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[thekennewickman-blog]

Saga of the “Ancient One”

1990 - Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is passed by President George W. Bush.

July 1996 - Two college students Will Thomas and Dave Deacy found the Kennewick Man, referred to as the Ancient One by Native American tribes,  skull along the shore of the Columbia River in Washington state, USA. They call the police and Benton County coroner, Floyd Johnson arrives at the scene. He does not know what to do with the findings and he calls local archaeologist, James Chatters.

Approximately 300 bones and bone fragments dated to 8,340-9,200 years ago were found belonging to the the Ancient One, “the oldest and best-preserved sets of remains ever discovered in North America.” These bones made up “~90% of an adult male skeleton.”

Chatter sent a bone sample for it to be carbon dated and that is when the Army Corps of Engineers (managed the land where the bones were found) not only claimed the authority of the remains, but also “demanded all scientific study cease.”

They proved their jurisdiction over the remains and they were “locked up at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.”

Native American tribes said the bones belonged to an ancestor and quickly moved to reclaim the remains and provide a “ritual burial.”

Armand Minthorn, a spokesman for the Umatilla tribe, wrote, “Scientists have dug up and studied Native Americans for decades. [...] We view this practice as desecration of the body and a violation of our most deeply-held religious beliefs.”

In response, the corps agreed to return the bones to the Native American tribe. However, scientists did not agree with this. Owsley contacted members of Congress and the corps and said that “the remains should be studied, if only briefly before reburial.”

Researchers lead by Owsley filed a lawsuit (eight plaintiffs) against the Native Americans claim because according to them, the Kennewick Man “could not be linked to living Native Americans” and in fact, needed to be study to show an affiliation to a modern tribe. NAGPRA did not apply.

1998 - Authorities recognize that “substantial parts of the femur bones” had disappeared in the move to the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory.

2000 - Then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt concluded that the Ancient One’s remains belonged to the tribe and ordered they be returned.

2001 - The femur bones of the Kennewick are found this year in the evidence vault of the county coroner’s office.

2002 - U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks in the United States District Court of Oregon ruled the remains of the Ancient One were not related to Native Americans “based on its physical features, and therefore the NAGPRA didn’t apply in this case.” The remains were sent back to the researchers and the decision was upheld in the court of appeals.

The motion was granted and the District Court specifically held (Bonnichen v. U.S. - 217 F.Supp.2d 1116): 

“(1) remains of Kennewick Man were not Native American within meaning of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA); 

(2) Secretary of the Interior erred in assuming that coalition of four federally recognized Indian tribes and a band that was not federally recognized was a proper claimant under NAGPRA and in failing to separately analyze the relationship of the particular tribal claimants to the remains; 

(3) evidence did not support determination that there was a “cultural affiliation” between remains and tribal claimants; and (4) plaintiffs would be permitted to study the remains.”

2004 - The United States Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit rules in favor of the scientists, citing research that demonstrated the Kennewick Man was not Native American. Native Americans tribes appealed, the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision and tribes moved for rehearing.

The court specifically held the following (Bonnichsen v. U.S. - 367 F.3d 864):

“(1) scientists had standing to bring action; 

(2) human remains must bear some relationship to presently existing tribe, people, or culture to be “Native American” within meaning of NAGPRA; and

(3) substantial evidence did not support Department's decision that remains were Native American within meaning of NAGPRA.”

2005 - Research on the Kennewick Man continued this year, following eight years of legal battles preventing the repatriation of his remains to Native Americans.

The research group was led by Douglas W. Owsley, the division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian received permission to study the bones discovered.

These are some of discoveries his team made:

“He was a stocky, muscular man about 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing about 160 pounds.”

Right-handed

Looked a lot like “baseball pitcher’s;” he threw a spear

Left left was much stronger than the right one, must have “arrested [his] forward momentum” with this leg

Hands and forearms show he “often pinched his fingers and thumb together while tightly gripping a small object”

Leg bones suggest he swam in shallow rapids and they reported he had “been growth consistent with surfer’s ear”

Knee joints show he must have “squatted on his heels” often

Years before his death, he had broken half a dozen ribs

five broken ribs never healed properly since he continued throwing spears with his right arm

Two small depression fractures on his cranium

Spearpoint was thrown at him and it injured and embedded itself in his hip when he was 15-20 years old

Others must have taken care of him because his injury healed and his limp disappeared over time

Ate “almost exclusively on seals, sea lions, and fish”

Drank glacial meltwater

Died at around 40 years of age

2014 - “Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton” edited by Douglas W. Owsley and Richard L. Jantz is published in September of this year. It is regarded as “the most complete analysis of a Paleo-American skeleton ever done.” His remain were in storage at the Burke Museum at this time.

2015 - Geneticists at the University of Copenhagen in a collaborative study with Stanford University’s Medical Center published an article in the journal Nature that demonstrated that the Native American tribes had been right all along. The senior author of the study Eske Willerslev, PhD, said, “It’s very clear that Kennewick Man is most closely related to contemporary Native Americans.” He added, “In my view, it’s bone-solid.” The study found that based on genetic comparisons, the Kennewick man “shows continuity with Native North Americans over at least the last eight millennia.”

Stanford University released a statement on June 18, 2015 with more information of their findings, disproving claims made in a 2014 study that said the Kennewick Man was “more related to indigenous Japanese or Polynesian peoples than to Native Americans.”

2016 - President Barack Obama signed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act), which included a section that transferred the control of The Ancient One to five Native American tribes.

2017 - The tribes reburied the Ancient One “in a grave not far from where he was found along the Columbia River.”

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[theepitomeofsimplicite]

Hi everyone,

I guess it’s never too late to wish you all a wonderful happy new year! Today, I’d love to take a moment to share my reflections on my best of 2018 travel. So, I am considering creating a series of posts in the upcoming weeks (YES! You read this. I am back to the grinds of writing and I am feeling super motivated) about sartorial-self editing and a follow up on continuing living my minimalist life.

The other day, a friend of mine who does not enjoy travel as much as I do recently asked me: ” What value does it bring to spend all your money in traveling so frequently?”

I paused for a brief moment and tried to recollect in my head all the countless unmeasurable benefits I gained from the experience of traveling. I’m thinking of adventures, freedom, and creating sweet memories with my favorite people. Mountains, road trips and singing cheesy songs in the car, big cities, beaches, lakes, wine country, night life, speak Spanish, fall in love… and so much more I mean where shall I begin…

Here are some advantages I can think of when it comes to why I value travelling as often as I can. To start with, there is an excitement and anticipation of planning a trip up front (read more about experientialism vs materialism post here). Looking forward to how we would imagine the journey. It gives room for creativity in deciding what activities to fill our days with.

Next, I learn to live more intentionally by pausing and being in the moment. I pay particular attention to small overlooked pleasures in life. I enjoy very much to be engaged with people in a genuine way by becoming a better active listener for instance when taking in to their stories. I experience more gratefulness. I like that my discovery mode is turned on (try new food, catch new sights, practice a new language sometimes, or embrace new cultures).

All in all, I find travelling to be important to me because it contributes to my self-improvement. All these reasons contribute towards my personal growth; my thoughts are influenced by a broader range of awareness of the world surrounding me, my habits are sometimes mimicking other’s cultural lifestyles, my learning is derived from my interactions with people and taking in their outlook on life, my beliefs are more grounded, and my thoughts are centered around creating a healthier and happier way of living. Let it be minimalism and zero waste lifestyle but these topics are worth detailing in separate posts.

Anza Borrego Desert/Julian, CA

After returning from my regular winter euro trip in the beginning of the year from Dresden and Paris, in February I went on a mini weekend road trip to Anza Borrego Desert. It’s only a two hour drive northeast of San Diego where I live and is located south east from Riverside and south of Palm Springs. The Anza Borrego Desert State Park isn’t too far from the Mount Jacinto Park where I hiked in the summer of 2017 (read here). It’s the largest park in California and has many wilderness areas as well as lots of hiking trails.

I picked the Palm Canyon trail where a minimum of climbing was involved (I love climbing!!!) and I was able to catch a sight at the primitive palm trees which are the tallest in California and are kept very wild and untrimmed. Down the oasis, I could hear from a far distance some buzzing sounds that resonated all around. As I was so curious to find out the origins of these croaks, I rushed down the river by climbing down the hiking trail in an off trail fashion (my adventurous side) to find some very cute tiny frogs under the rocks blending with the surroundings in the most perfect way.

All the climbing efforts were well worth! Then as the night quickly fell down, it’s how I got some very large and deep scars on my left forearm because I ran into a giant cactus on my way back up to the trail. Not very clever but I put the blame on my tomboy side! Later that evening on the way back to San Diego, a pit stop at Julian was required to have a taste of the well-known local apple pies and cider.

Los Angeles, CA

I drove to the city of angels and visited my friend Alexie (from UCLA) in the beginning of March as I needed to renew my passport at the French embassy. This was a two day trip but I really appreciated my time spent with her discussing various topics and you know just being women. Read more here where I talked about trying Tsukemen for the first time at Tsujita and a local’s brunch at Egg slut.

San Diego CRSSD FEST, CA

Processed with VSCO with b1 preset

This electronic, deep house, and techno festival is a traditional yearly thing I attend with my Persian buddies Arash and Massoud. Although I’ve tried to save a decent budget dedicated to music festivals for the year, I always seem to mess this up. But in any case, this is a sort of a mini Coachella and if you are in San Diego during March and September I recommend you guys to check it out because I like that it’s located by the waterfront and our dear Pacific Ocean.

Seoul/Busan, South Korea

In March, I was sent to South Korea for work (second time around and read first impression of the previous strip here). I stayed in Seoul and enjoyed this trip very much particularly as I didn’t end up having to do too much work at the customer site for once. But differently than last time, I decided to gather a team and explore South Korea away from the city center of Seoul. So we took the train to visit Busan.

Busan is a very large port city and is well known for its beaches, mountains, and temples. I enjoyed hanging out at the Haeundae beach with the young crowded locals and shot some fireworks. Later that night, the team composed of the new Dutch girlfriend Anne and another colleague, Robin who is Irish, went on bar hoping and met a friendly group of enthusiastic high energy good vibe young Koreans. We befriended right away with songs like Gangnam style and other classics.

We were then invited to a Karaoke bar and sung our heart out til about 8 am the following day. We actually made a reservation at a hostel nearby but needless to mention how pissed off the receptionist was as we had a very very very late check in that dragged her out of the bed. I know this was messed up but our new Korean friends helped us get to stay in to rest for the remaining duration of 2 hours, which was barely enough sleep but we needed to catch the train back to Seoul and I had to fly back afterwards.

The best part of this trip I think came from the idea that propelled me to go to Busan in the first place. The ultra fresh seafood and sashimi. I watched a documentary online where I saw a man trying to experience the “live” sashimi fish in Busan and choked on it. He became so red and almost died. I thought the idea of trying something so “fresh” would have made a fun challenge so I set my mind to experience it too at the Jagalchi Market, the world famous market for fresh fish and seafood. Robin and I got to try it but I barely survived. Personally though I wouldn’t do it again haha.

Another crazy experience was found at this local BBQ restaurant where I had fresh grilled eel for the first time ever. It goes without saying how painful that was visually and the taste was stringent. Have you ever eaten a whole eel? I’m not speaking of the little piece of eel that is place with a generous amount of Teriyaki sauce on the sushi but the whole fish. It’s so bony and crunchy towards the tail. I also would detail the part where the fish are taken from the aquarium then processed in front of your attentive eyes.

The cook knock the head of the eel using the back of the knife then begins to skin off the fish by removing the spinal column. The sound was draconian. The fish is then cut up into chunks. Later the pieces are laid on the plate ready to be grilled but the heads also come together. The visual still hurts me by just typing these lines but please skip this section if you are too sensitive sorry. As the brains were trying to pump blood through, and while Robin was devouring the body from the grill (personally I couldn’t do it), the mouth of the fish was left wide opened as a reaction to the loss of oxygen. I still remember vividly the horrified faces of the fish. In any case, this experience was quite unique but I’m still glad I got to see how life was like in Busan with the locals.

Saratoga/NYC, NY and Montreal, Canada

After my trip to South Korea, I was supposed to take some time off to stop by Japan to hang out with a friend I met during CRSSD fest but to my disappointment I had to fly straight away to New York for work again. This trip was rather unique because it’s where I met my crush there (blushing). But nothing surprising it’s just a crush and nothing more and you’ll read more about this Dutchie later 😉 Besides, work was very interesting there and the weather was ruthlessly cold with above the knee level of snow. Time working there was passing by so quickly as my best friend Mark (we work together) was also on site for work and we got to hang out a bunch.

In Albany we had Tanpopo Jakarta ramen. If you are curious about ramen, head over to my blog on ramen critic around the globe @ramencraycray. We ate at Vintage House and had interesting fried oyster sandwiches at Albany Ale & Oyster. We also hung out quite a bit in Saratoga Springs where we visited the Historic Congress Park to sip on the spring water. Had drinks at this hispter jazz playing live music at Morrissey’s and dined at the Wine Bar.

During this trip, I took the opportunity to drive to cross the border and visit Montreal. I had to make a pit stop at this gentleman’s house located in the beautiful town of Saratoga Springs. I met this older writer named Paul on the plane (yes for many of you who know me, I meet a bunch of folks on the plane and it’s not hard trust me!). We discuss many topics among writing and blogging as well as feminism and life in Paris compared with New York. We promised to give each other feedback from his book titled “Learning the Learner” while he reads my blog, this one.

He kindly invited me over to his house for breakfast along with a tour at the Spring Street Gallery which was a converted church located in front of his house. I had an immense pleasure in meeting his amazing awe inspiring wife Barbara (@blglaser5150). She is the woman I aspire to become when I get more mature. She has accomplished so much to become financially independent, in raising her Korean adopted daughter and her work in Natural State Park conservation, and now is a philanthropist. I was more than glad to have the chance to meet people like them and to share our stories. I felt so empower to continue my pursuit in advancing technology and to become as independent as she is someday. I also wish to further contribute to society just how she does it.

Ok so, now let’s talk about Montreal shall we? The road was very beautiful on my way there all covered in snow and I can easily glimpse at the mountain ranges during my three hour long drive. I stayed at Le Saint Sulpice hotel that was simply scrumptious located in Old Town. As I stepped out into town, I was clearly experiencing a wardrobe malfunction; I wore my long white Korean coat with a pair of jeans, a jumper, a beanie, scarf, and a pair of leather gloves. Evidently I froze to death within 15 minutes of walk in the blazing -15C.

So I rushed to the nearest neighborhood bar at the pub le Saint-Elisabeth. I met a new friend at the bar named Francois who was kind to show me locals spots around the well-known avenue du Mont Royal and had delicious poutine. The next day, I met up with my cousin who I haven’t seen in about 20 years (long time!!!) to catch up. We walked through the underground pass to go to the mall just like how the Quebecois shop to avoid peaking your nose out into the cold. She offered me some of the best ice wines ever. I feel very grateful!

On my last weekend there, I was meeting up with an old friend and together drove to NYC passing through the Lincoln tunnel. That was a hell of a lot of fun with lots of dancing, some ramen, and a copious amount of drinks and sightseeing. Make sure to read more about this city here.

West Coast Road Trip (Joshua Tree Park, CA/LA, CA/Big Sur, CA/Big Basin Redwood Park, CA/SF, CA/Newport, OR/Seattle, WA/Mt Adams, WA/Corvallis, OR)

In May, our birthday month, my sister (@dithy_f) from Paris and I got into my white Golf and drove along the USA West Coast. One of the best road trips ever yet! Read more here for part 1. Part 2 filled with more stories should be coming around soon so stay tune. In this case, I’ll skip here to the next trip below…

San Elijo Beach, CA

One of the best perks I enjoy about living in San Diego is that the county is so vast in its surface area that driving 30 to 40 minutes along the coast from where I live seems like a travel destination even though it’s technically still San Diego. We were camping there together with this really awesome girl Jenny (@nurse_jenny) (I met at a party and she had all the gut to just ask for my number and befriended instantly) and my friend Stephen (from work) who was set to take a year off to travel the world. I had an amazing weekend there grilling sausages and I even had some fun creating a beach bum beauty tutorial that can be found on my Instagram stories.

Ensenada/Tijuana, Mexico

I love spontaneous impromptu trips like this in the summer. Mexican friend Guerardo invited me over to tag along on his weekend getaway trip to Mexico. Singing along Felices Los 4 and Dura omg! We took the Ruta del vino to visit and wine taste at L.A. Cetto. We brunched at Bodegas del Valle, a secret local spot. We later that night played dominos then poker getting drunk on some tequila Reposado. The next day, we were beach ready to get some tan at Playa Hermosa in Explanadas. Afterwards, we had some of the best margheritas at Bar Andaluz and the best tacos ever are found at the world renown Anthony Bourdain approved Sabina Restaurante. Later, on our way back to the US, we had to stop by Tijuana where we got a roof top drink at Cine Tonala and played games.

Tel Aviv, Israel

During the summer, I traveled to Tel Aviv for the first time to visit my friend Tom. I know many of you already know how I met Tom and how I ended up in Dresden in the winter of 2017 but just for the sake of sharing with everyone. On my way to Amsterdam from Minnesota, I think that was in the summer of 2017 I happen to sit next to this blue eye guy with a quirky smile on this face. I think he started the conversation with an ice breaker question. So tips to you guys, if you are happen to sit next to a stranger on the plane and would like to make new friends, don’t put your headphones on, smile, and ask whether your flight neighbor is heading back home or visiting. This ice breaker question always works for me 🙂 So as we talked and laughed throughout our 8 hour long trip. We exchanged our contact information but before that he managed to convince me to meet again either in Tel Aviv and/or Dresden for the winter holidays.

And in truth eventually, I ended up meeting him in both cities haha. I flew to Dresden in December of 2017 from Paris because (this is a true story haha) my sister was too busy to host me during the weekday and (sadly) she is also a type A woman so she made it clear that I was on my own. Then I simply phoned Tom to check his whereabouts then booked a ticket at the airport from CDG, took the metro to Orly then flew to Dresden straight away. I actually don’t recommend anyone to fly that much in a day (4 back to back flights) but I’m still glad I made it out there. I stayed at Tom’s friend’s Matthias (a German cutie), and we got to visit the beautiful city (old and new neighborhood), did some thrift shopping as I was travelling without proper winter gears (got as scarf and beanie), and even attended an opera. The museums there were very impressive and boy I love the Christmas market to grab some warm German sweet bread, some wurst, and a sip of the delicious gluhwein (even gluhbier).

Well, I’m digressing now sorry so back to Tel Aviv! Tom and I stayed at another of Tom’s friend’s apartment nearby the beach in Yaffa area. Hillel is such a smart and funny guy. He’s very thoughtful too! I recall how before I’d get up in the morning, a warm freshly baked pastry was awaiting for me on the kitchen counter. He was temporarily being a dog daddy to Indie so I lucked out in meeting them because I had so much fun hanging out with these mischief later in the Old City. This vibrant place is full of craft shops and art galleries, and stalls selling antiques and jewelry at the lively Jaffa Flea Market.

There are some Ottoman influences such as the Clock Tower. We walked around and spotted an outdoor venue filled with folks dancing on Arab music after crossing the Wishing Bridge. The area is also popular for its hip wine bars, creative Mediterranean dining and seafood restaurants near Jaffa Port. There is such a wide mix of culture and we got together for drinks at the Shaffa bar with Stefania, her bf and friend. Well, how I met Stefania was also on a plane ride from JFK to Tel Aviv haha. We sat next to each and became friends instantly. And so we just had to meet up in town!

Then Hillel wanted to take us to his favorite secret spot that offers a unique view over the Jaffa port but on the opposite side. Recall when I called Hillel and Indie the little pair of mischief well, to get to that safely guarded spot required illegal climbing over a fence then a wall hmmm the challenge came from having our little four legged Indie with us but we still proceeded with climbing with the adventurous dog friend. It was so worth it as we could catch a glimpse in the quiet night and only hearing the waves crashing on the rocks and just taking in the beautiful sights and being in the moment.

I have a few tips on Tel Aviv for you guys if you are interested, drop a comment below. I personally really enjoy going to the outdoor markets like the Carmel market where Tom and I met up with another of Tom’s friend named Roy. He had bought some delicious cheese and we improvised a French picnic with a bottle of red (of course!) and laid around in the neighborhood park, while dog petting.

I only stayed 4 days in Tel Aviv and wished to road trip to Jerusalem but due to the unbearable heat wave, I’ll postpone this trip to another time. So next on my way to Amsterdam, I had a quick overlay in Rome. Unfortunately I couldn’t hang out with my dear friend Rita but had (yes another) interesting encounter on the plane. An older Italian gentleman who is a professor in Chemistry and avid alternative renewable energy especially in clean gas was my neighbor. He had mistaken me as a model haha. But to his disappointment I had to break it to him that I was just an engineer.

We talked for a long while about renewable energy and the new tech trends. Once we landed in Fuimicino, he kindly offer to continue our conversations over at the lounge. I personally love to converse with passionate folks. Side note by the way, a handful of people either border patrol agents or people I bumped into during my flights tend to believe I’m some model. Can it be because of my leather jacket, my casual effortless airport style or is it? Regardless, I’m utterly flattered but (shrugging) would love to know why…

Amsterdam/Eindhoven/Heusden, The Netherlands

I arrived in Amsterdam to meet up with Silvana (@saisonlune) the birthday girl. She’s taken me to the north of Amsterdam so we took the ferry where we can sight the beautiful A’dam Toren from Centraal Station. We had a snack at FC Hyena where it has movie theater and great food. The décor is industrial but with lots of quirky colors. Afterwards, we headed next door to the Hotel de Goudfazant. This place used to be a car garage so don’t be surprised if you are dining next to cars inside the space.

The following day, I also got to meet Jessica from Daarboven and stroll around Amsterdam. We had a pit stopped at my fav Scandinavian shop Filippa K where I got a couple of essential garments (a nice cropped wool jacket and a pair of simple blue denim, read here).

We sipped on some fancy drinks at the Hoxtel lounge, grabbed ramen at Fou Fow Ramen then devour some explosive chocolate at the Michelin starred Duchess .

In Eindhoven, I always enjoy staying at my bestie Joffrey. I also took some time to say hi to Adri from Chanel. She created a new look for me and left with many goodies she gathered for me. In the afternoon, Jo organized a mini road trip to Heusden for a getaway. Walking around there was very relaxing to see the lashing green surrounding and the famous windmills. In the village we grabbed some red and some bread (I love Dutch breads). Later in the evening Jo and I met up with Yohann (our betstie) to grab an apero at his house.

Then we all met up with the other guys for Lepeltje Lepeltje, a food fest in Eindhoven with live music and yummy ice creams. Later than night we all hung out at our regular Irish pub Oshea’s where a few more people are set to come by. One person was the German cutie I was seeing on the date during lunch time at one of my fav brunch spot called Krok Madame. The other person was my Dutch crush and well needless to mention how melodramatic this all resulted and of course I’ve never intended anything as such to take place.

Chinon/Vendée Road Trip, France

It’s still summer and I was on my way to Paris now to get with my sister then we picked up my mom to go onto our yearly road trip. We stopped by the wine country region as always. I’ve notice my friends recently called me “Wine Privileged” and I am beginning to be more grateful from my upbringing and the fact that my parents’ house is located in one of the most amazing wine country region of France. And so we are in Chinon and visiting the Cave Monplaisirs.

The lady owner was formidable in presenting the wine selection with exquisite details of the terrain, the grapes provenance and mixes. This is how I get wine educated by going on a variety of wine tasting and having great conversations. She also kindly offered us an extra bottle (we had to keep it quiet on the gift haha) simply because she enjoyed sharing a great conversation too! We set up our picnic by the Loire river with great sight, a fresh summer breeze, and amazing wine paring (Les Picasses from 2016).

My sister and I rented a beautiful beach house in the Vendée region with a big pool by Saint-Jean-de-Mont beach. We had a lovely time with my mom swimming , BBQ, and just chilling in town. We did a bit of sightseeing but the best experience was going to the oysters’ market casually located in various parts of the roads there called le Délit. I believe to have found the best tasting oysters in my entire life! I stoke a conversation with the bar owner sharing with him my USA stories and then he pointed out that an LA designer was painting the walls of the place. Have a look as it’s pretty quirky. Another good time (yes it’s again about food) was going to Noirmoutier to bunch at Michelin starred or recommended restaurants like L’ilot Bleu. Next stop was a flower park (my mom is a lotus enthusiast) called the Parc Floral de la court d’Aron where we spent a day there having a little French picnic.

Paris, France

This city is always crazy and has the most fun parties. I hung out with the Parisian crew (a bunch of finance folks who prize on expensive champagne bottles. Yeah I know it’s just another life style) and caught up with Taler (@nomadicfille). We had ramen again but this time at Hokkaido.

The following day we went to the street food fest in Place République. Then, we headed towards the roof top at the Art et Métiers hotel. Needless to mention, there was a gorgeous view over the city of Light and the flashing Eiffel Tower but what caught my attention was this cutie sitting right next to me from another group of Parisians. We had a great conversation but I must be so naïve in too many ways, I didn’t realize he was a catch haha. But it’s all good we are friends on Instagram, does that count?

Los Angeles, CA

In September after getting back to San Diego, the following weekend I got on the road towards Vegas, the sin city. But I thought I’d stop by and say hi to my friend Alexie (if you don’t remember her, I had a post on LA here). We caught up over dinner, girls talk then the following day brunched at our favorite place in Abbott Kinney called Gjelina. A bit of window shopping but then it was time for me to get back on the road already.

Vegas/Valley of Fire Road trip, NV

Hanging out with Jo and catching up with his dad I haven’t seen in a couple of years was fun. In short, Fermont experience, losing money gambling, getting fancy drinks at the casino, and hiking in the heat of the Valley of Fire where we almost passed out. I recommend everyone who is passing by Vegas to go check out this out of the ordinary red-bricked landscape. It’s truly breath taking how arid the climate is but how the rock formations come together is pretty amazing.

Big Bear, CA

This road tripping to camping with Arash was in late September so it was indeed freezing cold. We were out of Vodka to keep us warm so in the process I lost my toes overnight for about 8 hours then recovered. The Castle Rock trail hike by Big Bear Lake was pretty intensive in climbing but the view we could catch on top was all worth it with a breathtaking forest views, rock structures, and a distant lake.

Lake Tahoe, CA

Next road trip was made during the thanksgiving holidays. It was very adventurous on the long drive there from San Diego to Lake Tahoe especially in the freezing night. Just had to pick up Massoud along the way in Orange County. As we approached the mountain ranges, we found out too tardily that the snow chains were undersized so we decided to simply deflate the tires in order to create more traction. (3 engineers getting together that’s how things go often!).

London, England

I haven’t been back since a couple of years ago so I was glad to stop by London in December and catching up with my dear Jackie (@passyjacqueline). What I retained the most from being there was experiencing Tinder dating together haha. I recall vividly on one of the bus rides in London City where Jackie and I were eye on out phones swiping left and occasionally right on the app then suddenly we heard 3 older gentlemen exclaiming right behind us “But you keep on swiping left!” hahaha I’ll omit the Brit accent but I couldn’t help than to crack up. It’s an observation that it seems everyone young and old men and women everywhere across the globe is searching for love though this dating tool.

I really enjoyed the low key local hangout (will do a map later if you are interested for I have some tips!) and art exhibits. We went to Blain Southern and checked out the “Between the lines” of Chiharu Shiota and the drawings of Jonas Burget. Indeed, I’d rather avoid doing tourist traps cos I just wanted to create memories being with my dear friend in the most humbling way. Some of the cool places I went to are Tonkotsu ramen, Oslo Hackney bar and club, Blighty Tottenham for brunch, Pop Brixton for the hispter hang out and drinks food hall style, Ace hotel in Shoreditch for a fancy drink at the lounge. For a nice walk I went to Borough market (my fav) and had tapas at Tapas Brindisa. Roof tops I went to Sushi Samba which offers a great view of the Gherkin. Lastly, Jaaguarshoes Collective is a local hang out for casual drinks.

Amsterdam/Eindhoven/The Hague, The Netherlands

Going to Holland is always about catching up with everyone. I also flew from London to Amsterdam as cheap as 37 euro that’s why I love travelling within Europe because of the ease of transport. I’m typically staying at Joffrey’s house in Eindhoven. We always cozy up on his velvet couch in the late evening watching our fav old French show Kaamelott. In the evening I had dinner with my old friend Alain who is half Dutch and half French. We checked out the new hot spot called Kazerne which had a lovely exhibit.

This time I was in Amsterdam meeting up with Jessica. We always have planned for me to go visit the museum where she works at but every time I’m arriving by train so late in the afternoon that I keep missing out. Bummer! However, we grabbed a local Thai food where there was probably 5 tables. It was so tiny but the food was good. We then intended to go for a quick shop to Filippa K (one of my fav shops) but it had already closed by 7 pm.

Next, we just continued strolling around what I find to be the romantic Amsterdam with the light exhibits on the canals. We grabbed some drinks at the Hoxton lounge (one of my fav places to go chill in Amsterdam), and then she insisted on grabbing another drink at a club I’ve never been to, which was ChinChin. There was a karaoke bar, restaurant, and club all in one place. I like catching the train back with her and just keep on conversing about life, our careers, blogging, shopping, personal style, and recently about our love life, dating, and relationships. Needless to mention how glad I am to have getting to know her.

The following day I caught an early train ride from Eindhoven to The Hague to grab brunch with the crew made of Kimberley, Silvana, and finally got to meet Sebastian. We chatted and laughed about everything at the local brunch names Bartine. It was good to see them all. Then afterwards, I had the honor to stroll around the Hague with Sebastian as my personal tour guide. He was showing me the old government buildings, describing the architectural styles, and the history behind them.

And it was already time to head back to Eindhoven to meet up for dinner with other friends. So the lovely Anne showed up with Joffrey. Unfortunately, my friend from work Sander (a Belge guy) and his wife couldn’t stay late into the evening as they have a little toddler to attend to so I only got to see them very briefly. The next day which was Saturday, Jo and I packed our bags, got into the car and set our GPS direction towards Paris to meet up with my sister for a late brunch.

Paris, France

Ahhh Paris is always my fav place in the world! Always crazy and fun at the same time with my lovely sis Britney and the Parisian crew. You probably may have noticed but I also avidly avoid tourristy areas there. I always prefer our local hang outs or discover new hot spots that most tourists are unaware of. We hung out in the newly trend food hall style La Félicita, had a bite and a few drinks then danced our night away.

We also celebrated New Year’s eve in our own terms. No rules nor tips to follow. We simply created our own way of having a great time. No overpriced club tickets bought online, no house party on our agenda. Remember that the best plan is no plan after all. We just walked up towards the Champs-Elysee then grabbed food and drinks at the Beer Station.

The area had been blocked off for the fire work show around the arc de Triomphe but we were located right at the edge of the landmark. Stayed warm, had food and cheering on red wine then champagne, watching the fireworks all in safety and warmth instead of mingling with the crowds on the Champs-Elysee avenue where it was counted that over 150,000 people attended the event. We took the party further towards Pigalle area at the Carmen club where we met the cutie barman Romeo who had a generous amount of dating advice to give away haha.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get much free time at hand to see the group of Paris girls (sorry! Next time for sure!) but got to do a quicky apero at Taler’s house. I got to meet her boyfriend, her cousin from the US, and her other friends. My sister later showed up too!

Tours, France

This was a truly special trip into the wine country of Loire Valley. Typically every time I visit my parents’ house in the Center of France, we’d stop by the neighboring area to go wine tasting and coming back home with boxes of a variety of wines. We are also very intimate with the wine makers of the region so it’s always a pleasure to say hi. But this time, I’d convinced my sister and our friend Aja to come along with me to visit the Tours region and meet up with Antoine at the Domaine de Cray.

It was a lovely wine tour into the sparkling white wine production, the famous Cremant de Loire, where he was showing us the art of riddling wine a la méthode Champenoise. He was showing up the assembly line with some level of automation for the first fermentation to take place where the natural sugar from the grapes are converted into alcohol and letting the carbon dioxide escape from the bottle and makes the base wine or the cuvée. It’s not usually very tasty as it is very acidic. Antoine showed us where these cuvée were stored in those large chambers and even had a sip of it together with the tuxedo cat who serves as great company. I recommend anyone to stop by this winery!

If you made it to read this line, well thanks for reading my stories. Let me know if you enjoy these narratives as much as I do or rather want tips for travel but either way don’t hesitate to drop a comment and I’ll look forward to your inputs.

  Best of 2018 Travel Hi everyone, I guess it's never too late to wish you all a wonderful happy new year!

[unbiasedph]

‘Cosplayer daw?’ Pagsusuot ng katutubong kasuotan ni VP Sara, inulan ng iba’t ibang reaksiyon

Umani ng samu’t saring reaksiyon at komento ang pagsusuot ng tradisyunal na kasuotan ng mga Bagobo Tagabawa ni Vice President at Department of Education Secretary Sara Duterte, sa pagbubukas ng unang sesyon ng 19th Congress at unang State of the Nation Address o SONA ni Pangulong Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr kahapon ng Lunes, Hulyo 25, sa Batasang Pambansa. Ibinida ni Inday Sara ang kaniyang katutubong kasuotan, na aniya ay hiniram niya lamang sa deputy mayor ng naturang cultural group na si Bae Sheirelle Antonio. “Sa ating pagdalo sa unang State of the Nation Address ni Pangulong Ferdinand Marcos Jr., suot po natin ang tradisyunal na kasuotan ng tribong Bagobo Tagabawa,” ayon sa Facebook post ni Duterte, Hulyo 25. “Ang damit na ito ay pinahiram po sa atin ni Bae Sheirelle Anino, ang deputy mayor para sa Tagabawa tribe sa Davao City.” Ang Bagobo weaves ay kilala bilang “Inabal”, tradisyonal na telang yari sa abaca. Ang mga padron o pattern nito ay tinatawag na Kinatkat o Ine na isinusuot ng kababaihang Bagobo Tagabawa. Mga katas ng gulay at iba pang likas na pampakulay umano ang ginagamit dito. Ang mga Bagobo ang pinakamalaking cultural group sa Southern Mindanao. Ito ay binubuo naman ng tatlong sub-grupo: ang mga Tagabawa, Clata o Guiangan, at Ubo. Marami naman ang pumuri sa Pangalawang Pangulo, sa comment section ng kaniyang Facebook post, lalo na ang mga tagasuporta niyang celebrities gaya ng mang-aawit na si Robert Seña, komedyanteng si Beverly Salviejo, at newscaster na si Kat De Castro. Umani rin ito ng papuri mula sa mga netizen. “Iba talanga ang ating VP. Hindi tayo nagkamali sa kaniya! Ang ganda talaga ng mga damit sa Mindanao, sagana sa kultura.” “Salamat po Vice. Kaming mga katutubo ay sobrang saya po na ipinagmamalaki n’yo kami sa buong mundo.” “Nakakaproud! A true leader of Mindanao!” “This is such a beautiful gesture of minority representation. Great job!” “VP Inday Sara wearing a dress of Bagobo Tribe projected a message that all tribes in the Philippines are being represented and it encourages that our tribal brothers and sisters are part of nation building and not considered as minorities and will only be on the sidelines.” Samantala, trending naman ang dalawang basher na nagkomentong tila ginawa na raw “entertainment” ang public service at tila nag-cosplay daw si VP Sara. “Ginawa nang entertainment ang public service”. “May Cosplayer pala dito”.

Screengrab mula sa FB Agad namang bumanat ang mga tagasuporta ni VP Sara upang ipagtanggol ito at ipaliwanag sa dalawang bashers na hindi ito cosplay. Samantala, may mga kumukuwestyon din kay VP Sara sa pagsusuot niya ng tradisyonal na kasuotan dahil taliwas daw ito sa naging pahayag ng kaniyang amang si Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte laban sa mga lumad, sa isang press conference matapos ang SONA niya noong 2017. Nagbanta si dating Pangulong Duterte na bobombahin ang mga paaralan ng mga Lumad dahil tinuturuan umano silang maging rebelde sa pamahalaan. “Umalis kayo diyan. Sabihin ko diyan sa mga Lumad ngayon, umalis kayo diyan. Bobombahan ko ‘yan. Isali ko ‘yang mga istruktura ninyo,” aniya. “I will use the Armed Forces, the Philippine Air Force. Talagang bobombahan ko ‘yung mga… lahat ng ano ninyo. Because you are operating illegally and you are teaching the children to rebel against government.” Samantala, wala pang tugon o pahayag ang kampo ni VP Sara tungkol dito. Read Full News @ Manila Bulletin Read the full article

[jeffreyarico-blog]

How ‘thanksgiving’ Became *Thanksgiving*

It is known that Thanksgiving is a National Holiday in America and supposedly originated 1621 when Plymouth Colonist and the Wampanoag Indians had a feast together during a celebration of an Autumn Harvest that lasted for three days.

In November 1620 a mixture of European settlers landed the Mayflower ship near Cape Cod after a 66 day journey of 102 (some historians say 101 or even roughly 100) passengers that were excited to enter this new world. The settlers came ashore but soon (maybe about a month later)  they crossed Provincetown Harbor to Plymouth Harbor in fear that they angered Native Americans because some of the settlers robbed graves and storehouses for corn and set fire to them.  

During the first horrendous winter most of the settlers stayed on board the ship (some attempted to build huts).  Approximately, half of the settlers on board died because of diseases such as: Pneumonia, scurvy (deficiency of vitamin c), and malnutrition. Many women died because they gave their food to their starving children.

In March 1621, the surviving settlers marched ashore. They received a visit from an Abenaki Indian who actually greeted them in English and soon to follow they were greeted by another Native American Tisquantum of the Pawtuxet tribe (the Pawtuxet is a band of the Wampanoag).

Tisquantum (more commonly known as Squanto and probably named by William Bradford (we will get to him in moment), an English-speaking Native American. Squanto was captured by the English in 1614 and was later sold into slavery in Spain. He spent many years in England and learned how to speak English (later to become their translator in-trade with other Native American people and the colonist). He returned to New England in 1619 and to discovery that his entire Patuxet tribe died from smallpox.

The pilgrims lacked nutrition so Squanto taught the weakened Mayflower survivors how to fertilize the soil with dried fish, cultivate corn, gather sap from trees, catch fish (even where to find the best locations to catch fish). Maybe has even shown them how to plant carrots, onions, garlic, squash and gather nuts.

By the way the Pilgrims didn’t refer to themselves as Pilgrims and they were actually separatists (or Puritan Separatist) who were separated from the Church of England (it was actually illegal not to attend the Church of England among other harsh laws).

The settlers that landed in 1620 were the second colony of American. The first colony that landed in Virginia were able to practice their religion freely in the Netherlands. First, they arrived in the Netherlands but then set sail to Virginia in 1607.

These First settlers also came to American to increase their wealth, extend their influence over world affairs and this wasn’t just a religious venture.

Squanto formed an alliance between the second European Colonists (from the Mayflower) and the Wampanoag tribe. The Pilgrim-Wampanoag peace treaty is the agreement, that both parties promised not to “doe hurt” to each other and this was the first treaty between a Native American tribe and American colonists. If a Wampanoag broke the peace, he would be sent to Plymouth for punishment; if a colonist broke the law, he would likewise be sent to the Wampanoag. This was singed on ‘April Fool’s Day’ 1621.

Elected Governor William Bradford (English separatist; and Governor for approximately 30 years, between 1621 and 1657) took the leadership role when the first elected governor died in the harsh winter that stole the lives of approximately half of the crew aboard the Mayflower.

During the fall harvest of 1621 William Bradford may have invited members of their Native American allies now remembered as the first Thanksgiving (Though it probably wasn’t actually called “Thanksgiving” by the original attendees to this harmonious and peaceful feast.).

To the separatist, a “thanksgiving” was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event e.g., winning of a battle.

Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia holding a thanksgiving in 1610. In 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia. The group's London Company charter specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving (note: not capitalized; note: not a proper noun) to Almighty God."

Now moving back 1621…

There’s no evidence that the Native Americans were invited to this feast in the fall of 1621. No one knows the truth of how they ended up together. It’s a common misconception. This was more of a military alliance or a political gathering. Thus, it was a celebration of crossing cultures with different types of foods games and prayer.

This was probably a guy’s-only event (sorry ladies) and the ladies were doing most of the cooking.

So what was on the menu?

We do know that Governor William Bradford does mention a plentiful amount of turkeys but we are not sure if in connection to this feast. He noted that, "besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys which they took many”. He sent his men on a mission to collect water fowl. So it is possible that wild turkey was eaten but we are not sure.

We do know that The Wampanoag brought five deer.  

And we know that there was a plentiful about of seafood available: Lobster, clams, mussels and maybe even eels too.  

[PLUS] Corn and porridge.

Pumpkins maybe; but not as a pie. Squash, yes. In fact there was no pies there.  The pilgrims had no ovens and the supply of sugar that the settlers had diminished by the fall of 1621.

No white potatoes because they originated in South America. No sweet potatoes because they’re from (can anyone guess?) the Caribbean. These potatoes haven’t arrive to North America Yet.

Cranberries may have been present but were likely eaten raw or at least not in a sweet form. Native Americans ate cranberries as fruit, raw; dried them, and formed them into cakes to store; made tea out of the leaves among other preparation methods. It’s known as an early Native American ‘super food’ before the term even came into play.

Probably walnuts, chestnuts, and beechnuts because they were plentiful.

Pilgrims held their second Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 to mark the end of a long drought that had threatened the year’s harvest and prompted Governor Bradford to call for a religious fast.  Days of fasting and thanksgiving on an annual or occasional basis became common practice in other New England settlements as well.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress selected one or more days of thanksgiving per year. In 1789 George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States.

Our First President George Washington called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the joyous outcome of the country’s war of independence and the successful ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The Second, US President John Adams; Fourth US President James Madison also designated days of thanks during their presidencies.

In 1817, New York became the first of numerous states to officially adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday; each celebrated it on a different day, however, the American South remained largely unfamiliar with the tradition.

1827, the famous writer Sarah Josepha Hale—author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—launched a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday—and she maybe held most reasonable for the Holiday: her campaign begin in 1846 and lasted 17 years before it was successful.

She wrote letters to five presidents: Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln.  She convinced Lincoln to support legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving (now a proper noun) in 1863. The new national holiday was considered a unifying day after the stress of the American Civil War. The only national holidays, celebrated at this in the United States, at this time, were Washington's Birthday and Independence Day.

Footnote: https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2010/11/22/131516586/who-brought-the-turkey-the-truth-about-the-first-thanksgiving

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/us/thanksgiving-myths-fact-check.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-was-on-the-menu-at-the-first-thanksgiving-511554/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131127-cranberries-thanksgiving-native-americans-indians-food-history/

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151121-first-thanksgiving-pilgrims-native-americans-wampanoag-saints-and-strangers/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-pilgrim-wampanoag-peace-treaty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Josepha_Hale

[werindialive]

Congress is the ‘mother or terrorism’ and Samajwadi Party is Abba Jaan, says Yogi Adityanath

On Sunday, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath attacked the opposition party very hard as he calls Congress party the mother of terrorism in India. He also took a jab on the Samajwadi Party. The Bhartiya Janta Party leader was attending a program in Kushinagar where he became all vocal about the competition and said that the Congress Party is the one responsible for giving shelter to mafia and insulting the faith in Lord Ram.

“But the BJP heals the citizens, paves the way for the construction of a grand temple of Lord Shri Ram and sends the mafia to the place they deserve. If there is BJP, there is respect for everyone, there is respect for faith," Adityanath said.

CM Adityanath was in Kushinagar attending the inaugural function of several development projects.

Claiming the two former parties played dirty politics, the CM said that both Congress Party and Samajwadi Party did nothing but plagued the state with disease, unemployment, mafia raj and corruption. He also asked the people of UP to stand against “the pro-Taliban, casteist and dynastic mentality that shot at the devotees of Lord Ram.”. Praising the Modi leadership, he said that there is no space for appeasement Politics when Modi is in charge.

“Before 2017 was everyone able to get ration? Earlier those who used to say 'Abba Jaan' digested the ration for the poor." he said. “The ration meant for Srinagar went to Nepal and Bangladesh back then. But if someone tries to take away ration from the poor now, he will definitely land in jail.”

As soon as the statement clip of CM Adityanath was tweeted, Omar Abdullah took a snap and claimed that the BJP leader was spreading hatred and blatant communalism.

Omar Abdullah said, “I’ve always maintained the BJP has no intention of fighting any election with an agenda other than blatant communalism & hatred with all the venom directed towards Muslims. Here is a CM seeking re-election claiming that Muslims ate up all the rations meant for Hindus.”

For more political news in Hindi, subscribe to our newsletter.

[neptunecreek]

Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Court Rubber Stamps Mass Surveillance Under Section 702 - Again

As someone once said, “the Founders did not fight a revolution to gain the right to government agency protocols.”  Well it was not just someone, it was Chief Justice John Roberts. He flatly rejected the government’s claim that agency protocols could solve the Fourth Amendment violations created by police searches of our communications stored in the cloud and accessible through our phones.  

Apparently, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) didn’t get the memo. That’s because, under a recently declassified decision from November 2020, the FISC again found that a series of overly complex but still ultimately swiss cheese agency protocols -- that are admittedly not even being followed -- resolve the Fourth Amendment problems caused by the massive governmental seizures and searches of our communications currently occurring under FISA Section 702. The annual review by the FISC is required by law -- it’s supposed to ensure that both the policies and the practices of the mass surveillance under 702 are sufficient. It failed on both counts.  

The protocols themselves are inherently problematic. The law only requires that intelligence officials “reasonably believe” the “target” of an investigation to be a foreigner abroad -- it is immaterial to the initial collection that there is an American, with full constitutional rights, on the other side of a communication

Justice Roberts was concerned with a single phone seized pursuant to a lawful arrest.  The FISC is apparently unconcerned when it rubber stamps mass surveillance impacting, by the government’s own admission, hundreds of thousand of nonsuspect Americans.

What’s going on here?  

From where we sit, it seems clear that the FISC continues to suffer from a massive case of national security constitutional-itis. That is the affliction (not really, we made it up) where ordinarily careful judges sworn to defend the Constitution effectively ignore the flagrant Fourth Amendment violations that occur when the NSA, FBI, (and to a lesser extent, the CIA, and NCTC) misuse the justification of national security to spy on Americans en mass. And this malady means that even when the agencies completely fail to follow the court's previous orders, they still get a pass to keep spying.  

The FISC decision is disappointing on at least two levels. First, the protocols themselves are not sufficient to protect Americans’ privacy. They allow the government to tap into the Internet backbone and seize our international (and lots of domestic) communications as they flow by -- ostensibly to see if they have been targeted. This is itself a constitutional violation, as we have long argued in our Jewel v. NSA case. We await the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Jewel on the government’s claim that this spying that everyone knows about is too secret to be submitted for real constitutional review by a public adversarial court (as opposed to the one-sided review by the rubber-stamping FISC).  

But even after that, the protocols themselves are swiss cheese when it comes to protecting Americans. At the outset, unlike traditional foreign intelligence surveillance, under Section 702, FISC judges do not authorize individualized warrants for specific targets. Rather, the role of a FISC judge under Section 702 is to approve abstract protocols that govern the Executive Branch’s mass surveillance and then review whether they have been followed.  

The protocols themselves are inherently problematic. The law only requires that intelligence officials “reasonably believe” the “target” of an investigation to be a foreigner abroad -- it is immaterial to the initial collection that there is an American, with full constitutional rights, on the other side of a conversation whose communications are both seized and searched without a warrant. It is also immaterial that the individuals targeted turn out to be U.S. persons.  This was one of the many problems which ultimately ended with the decommissioning of the Call Detail Records program, which despite being Congress' attempt to rein in the program which started under section 215 of the Patriot Act, still mass surveilled communications metadata, including inadvertently collecting millions of call detail records from American persons illegally. 

Next, the protocols allow collection for any “foreign intelligence,” purpose, which is a much broader scope than merely searching for terrorists. The term encompasses information that, for instance, could give the U.S. an advantage in trade negotiations. Once these communications are collected, the protocols allow the FBI to use the information for domestic criminal prosecutions if related to national security.  This is what Senator Wyden and others in Congress have rightly pointed out is a “backdoor” warrantless search. And those are just a few of the problems.  

While the protocols are complex and confusing, the end result is that nearly all Americans have their international communications seized initially and a huge number of them are seized and searched by the FBI, NSA, CIA and NCTC, often multiple times for various reasons, all without individual suspicion, much less a warrant.

Second, the government agencies -- especially the FBI -- apparently cannot be bothered to follow even these weak protocols.  This means that in practice, we users don’t even get that minimal protection.  The FISC decision reports that the FBI has never limited its searches to just those related to national security. Instead agents query the 702 system for investigations relating to health care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism, public corruption and bribery. And that’s in just 7 FBI field offices reviewed. This is not a new problem, as the FISC notes. Although it once again seems to think that the FBI just needs to be told again to do it and to do proper training (which it has failed to do for years). The court notes that it is likely that other field offices also did searches for ordinary crimes, but that the FBI also failed to do proper oversight so we just don’t know how.  

A federal court would accept no such tomfoolery.....Yet the FISC is perfectly willing to sign off on the FBI’s failures and the Bureau’s flagrant disregard of its own rulings for year upon year.

Next, the querying system for this sensitive information had been designed to make it hard not to search the 702-collected data, including by requiring agents to opt out (not in) to searching the 702 data and then timing out that opt-out after only thirty minutes. And even then, the agents could just toggle “yes” to search 702 collected data, with no secondary checking prior to those searches. This happened multiple times (that we know of) to allow for searches without any national security justification. The FBI also continued to improperly conduct bulk searches, which are large batch queries using multiple search terms without written justifications as required by the protocols. Even the FISC calls these searches “indiscriminate,” yet it reauthorized the program.  

In her excellent analysis of the decision, Marcy Wheeler lists out the agency excuses that the Court accepted:

It took time for them to make the changes in their systems

It took time to train everyone

Once everyone got trained they all got sent home for COVID 

Given mandatory training, personnel “should be aware” of the requirements, even if actual practice demonstrates they’re not

FBI doesn’t do that many field reviews

Evidence of violations is not sufficient evidence to find that the program inadequately protects privacy

The opt-out system for FISA material — which is very similar to one governing the phone and Internet dragnet at NSA until 2011 that also failed to do its job — failed to do its job

The FBI has always provided national security justifications for a series of violations involving their tracking system where an Agent didn’t originally claim one

Bulk queries have operated like that since November 2019

He’s concerned but will require more reporting

And the dog also ate their homework.  While more reporting sounds nice, that’s the same thing ordered the last time, and the time before that.  Reporting of problems should lead to something actually being done to stop the problems.  

At this point, it’s just embarrassing. A federal court would accept no such tomfoolery from an impoverished criminal defendant facing years in prison. Yet the FISC is perfectly willing to sign off on the FBI and NSA failures and the agencies' flagrant disregard of its own rulings for year upon year.  Not all FISC decisions are disappointing.  In 2017, we were heartened that another FISC judge had been so fed up that it issued requirements that led to the end of the “about” searching of collected upstream data and even its partial destruction. And the extra reporting requirements do give us at least a glimpse into how bad it is that we wouldn’t otherwise have.  

But this time the FISC has let us all down again. It’s time for the judiciary, whether a part of the FISC or not, to inoculate themselves against the problem of throwing out the Fourth Amendment whenever the Executive Branch invokes national security, particularly when the constitutional violations are so flagrant, long-standing and pervasive. The judiciary needs to recognize mass spying as unconstitutional and stop what remains of it. Americans deserve better than this charade of oversight. 

Related Cases: 

Jewel v. NSA

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/3tpobcQ

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

'Disobedience' has some of the most realistic lesbian sex scenes, uh, ever

Whether you're a queer person aching for representation or a straight human looking for a good time, we are all searching for the same thing in life: quality lesbian sex scenes.

Historically, they've been excruciatingly hard to find. That's why it's delightful to see newly-released indie drama Disobedience get it mostly right. Neither a heteronormative pornographic fantasy nor a dry, anthropological account, Disobedience manages to depict queer sex without exploiting the actors performing it.

Bonus: It's super hot.

SEE ALSO: Instagram's Queer Appalachia brings love — and services — to those who need it most

Ever since Director Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience premiered at TIFF in 2017, it's been the talk of the town among the five queer women who care about this kind of stuff. The film tells story of Orthodox Jewish lesbians in London: Esti (Rachel McAdams) caught in a loveless relationship with a Rabbi, and Ronit (Rachel Weisz) trapped in a series of meaningless heterosexual hookups. 

Besides being a genuinely considerate movie with some thoughtful meditations on religion and culture, it has the added thrill of having super erotic sex scenes, made possible because:

1. The director didn't exploit his actresses (see Autostraddle's interview with Rachel Weisz).

2. It's a forbidden love that takes place in a confined setting where people wear lots of uniforms.

3. There's actual build-up, it's not just straight porn.

4. The two characters actually seem like each other (gulp!).

5. They execute realistic sex positions that normal, sexual non-Olympians are capable of performing.

This seems like it shouldn't be a victory. And yet, the list of movies who've accomplished the same feat is painfully abbreviated. Don't talk to me about Blue is the Warmest Color, a movie made famous for its extended, impractical sex scenes and allegations of harassment by its director, Abdellatif Kechiche. Kechiche reportedly bullied the two female protagonists as well as his staff, forcing them to work 16-hour workdays under extreme pressure. Critics further accused the director of creating "voyeuristic" sex scenes intended to solicit the male gaze.

As a queer woman myself, I was mostly concerned that the two female characters ate a whole plate of spaghetti without brushing their teeth before commencing intercourse.

There are a few others that make the cut. Todd Haynes' Carol featured delightfully melodramatic and nostalgic rich lesbian sex scenes, but the scenes were brief in duration, and what they had in quality they lost in quantity. Repression-era sex scenes are the best kind of sex scenes. We demand more.

1985's Desert Hearts was one of the first majorish films to feature lesbian sex, uh, ever. Bound (1996), the story of a hot ex con lesbian plummer, had some of the hottest lesbian sex scenes in lesbian sex scene history. Still, the chances of people watching this movie who aren't Xennial queers, Gen-X lesbians, or currently taking a feminist film theory class are, approximately, zero.

I'm not about to put Kissing Jessica Stein in this category, because it's too weak of a queer film to be even considered. There's also Mulholland Drive, which had some very brief hot queer moments relative to its era (2001). Heavenly Creatures (1994) served the queer goth community particularly well. Sadly, that community is relatively small.

So kudos to Disobedience for really taking the time to mediate on how queer women have sex. The scene clocks in at about eight minutes and never once gets banal — it even throws in a complimentary spit swap.

Here's what Weisz told queer women's media publication Autostraddle about the film:

As am I. Representation always matters, whether it's in the Halls of Congress or at your local independent theater. Queer women deserve to have their queer female sex represented on screen, without it devolving into typical pornographic tropes: shaved vaginas, sorority sisters, giant jiggly boobs, foot-long dildos, scissoring, a well-hung neighbor guy who just "pops in" for a threesome, etc. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of these erotic ingredients, per se, but it's formulaic and not particularly representational of most queer sex.

If America truly cares about lesbian sex (which it definitely does, as most porn sites, queer women, and even straight women will tell you) it should do a better job of representing it on screen. 

Disobedience has come a long way from its queer cinematic origins, and we still have so far to go.

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WATCH: Artistic cycling is one of the weirdest and hardest sports you probably didn't even know existed

[avnconferences-blog]

Book hotel accommodation and other facilities for ATS congress online here.

[thisdaynews]

Plot To Sack Secondus As PDP Chairman Thickens, Wike Withdraws Support For Him

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/plot-to-sack-secondus-as-pdp-chairman-thickens-wike-withdraws-support-for-him/

Plot To Sack Secondus As PDP Chairman Thickens, Wike Withdraws Support For Him

LAGOS-In their endeavors to reposition the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in front of the 2023 general elec­tions, lead representatives chose on the foundation of the gathering are plotting the evacuation of Prince Uche Secondus, the public administrator of the gathering, Daily Independent only gath­ered.

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Sources in the gathering revealed to Daily Independent that Secondus, who was chosen in December 2017 and still has a year to finish his present term “may not make sure about re-appointment for a new term regardless of whether he scarcely figures out how to make due till December 2021”. ­

It was accumulated that since the exit of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the previous public administrator of the decision All Progressives Congress (APC) in June, this year, a few partners in the PDP have been making quiet fomentations for Secon­dus substitution so the gathering can likewise start on a new record.

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It was additionally accumulated that while Secondus got a relief from the gathering’s treatment of the political emergency in Edo in which it obliged Gov­ernor Godwin Obaseki who at last won the state for the PDP, the ongoing loss of Ebonyi State to the APC has put the PDP administrator on the spotlight again as requests for his expulsion increased.

One of our sources fur­ther added that the circumstance has become more complicat­ed for Secondus inferable from the opposing situation of Riv­ers State lead representative, Nyesom Wike, who assumed a urgent function in his development as the PDP director in 2017.

As per him, Wike’s a lot of bad blood relationship with Secondus began in October 2018 after Atiku Abubakar vanquished Wike’s applicant, Governor Aminu Tambuw­al of Sokoto State to arise as the official competitor of the PDP.

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Subsequent to alluding to the Sec­ondus-drove National Working Committee (NWC) as expense col­lectors in June, Wike at the end of the week likewise blamed them for planting seed of disunity among PDP lead representatives and risking the gathering’s pros­pect to secure the administration in 2023.

A noticeably irate Wike said it was unfortunate that in­stead of benefiting from the failure and maladmin­istration that has character­ised APC five years in force, PDP’s NWC is developing breaks in the gathering.

He clarified that instead of spotlight on systems on the most proficient method to exploit the developing upsetting with the APC government, the NWC is planting a seed of dissension among lead representatives utilizing two previous legislative heads of Imo and Cross River states and a current congressperson from Benue State. The lead representative blamed the current leader­ship for NWC of just be­ing keen on holding the current structure of the gathering to stay in force, and not to win the 2023 political race.

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“PDP should have har­vested from the failure of the APC; from the mal­administration of the APC. Customarily, that is the thing that op­position party should do. If you were to ask me, are Nigerians sitting tight for a change? Truly. If you were to request me as a part from PDP, Am I prepared to help PDP to takeover, yes. However, if you were to ask me right now for what it’s worth, is the initiative of the gathering willing for us to reap this open door for a change, I will say no.

“A resistance that should be joined together, to work, to assume control over the issues of government, since individuals are hanging tight for this opportu­nity, yet the current leader­ship of NWC isn’t ready for that, somewhat, what they have done is to establish a few people to plant a seed of dissension among gover­nors for their own childish interest. Furthermore, that will boo­merang; that will burn-through them”, Wike had said.

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Our source, who was an individual from the gathering’s Board of Trustees, said despite the fact that Wike was not explicit, his upheaval was coordinated pri­marily at Secondus. He added that given the impact Wike employs in the PDP, particularly among the gathering’s lead representatives, Secondus days in office are numbered.

He likewise added that aside the conviction by numerous individuals that Secondus came up short on the ca­pacity to convey the gathering be­yond its current level, others accept that the gathering under his initiative has neglected to satisfy its hopes as Nigeria’s significant resistance which is required to put President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC on their toes.

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“Truly, Secondus days as the PDP public chair­man are numbered. The real­ity is that regardless of whether he figures out how to finish his present term, his odds of getting reelect­ed is so distant. The NWC-drove by him no longer appreciates the help of lion’s share of gathering individuals and the ongoing loss of Ebonyi has further wors­ened the circumstance.

“On the off chance that you take a gander at the out­burst of Governor Wike who assisted Secondus with fueling and the assertion made by Bukola Saraki, previous Sen­ate President, taking steps to leave as administrator of the gathering’s compromise board on the off chance that Secondus con­tinues to meddle in the pro­cess, at that point you should realize that Secondus no longer en­joys the fame of gathering individuals who created him in 2017.

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“Across board, there is a quiet protesting in the par­ty that the administration should be reconstituted if the gathering is not kidding about getting back to control in 2023”, he said.

When reached, a mem­ber of the gathering’s NWC said gossipy tidbits that PDP lead representatives are disillusioned with Sec­ondus and needed him out is false.

“The report isn’t accurate. In the event that it is right, I will let you know so. What number of lead representatives do we have in the North? North-West is two; North-East is three and North-Central is one. Who is against Secon­dus among these lead representatives? None, I can say.

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“On those censuring Sec­ondus for absconding, what number of lead representatives deserted? What was the explanation behind the abandonment? Lead representative Umahi left PDP and censured Gover­nor Wike for his choice. He never blamed the NWC for anything”, he said.

Additionally, Kola Olog­bondiyan, public exposure secretary of PDP, said APC which is currently a dead ideological group having disintegrated every one of its structures is searching for approaches to destabilize the PDP at all expense.

“The APC isn’t not kidding. In all actuality, their gathering is in disorder and they need to break PDP so they can shape another gathering. They won’t succeed”, he said.

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[unbiasedph]

‘Cosplayer daw?’ Pagsusuot ng katutubong kasuotan ni VP Sara, inulan ng iba’t ibang reaksiyon

Umani ng samu’t saring reaksiyon at komento ang pagsusuot ng tradisyunal na kasuotan ng mga Bagobo Tagabawa ni Vice President at Department of Education Secretary Sara Duterte, sa pagbubukas ng unang sesyon ng 19th Congress at unang State of the Nation Address o SONA ni Pangulong Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr kahapon ng Lunes, Hulyo 25, sa Batasang Pambansa. Ibinida ni Inday Sara ang kaniyang katutubong kasuotan, na aniya ay hiniram niya lamang sa deputy mayor ng naturang cultural group na si Bae Sheirelle Antonio. “Sa ating pagdalo sa unang State of the Nation Address ni Pangulong Ferdinand Marcos Jr., suot po natin ang tradisyunal na kasuotan ng tribong Bagobo Tagabawa,” ayon sa Facebook post ni Duterte, Hulyo 25. “Ang damit na ito ay pinahiram po sa atin ni Bae Sheirelle Anino, ang deputy mayor para sa Tagabawa tribe sa Davao City.” Ang Bagobo weaves ay kilala bilang “Inabal”, tradisyonal na telang yari sa abaca. Ang mga padron o pattern nito ay tinatawag na Kinatkat o Ine na isinusuot ng kababaihang Bagobo Tagabawa. Mga katas ng gulay at iba pang likas na pampakulay umano ang ginagamit dito. Ang mga Bagobo ang pinakamalaking cultural group sa Southern Mindanao. Ito ay binubuo naman ng tatlong sub-grupo: ang mga Tagabawa, Clata o Guiangan, at Ubo. Marami naman ang pumuri sa Pangalawang Pangulo, sa comment section ng kaniyang Facebook post, lalo na ang mga tagasuporta niyang celebrities gaya ng mang-aawit na si Robert Seña, komedyanteng si Beverly Salviejo, at newscaster na si Kat De Castro. Umani rin ito ng papuri mula sa mga netizen. “Iba talanga ang ating VP. Hindi tayo nagkamali sa kaniya! Ang ganda talaga ng mga damit sa Mindanao, sagana sa kultura.” “Salamat po Vice. Kaming mga katutubo ay sobrang saya po na ipinagmamalaki n’yo kami sa buong mundo.” “Nakakaproud! A true leader of Mindanao!” “This is such a beautiful gesture of minority representation. Great job!” “VP Inday Sara wearing a dress of Bagobo Tribe projected a message that all tribes in the Philippines are being represented and it encourages that our tribal brothers and sisters are part of nation building and not considered as minorities and will only be on the sidelines.” Samantala, trending naman ang dalawang basher na nagkomentong tila ginawa na raw “entertainment” ang public service at tila nag-cosplay daw si VP Sara. “Ginawa nang entertainment ang public service”. “May Cosplayer pala dito”.

Screengrab mula sa FB Agad namang bumanat ang mga tagasuporta ni VP Sara upang ipagtanggol ito at ipaliwanag sa dalawang bashers na hindi ito cosplay. Samantala, may mga kumukuwestyon din kay VP Sara sa pagsusuot niya ng tradisyonal na kasuotan dahil taliwas daw ito sa naging pahayag ng kaniyang amang si Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte laban sa mga lumad, sa isang press conference matapos ang SONA niya noong 2017. Nagbanta si dating Pangulong Duterte na bobombahin ang mga paaralan ng mga Lumad dahil tinuturuan umano silang maging rebelde sa pamahalaan. “Umalis kayo diyan. Sabihin ko diyan sa mga Lumad ngayon, umalis kayo diyan. Bobombahan ko ‘yan. Isali ko ‘yang mga istruktura ninyo,” aniya. “I will use the Armed Forces, the Philippine Air Force. Talagang bobombahan ko ‘yung mga… lahat ng ano ninyo. Because you are operating illegally and you are teaching the children to rebel against government.” Samantala, wala pang tugon o pahayag ang kampo ni VP Sara tungkol dito. Read Full News @ Manila Bulletin Read the full article

[projectrepublic-blog]

Triggered Parents Create Event to Take Toy Guns from Kids

Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers were a childhood staple for those of us who didn’t have parachute adorned, floral printed parents. Added to the fun were loud cracking cap guns, tying up your brother, and maybe even leaving him bound while you went and ate lunch. Good times.     #Liberal Hysteria — Wants ban on popular Fairy Tale — Here is why…     For some  children in Buffalo , those good times dead. Murdered. The community is apparently hosting a toy gun exchange to keep such “dangerous” specimens away from the munchkins. In case you needed another reason to hate 2017:   “This is a cap gun and it sounds real,” said Leonard Lane.   Hey, loud noises are almost as scary as the makeup-less face of Pelosi.   “Whatever you put in a child’s hands that’s what he feels comfortable with and you put a toy gun in his hands at an early age and when he gets older he’s going to want the real thing,” said Leonard Lane, president of Buffalo F.A.T.H.E.R.S organization.   I had a cap gun and I never – oh wait, never mind. So some kids might grow up and want the real thing. But I see no argument for why possessing a self-defense tool against deadness and rapage is bad. These parents have little interest in actual discussion, though. They just want to ban all the things.     ‘Womanspreading’ — Yes, here we go         That’s why Lane is encouraging parents to give up their child’s toy guns this Christmas and exchange it for a different toy, as part of the annual Toy Gun Exchange at the Delavan Grider community center.  “Little kids like to play cops and robbers but you know in the environment we live in, there’s so much violence in this world that there’s so many other options for kids to have fun,” said Capt. Steve Nichols with Buffalo police.   Options like transgender camp, microaggression training, or a hardy round of hormone therapy.   “Put something better in their hands, something that can better the child. They need to get something a book, a football, something that can better them make them a more productive citizen in society,” said Darryl Scott, Outreach supervisor with Buffalo S.N.U.G.   No. Books cause paper cuts. Football causes concussions and social justice syndrome. Just give them an iPad and let them access porn on YouTube. Better options.     Shaun King On #Trump’s Twitter Beef With LaVar Ball: ‘Ungrateful Is The New N*****’     We can’t have children running around outside socializing in a game of cops and robbers. We must wrap them in bubble wrap, feed them Cheetos, and seat them in front of a gay show explaining why they are fat victims. And later, when they may find themselves helpless victims of actual assault? Too bad. Guns are mean and scary. #Progress  The post  Triggered Parents Create Event to Take Toy Guns from Kids  appeared first on  Project Republic | Headlines, News, Politics .

  #House #MAGA #LIbrals #Conservative #SJW #White #Congress

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Let's deconstruct Nixon's "Resignation Lunch," shall we?

Mark Dery:

"I want to know exact details, hard information about everything!" J.G. Ballard told an interviewer, in the pre-Internet year of 1982. Expressing his hope that "the computer and TV revolution will bring about...a scientific information channel where you can just press a button" and be deluged by the kind of obscure data that fed his imagination as a visionary novelist, Ballard rhapsodized, "I want to know everything about everything! I mean, I want to know the exact passenger list of that DC-10 that crashed outside Malaga two weeks ago, I want to know the latest automobile varnishes that are being used by the Pontiac division of General Motors, I want to know what Charles Manson has for breakfast—everything!" But, he lamented, "it's very difficult to get this information—access is the great problem."

Not anymore, of course, and it seems a fitting tribute to Ballard's interest in what he called "invisible literature" that lists of the Last Meals of Death-Row Inmates (if not daily updates on Manson's breakfasts) have become a clickbait staple. "The Sad, Stately Photo of Nixon's Resignation Lunch," posted by the NPR food and agriculture correspondent Dan Charles, isn't exactly a snapshot of a last meal, but it's close kin to it, symbolically, though how much of that has to do with our historical awareness that this was a meal about to be eaten by a political pariah whose bags were packed for the purgatory of San Clemente ("This is the lunch that President Richard Nixon ate on August 8, 1974, just before going on national television to announce that he was resigning," writes Charles) and how much of it has to do with the dispiritingly geriatric, assisted-living-cafeteria aesthetics of the meal, who knows?

This is a lunch from a lost world, when grown men drank milk and fallout-shelter fare like a scoop of cottage cheese girdled by a pineapple ring (straight out of a can, no doubt) was still on lunch menus. The official White House emblem on the plate stirs unsettling memories of Hitler's dinner service, pilfered from Berchtesgaden by American G.I.'s. Did Nixon dine alone that day? (I imagine him eating alone in a pin-drop silence broken only by the clink of cutlery and the sound of swallowing, a Nixonian version the aging astronaut eating his last supper in 2001.) Why the White House photographer, Robert Knudsen, captured this melancholy repast on film, we don't know, but in a better America the Resignation Lunch would, by an act of congress, be a fixture on the White House menu—a memento mori in cottage cheese and pineapple, designed to remind all who would be King of America that even presidential power must pass.

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/10/lets-deconstruct-nixons.html

[plxyboi-blog]

The Junk Food President Aims to Ruin American Nutrition

New Post has been published on https://healthy4lives.com/the-junk-food-president-aims-to-ruin-american-nutrition/

The Junk Food President Aims to Ruin American Nutrition

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President Trump welcomed the faculty football national champion Clemson Tigers to the White Residence in January with a quick-food items feast served buffet model in the State Eating Room.

Presidents do not immediately compose the nation’s dietary recommendations for Americans, which are up-to-date each five a long time by federal law. However, you question what the 2020 model will suggest, provided how President Trump serves lunch dripping in saturated unwanted fat, grease, and salt to best athletes.

When Trump hosted Clemson University’s national collegiate football title crew in January, the govt was in partial shutdown, so a food could not be catered by White Residence employees. Trump feigned to the crew that potentially initial girl Melania Trump and second girl Karen Pence could have manufactured them “some little, quick salads.” Trump then joked, “I reported you fellas are not into salads.”

Alternatively, Trump requested from the four food items groups that ended up the staples on his 2016 election marketing campaign: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Hen (KFC), pizza, and Diet Coke. He boasted to the Clemson gamers that he requested 1,000 hamburgers. “All-American organizations,” he reported. “Burger King, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s. We have Significant Macs. We have Quarter Pounders with cheese. We have anything that I like, that you like. And I know no subject what we did, there is practically nothing you can have that’s superior than that, suitable?”

There was lots of laughter from the football gamers, potentially to be polite and potentially for the reason that they in fact take in a great deal superior than that on campus. The crew receives significantly extra diet instruction than the regular American, from culinary coaches and an “executive functionality chef.”

In a country exactly where two-thirds of grown ups and a 3rd of youngsters are overweight or overweight, Trump’s banquet truly was not funny. According to the 2015 recommendations that are now in drive, bad diet and absence of exercising are possible connected to preventable continual condition in almost 120 million American grown ups, together with Sort 2 diabetes, heart condition, substantial blood pressure, and most cancers. The direct and oblique prices, in health care care and shed work time, not to point out sheer struggling, run hundreds of billions of pounds.

Everyday Americans, especially the deprived, dwell in a separate universe from Clemson’s functionality cooks. Most dad and mom want to be good quarterbacks for their youngsters, but much too typically they are sacked by an all-out advertising blitz of junk food items, processed food items, and sugary consume organizations. With a quick-food items president as dietitian-in-chief, people distinctive pursuits certainly see their very best opportunity in current memory to undermine the healthiest of science-based mostly recommendations. If they have it their way, the image of the all-American diet will continue to be a Significant Mac, Coke, and fries.

  EVEN Beneath THE Public-MINDED Obama administration, the political food items battle in excess of the 2015 recommendations is instructive. With initial girl Michelle Obama advertising and marketing healthy consuming and exercising, lots of general public-health and fitness industry experts hoped for the strongest recommendations science could support. There was important progress on boy or girl diet with the bipartisan Healthy, Hunger-Absolutely free Kids Act of 2010. That act necessary faculty lunch diet to be steady with the dietary recommendations issued by the Departments of Agriculture and Health and fitness and Human Products and services.

Most scientific tests identified that students took to the much healthier offerings, rising usage of entrees, fruits, and veggies and reducing food items squander. The Obama-era USDA reported that among 2008 and 2014, a few million extra students ate faculty breakfast.

The 2015 Nutritional Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) appointed by Health and fitness and Human Products and services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also offered hope. The committee evidently reported Americans “should be inspired and guided to consume dietary patterns that are loaded in veggies, fruit, whole grains, seafood, legumes, and nuts reasonable in low- and non-unwanted fat dairy products and liquor (between grown ups) decrease in crimson and processed meat and low in sugar-sweetened meals and drinks and refined grains.”

The DGAC broke new floor by exclusively stating that extra sugars must be no extra than 10 per cent of daily intake. For emphasis, the committee reported, “Added sugars must be lowered in the diet and not changed with low-calorie sweeteners, but rather with healthy choices, such as water in put of sugar-sweetened drinks.”

Just as groundbreaking, the DGAC immediately linked diet to environmental sustainability, noting that the world wide output of food items accounts for 80 per cent of deforestation, extra than 70 per cent of freshwater use, and up to thirty per cent of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions. “Creative, evidence-based mostly procedures are required to reverse these alarming trends,” the committee reported.

After examining scientific tests all around the globe, the committee identified that “a diet greater in plant-based mostly meals, such as veggies, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and decrease in calories and animal-based mostly meals is extra health and fitness advertising and marketing and is associated with significantly less environmental impression than is the recent U.S. diet.” But at the end of the working day, the advisory committee is only that: advisory.

The moment the DGAC report was submitted to USDA and HHS, lobbyists ate absent at it like carpenter ants to downplay the associations among meat and sustainability as well as soda and obesity.

Karen Perry Stillerman of the Union of Concerned Experts (UCS), wrote that for the duration of the two-calendar year system that made the 2015 recommendations, food items and beverage organizations and trade associations spent extra than $seventy seven million lobbying Congress. Of that, the meat marketplace spent $four.5 million and the soda marketplace spent almost $24 million.

  SCORES OF CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS wrote to Vilsack and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell to say the committee wrongly vilified crimson meat and dismissed the alleged gains of lean meat. They also reported the committee had no business enterprise injecting sustainability into the recommendations. The signatories collectively obtained $3.1 million in contributions from agribusiness, from 2013 as a result of 2014, in accordance to the Centre for Science in the Public Desire.

Republicans responded with an appropriations act that banned sustainability from the recommendations and minimal the scope of funding to “nutritional and dietary facts.” In a push release even just before the act was handed, Vilsack and Burwell capitulated on setting and sustainability.

When the remaining recommendations ended up issued, there was practically nothing distinct about reducing usage of crimson meat and processed meat, which are connected to most cancers, cardiovascular condition, and diabetes. In 2015, the Planet Health and fitness Group labeled processed meat as carcinogenic and crimson meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The remaining recommendations did maintain the committee’s recommendation for Americans to decrease extra-sugar intake to 10 per cent of daily calories. But there ended up no concrete, best-line illustrations or explanations in the govt summary.

Buried in the recommendations was this details level: Sugary drinks account for almost fifty percent of extra sugars, and extra sugars account for 270 calories, or extra than thirteen per cent, of calories for each working day. The much too-couple of details on soda disappointed 2015 DGAC members such as Frank Hu of Harvard’s School of Public Health and fitness. Reports overwhelmingly connected sugar-sweetened drinks to obesity, when Facilities for Disorder Command and Avoidance mapping confirmed a crystal clear correlation among soda usage and obesity.

Hu also lamented that the deep-sixing of environmental sustainability was “a massively missed opportunity to teach the general public about the environmental impression of their food items possibilities, and to develop a food items process that is extra sustainable and conducive to the health and fitness of both humans and the world.” Hu immediately blamed “political pressure from Congress and the meat marketplace.” (Disclosure: My spouse is a researcher at the faculty and has co-authored a paper with Hu.)

Sarah Reinhardt, UCS’s direct analyst of food items methods and health and fitness, estimated that if the USDA and HHS published recommendations on processed meat and extra sugar by yourself, it would conserve 3,900 life a calendar year and $1.5 billion in health care prices from colorectal most cancers, and 19,000 life and $16 billion in health and fitness care prices from Sort 2 diabetes. Supporting persons take in plenty of fruit and veggies could have saved one hundred ten,000 extra life and $32 billion in health and fitness prices.

Other estimates depth the recent toll of our politically manipulated malnourishment. A 2017 review by an economist at the federal Company for Health care Investigation and Quality and scientists from Cornell and Lehigh Universities identified that the nation’s share of health and fitness care prices spent on dealing with overweight grown ups rose from twenty.6 per cent in 2005 to 28.2 per cent in 2013. The overall prices to handle grown ups for obesity-connected illnesses rose from $212.four billion in 2005 to $342.2 billion in 2013.

Amid the spiraling all round price of health and fitness care, a 2018 Milken Institute report up-to-date the direct continual-condition prices of obesity and overweight to $480.7 billion in 2016. With further more oblique prices of $1.24 trillion for the reason that of shed economic productivity, the overall continual-condition price of $1.seventy two trillion equals nine.3 per cent of the U.S. gross domestic solution. The report reported combating people trends involves “a societal consensus in favor of healthful consuming and exercising.”

A 2017 review by Tufts College, the College of Cambridge, and Montefiore Medical Centre in New York City estimated that bad diet was associated with almost 320,000 fatalities from heart condition, stroke, or Sort 2 diabetes in 2012. The highest proportions of people fatalities ended up connected to “excess sodium intake, inadequate intake of nuts/seeds, substantial intake of processed meats, and low intake of seafood omega-3 fats.”

Set a further way, the range of American life shed in just just one calendar year involving bad diets exceeds the 291,000 American battle fatalities in Planet War II. A Lancet-commissioned review published before this calendar year reported, “Unhealthy diets pose a better threat to morbidity and mortality than does unsafe intercourse, and liquor, drug, and tobacco use put together.”

The Republican Celebration is literally supported by crimson meat. The meat-processing marketplace has provided seventy nine per cent of its almost $seventeen million in contributions since 1990 to Republican congressional candidates, in accordance to the Centre for Responsive Politics.

In the 2018 election cycle, the best 8 contributors to congressional candidates from the food items and beverage marketplace provided the Countrywide Cafe Association, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, the Countrywide Confectioners Association (the candy lobby), and Bloomin’ Manufacturers, the father or mother enterprise of Outback Steakhouse and various other eating places. Virtually seventy two per cent of the $5 million they gave went to Republican campaigns.

Republicans obtain a hundred per cent of contributions from the father or mother organizations of Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell 97 per cent from Waffle Residence ninety three per cent from the Burger King franchisee association 92 per cent from the KFC franchisee association and sixty six per cent from the American Beverage Association.

We will shortly see if this lopsided support bears fruit (even if fresh fruit is appallingly scarce at most of the earlier mentioned entities) under Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who is making an attempt to roll back nutritional prerequisites for faculty meals. In a bizarre campaign against whole-grain and decrease-sodium meals, he has claimed, “Kids are not consuming the food items, and it is ending up in the trash.” But his have USDA scientists made a report this calendar year that in result debunked his tirades. The report identified the opposite: The extra wholesome the food, the extra well known people meals ended up with students.

  THE Method OF ISSUING the 2020 Nutritional Guidelines begins with the twenty-member 2020 Nutritional Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) picked by Perdue and HHS Secretary Alex Azar. The committee was introduced in February. The administration held the entire record of nominees and nominators mystery until finally June when Politico was provided a copy obtained under the Liberty of Information Act by the Medical professionals Committee for Dependable Medicine, which advocates for plant-based mostly diets.

On paper, the committee appears to be balanced, with nine of the twenty members getting been nominated by the American Culture for Nutrition: Barbara Schneeman, a previous U.S. Foods and Drug Administration director of diet and labeling Jamy Ard of Wake Forest College Regan Bailey and Richard Mattes of Purdue College Heather Leidy of the College of Texas Carol Boushey of the College of Hawaii Teresa Davis of Baylor Faculty of Medicine Kathryn Dewey of the College of California, Davis and Sharon Donovan of the College of Illinois.

The mission of the diet modern society is to “improve health and fitness all around the globe as a result of substantial high-quality science based mostly diet know-how, engagement and affect.” But fiscal affect in the firm has been extremely controversial in current a long time, with 32 firms outlined as “sustaining companions,” contributing at the very least $10,000 to the team. The sponsors incorporate Pepsi, Kellogg, General Mills, Mars, Nestle, Mondelez, Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, Pfizer, the Countrywide Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the Sugar Association, and the Countrywide Dairy Council.

Tied for second put in acquiring nominees on to the panel ended up the Grocery Companies Association, customer goods and food items big Unilever, the Worldwide Existence Sciences Institute (ILSI), and the Worldwide Foods Information Council (IFIC) Basis. Each individual claimed a few places (most nominees had several nominations). The American Beverage Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and SNAC Worldwide (the world wide trade association for the snack food items marketplace) every single put two nominees on the committee.

In all, 15 of the twenty advisory committee members have direct marketplace ties or nominations from marketplace-supported groups or glowing general public praise from marketplace-backed groups. It is standard to have this amount of marketplace existence on the nation’s most important food items panel, no matter if the administration is Democratic or Republican, since it has turn out to be more and more more durable to be a food items scientist with no marketplace funding.

According to 2019 USDA details, soon after the early 2000s, general public funding for agricultural study and advancement was place on a hunger diet. Meanwhile, private funding mushroomed to about $12 billon in 2014. The private-to-general public funding disparity had previous U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and previous Foods and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler contacting for a new federal diet institute in a February New York Instances op-ed.

Noting that obesity has turn out to be the best disqualifier for army service, they pointed out that a country that spends $forty billion a calendar year on candy and hundreds of billions of pounds on health and fitness care connected to obesity need to devote extra than the $1.5 billion now spent on studying diet. “Establishing a put to study diet is also critical to keep American competitiveness,” they wrote.

Inspite of Perdue’s pledge “to have gurus on both end of the spectrum, both from the plant-based mostly and the meat-based mostly side of the equation—making recommendations,” lecturers and general public-health and fitness groups with no marketplace connections are in the minority. Purdue and Azar mail an ominous message when SNAC can snag two places on the committee, when the American Public Health and fitness Association is shut out.

Although the pursuits of SNAC, the Grocery Companies, Unilever, or the American Beverage Association are relatively predictable—to safeguard the income of lots of of their harmful or marginally healthy products—the very best comprehension of industry’s net all around researchers arrives as a result of the innocuously named Worldwide Existence Sciences Institute and the Worldwide Foods Information Council Basis.

ILSI promises a quarter of the new DGAC. It nominated the chair of the committee, Barbara Schneeman, the previous Fda official, and the vice chair, Ronald E. Kleinman, the physician-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital for Small children. Kleinman is also on the board of trustees of ILSI’s Investigation Basis, when Schneeman is a govt liaison. ILSI also nominated Davis, and Donovan and Bailey are ILSI North The united states scientific advisers.

ILSI North The united states claims it “advances food items basic safety and diet science for the reward of general public health and fitness.” But that assert is gutted by the simple fact that it was created in 1978 by a Coca-Cola govt “to unite the food items industry” in what proved to be manipulation of science and govt health and fitness recommendations for its now extra than a few dozen company members. Most of the earlier mentioned-named sustaining companions of the American Culture for Nutrition are also members of ILSI—plus Hershey, Archer Daniels Midland, Campbell Soup, Kraft Heinz, Red Bull, Keurig Dr Pepper, Ocean Spray, and Welch’s.

Yet another instance of the industry’s manipulation of study is an ILSI-funded review that manufactured its way into the Annals of Interior Medicine in 2017. It reported sugar intake recommendations are based mostly on “low-high-quality evidence” and are therefore “untrustworthy.” And an investigation this calendar year for the British Medical Journal and the Journal of Public Health and fitness Coverage by Susan Greenhalgh of Harvard identified that ILSI aided redirect China’s continual-condition science from a paradigm that targeted on diet to Coke’s narrative—debunked by most general public-health and fitness experts—that blames absence of exercising instead of sugary beverages for obesity. Overweight and obesity in China doubled from twenty.5 per cent of grown ups in 1991 to 42.3 per cent in 2011.

Meanwhile, the journal Globalization and Health and fitness has just published a report on ILSI’s resistance to any general public-health and fitness measures to decrease sugar usage and initiatives to downplay the risks of glyphosate-based mostly pesticides such as Monsanto’s Roundup. Most cancers-stricken plaintiffs who made use of Roundup have started successful multimillion-greenback judgments in the United States.

The report concluded that “ILSI must be regarded as a lobby team and that lecturers and scientists, plan makers, the media, and the general public must watch ILSI’s study as advertising and marketing the pursuits of the food items, beverage, complement and agrichemical industries, when its actions encourage its members’ pursuits and counter healthy general public guidelines.”

Likely marketplace affect will also permeate a new location in the 2020 guidelines—recommendations for expecting lady and youngsters from birth to 24 months. A single big recommendation in these new recommendations must mirror the assistance by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Planet Health and fitness Group, particularly that toddlers ideally must be breastfed their initial 6 months for maximum diet.

But the Trump administration shocked the pediatric globe final calendar year by at initial refusing to signal what must have been a perfunctory United Nations resolution encouraging breastfeeding and urging nations around the world to end “inappropriate marketing of meals for infants and younger youngsters.” The U.S. signed on soon after the language to end inappropriate advertising was taken off.

This go raises the respectable issue that both the Nutritional Guidelines Advisory Committee or the administration will condition the remaining recommendations to someway extol the virtues of company infant formulas. DGAC member Sharon Donovan has been a advisor to infant formulation makers Mead Johnson, Abbott Nutrition, and Pfizer. She has conducted Mead Johnson–funded study and edited informational materials for that enterprise.

Also on the committee is Steven Heymsfield of Louisiana State College, who has served on the scientific advisory board of weight-reduction solution Medifast. It is interesting that USDA and HHS essentially gave two places to food items-alternative experts when a 2015 review by Johns Hopkins College scientists identified that pretty couple of professional weight-reduction plans, with the exception of Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, exhibit very long-term gains. The review identified that any quick-term gains of Optifast and Medifast attenuated soon after 6 months.

And in a further twist, Heymsfield is also the 2018–2019 president of the Weight problems Culture. That modern society offers five members on the DGAC: Heymsfield, Ard, Mattes, Elizabeth Mayer-Davis of the College of North Carolina, and Elsie Taveras of Massachusetts General Hospital.

The Weight problems Culture is previously under fireplace from critics for accepting company funding from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, and getting once staged “engagement councils” with members symbolizing PepsiCo, Monsanto, Nestle, Dr Pepper, Atkins, Mars, and Campbell’s Soup. Past calendar year, Pepsi underwrote a distinctive concern of the society’s study journal titled “Low-Calorie Sweeteners and Weight Administration.” The modern society vigorously denies that marketplace support is linked to its casting question on the efficacy of taxing sugar-sweetened drinks. Taxation has evidently lower tobacco usage, and a federally funded review final calendar year reported soda taxes looked “promising in combating obesity.” The performance would possible depend on the amount of taxation.

And that provides us back to meat, that resource of intensive discussion in 2015. The 2020 panel has various members with meat-marketplace connections. DGAC members Davis and Leidy have recommended or spoken at “Protein Summits” meant “to take a look at the misperception that Americans in excess of-consume protein.” The summits have been sponsored by the Countrywide Pork Board, the Beef Checkoff, the Egg Nutrition Centre, Hillshire Manufacturers, the Dairy Investigation Institute, and the International Dairy System.

Yet another DGAC member, Lydia Bazzano of Tulane, was nominated by Atkins Nutritionals, recognized for its low-carbohydrate, meat-targeted diet.

In a further review funded by the Countrywide Pork Board, Leidy identified very long-term health and fitness gains of pork-based mostly breakfasts in adolescents. The comparison team was low-hanging fruit for improvement—adolescents who skip breakfast. Unabashedly, the Pork Board—which is hardly dashing to look at pork with fruit-based mostly breakfasts—proclaimed “high-high-quality lean pork” to be a “key component of daily healthy consuming.”

Trumping up the health and fitness gains of “the other white meat” is a Trojan horse for the pork marketplace to pig out on sales of bacon. Although the regular American relatives buys fresh pork, such as tenderloin, shoulder roast, or ribs, just 6 periods a calendar year, the range of Americans who consume at the very least a few pounds of bacon a calendar year rose by almost 50 per cent from 2011 to 2018, from 44 million to sixty three million. The Wall Road Journal pointed out in 2017: “With the increase of low-carb substantial-protein diets, fatty bacon manufactured a comeback.”

If the Trump administration lays a major hand on both the committee or the remaining recommendations, there appears little probability for proponents of healthy diets to stage a comeback. UCS has reported on how Perdue has stacked the USDA with executives and lobbyists from the globe of pesticides, corn syrup, and junk food items and sided with Significant Pork in excess of modest farmers and Significant Dairy and other individuals in excess of youngsters in the calming of policies on faculty lunches.

Perdue’s development of an marketplace echo chamber has been so discouraging that staff members at the best study arms of the USDA, the Financial Investigation Provider, and the Countrywide Institute of Foods and Agriculture have quit in large quantities. Beneath the Obama administration, the two businesses jointly utilized seven-hundred persons. That range is reportedly down to 450 amid attempts by Trump to slash ERS funding by fifty percent and Perdue’s strategy to go the ERS and NIFA out of Washington and to USDA’s Kansas City location. That is on best of a go in 2017 to eliminate the USDA’s Centre for Nutrition Coverage and Advertising as a stand-by yourself scientific division and merge it with the Foods and Nutrition Provider. Critics say the go renders CNPP extra vulnerable to marketplace-influenced politics.

Perdue’s assert that he is earning the go to conserve revenue and go researchers nearer to agribusiness “stakeholders” has been assailed by critics who see this go as divorcing USDA researchers and economists from collaboration with people from other cabinet businesses. In a Washington Put up op-ed in June, two previous chief researchers at the USDA, just one under Obama (Catherine Woteki) and the other under George W. Bush (Gale Buchanan), wrote:

Foods and agriculture in the United States deal with perennial worries from a multitude of resources: pests, conditions, droughts, flooding, brutally competitive markets and trade disputes. It is disheartening to consider that the science underpinning these critical contributors to the U.S. economic system, and to the health and fitness and well-becoming of each American, is under threat from the pretty govt section overseeing them.

When chief researchers, significantly just one who served under Bush, are this involved about a deck stacked against their colleagues, just one can only hope that the researchers that Perdue and Azar have picked for the 2020 Nutritional Guidelines Advisory Committee can be objective. The 2015 committee, with big backing at the rear of the scenes by lots of occupation scientists in USDA and HHS who ended up on groups for details examination and diet evidence, undoubtedly exhibited such independence. Irrespective of their marketplace connections, that committee understood that the health and fitness and well-becoming of each American was at stake.

In a country that loses extra persons each calendar year to harmful diets than the overall of American battle fatalities for the duration of Planet War II, the 2015 committee shipped conclusions that marketplace did not want to hear. A diligent 2020 committee will pretty much assuredly deliver conclusions that this individual administration almost certainly does not want to hear. Although serving junk food items to Clemson’s football crew might have been a joke, destroying the nation’s health and fitness is not.

Derrick Jackson is a Prospect board member.

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[keywestlou]

WHITEST CITY IN AMERICA

The things I learn.

There is a community in the U.S. described as the “whitest city in America.” Portland, Oregon.

Portland has been in the news because of yesterday’s confrontation between liberal and far right groups.

The liberal group are known as Antifa. An Anti-Fascist group. The Rose City Antifa one of its leaders.

The far right several groups combined. The most prominent Proud Boys. Proud Boys and the far right can be described as white nationalists. The Southern Poverty Law Center descries Proud Boys as a general hate group.

There have been 12 confrontations in Portland since 2017. Violence occurred in 2.

Ill feeling runs high. Both sides believe they are doing what is right for America.

The far right groups advertised “Death to Antifa……Bring guns.”

Another cry heard “End Domestic Terrorism!”

Proud Boys is described as an “Organization of Terror.”

Yesterday’s confrontation has been described as the largest national supremacist rally ever. Roughly 500 far rights showed up.

The white supremacist group went to Portland seeking violence. It was their intent to turn Portland into a battleground.

The City and the police were concerned. Concrete barriers were used to separate the 2 groups.

Portland was selected by the far right because it is the whitest city in America. How so? Portland is 77 percent white. Less than 6 percent black.  A fertile recruiting ground for racist hate groups.

The State itself bears initial blame. Oregon envisioned itself as a white utopia. Blacks were banned from residency till 1926. Would you believe?

The police are a significant factor. They support far right groups. The police and Mayor are truly separate and distinct. The Mayor’s office operates in fear of the police.

Now comes Donald Trump. A white nationalist, a bigot. He obviously stands with the far right groups. He blames Antifa for the disturbances. Especially yesterday’s. Trump has threatened to designate Antifa a “terrorist group.” Understandable. Trump stood with the white nationalists in Charlottesville, also.

Trump by his words and actions encouraging white nationalist groups. He is in effect saying…..I stand with you.

The first legal time when Trump can be replaced is the 2020 election. I fear we may not make it. Violent street confrontations will soon be the order of the day. rump is otherwise screwing up our democracy.

My admonition my friends is to not support Trump in anything. Other than a tax cut for the rich, what has he accomplished in 2 1/2 years? Come November 2020, vote for the Democrat candidate for President. Also vote Democratic for the Senate and House. Give the new President the tools to work with.

While tensions were manifesting themselves in Portland, I had a quiet day in Key West. We love everyone!

A manicure with Tammy at 1. Ran some errands. Then home to watch the PGA BMW Tournament.

Round 3. Justin Thomas outdid himself. Shot 61. In 1st place going into the final round today. With a 6 stroke lead!

He played so well. Even had 2 eagles.

A change of pace dinner last night. Crispy duck at La Te Da. Ate at the outside bar. Chatted with the people around me.

Key Westers are community minded. Especially our elected officials. However the new City Commission seems to think they sit in Congress in Washington. They attack the big issues rather than the small mundane ones important to their citizens.

The Commission’s present concern is banning plastic straws. A noble thought. Everyday plastics as a whole should be banned. But not by the Commission of a 27,000 person city.

Several months ago, Key West got into banning sun tan lotions if certain substances were contained in them. Something like to scinetist said this was the case. All others no. The 2 in support of the banning took the position that the sun screens they were concerned with were destroying the reef. The reef is important to Key West.

The Commission’s vote was meaningless. Visitors can bring their own sun screen lotions int o Key West. People can also buy sun screen lotions in communities outside Key West and use them in Key West.

There was a suspicion what Key West was doing was going to spark some sort similar action throughout the country. It has not. Probably won’t. Primarily because the scientific proof to evidence harm does not evidence itself in tests.

Why this tirade?Simple. I believe the Commission should concern itself with problems that directly affect their citizens. Like fixing the streets. Resurfacing, repaving, whatever. The streets are an abomination. Especially in the downtown area. No one seems to do anything about it. Talk, yes. Action, no.

Trump knows he screwed up with the tariffs. Does not know how to extricate himself.

Perhaps blame another. His way. This week he said Europe will have problems next. Next referring to Germany. He did nothing wrong.

German will have problems by sometime next year. If so, a world wide recession guaranteed.

The solution to the recession danger is for Trump to quickly resolve the China tariff dispute, all tariff disputes. Then do whatever necessary to help Germany and other European countries. We are all in this recession thing together. The President should back off from his tariff wars, say maybe I was wrong and do the necessary to save the U.S. and rest of the world from a major recession.

It would work to his advantage come the 2020 election.

The Palestinian grandmother of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib expressed her thoughts re Trump: “May God ruin him.”

I assume Palestinians are of the Islamic faith. Muslims. Trump should beware. The Congresswoman’s grandmother may call a jihad down on Trump.

I have a busy afternoon. Sloan has returned from her Colorado vacation. She is due at 1. We have many things to do.

Enjoy your Sunday!

    WHITEST CITY IN AMERICA was originally published on Key West Lou