It’s hard to resist the messianic voices that tell us we’re the indispensable heroes of our time, the saviors of the world and its children.

But it’s time to ask: In countries like Yemen, who will save the world from us?

[politicalfilth-blog]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Confronted On Globalist Carbon Tax, Called A ‘Scumbag’ (VIDEO)

We Are Change

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a last minute stop in Winnipeg to promote his childcare agenda at a YMCA daycare on March 29th. After a photo-op with a bunch of children, the kids were moved out of the room alongside Trudeau, only to return a few minutes later to take questions from the press.

I was granted a media pass to the event, waited patiently for a few hours and was not allowed to ask a question at the microphone. So, I took it into my own hands and between questions, I loudly asked my question for the Prime Minister to hear from a mere 5 feet away. The media was being pre-screened for questions and no real questions were being asked.

I confronted Trudeau on the carbon tax, which will not only be a tax on everything as companies are forced to raise their prices which affects everyone’s wallet, but it also forces impoverished families, especially in rural communities, to choose between heating their home and buying groceries in the winter.

It will bankrupt companies who export goods and puts Canada at a huge disadvantage when it comes to competition.

This all goes back to Maurice Strong and Norway’s Gro Harlem Brundtland, who pushed forward the first climate change depopulation agendas back in the 1970s.

Today, under the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, there is an organized globalist push to completely destroy any fossil fuel industries, depopulate the world, and tax everyone on their carbon footprint, which is in the negative on average in Canada.

Canada’s carbon output only makes up for about 2% of the global footprint. The carbon tax will simply make it impossible for Canadian companies to compete against businesses in foreign countries and puts a stop on small business competition as major corporations continue to be monopolized by the state.

I’ve done several videos in the past on Canada’s carbon tax.

You can see one here:

I was pulled out of the room as I continued to ask Trudeau questions and got no answers, so I decided to call him out for the true globalist puppet he is. I called Trudeau a scumbag followed by saying “Shame on you and your globalist counterparts!”

The event was highly publicized in the media as the mainstream media did a bang-up job of copying and pasting the original article in the Huffington Post, CTV, CBC, Global, City News and others. In fact, Canadian state-run CBC edited their footage to make it seem as though I’d called Trudeau a scumbag while four year old children were present which is absolutely false.

They all left out the fact that I had questioned Trudeau extensively for minutes before calling him a scumbag and simply claimed that he “claimed to be a member of World Alternative Media”.

Clearly they didn’t do two seconds of due diligence. They would have seen that I’m rather well known across Canada and parts of the United States as the founder of World Alternative Media, but that after all is why the mainstream media is dying.

While I usually wouldn’t call someone a scumbag during a confrontation, watching the Prime Minister arrogantly smirk as he posed for a scripted photo-op with children, then claim he cared about those in poverty boiled my blood. Knowing the high quantity of people starving due to the carbon tax or being forced to move from their rural bankrupt communities to the city while he falsely pretends he’s standing up for the environment all while getting support from the top oil companies and lobbies is truly sickening. As I got manhandled by security, I had to get one last jab in.

Of course, that’s how the mainstream media reported it and it’s to be expected. With that said, I regret nothing.

This was the second time I’d successfully confronted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I’d confronted him two days before the 2015 election on Bill C-51 which much like the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, considers all people who openly protest government as “suspected terrorists” and with that, allows the government to arrest people and search their homes without a warrant.

This dramatically opposes the natural individual liberties one is born with. Canada is quickly turning into a cesspool of collectivism. It’s quickly becoming an Orwellian police state as well as a nanny state. Free speech is stifled. Opposition is censored. Debt is abundant and subsidization is blowing sky-high. Corporations are being monopolized by heavy regulations and the poor are getting poorer.

Oh, and for the Americans reading this, no, marijuana is not legal. When it is indeed legal, it’ll simply be another cash grab by the government which will inflate prices and hand most of the industry over to the government. Kind of like taking away your right and giving it back at a price. That’s not a right, that’s the government saying “Let them eat cake!”

I’ve confronted many of the government’s cabinet in the past and have led similar efforts against former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. This is simply about consistency, truth and individual liberty.

Confronting the Minister of Finance Bill Morneau on selling off all of Canada’s gold and creating a global currency the week before he attended Bilderberg:

  Confronting the Minister of Defense on arming ISIS and supporting Saudi Arabia with weapons:

The post Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Confronted On Globalist Carbon Tax, Called A ‘Scumbag’ (VIDEO) appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/canadian-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-confronted-globalist-carbon-tax-called-scumbag-video/