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superseraphim7 · 6 years ago

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Trump’s Administration Has Been Briefed About UFOs; According To Steven Greer

donald trumpWhat do presidents know about UFOs? Well, if you’re an avid researcher of the topic, you’ve probably realized by now that presidents don’t really have a “need to know” about these things. The “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower spoke of, which has become as uncontrollably powerful as he feared, has completely taken over operations that not even the president knows about. Many from within political realms who’ve held esteemed positions have spoken out about this fact.

Take Paul Hellyer for example, a former Canadian Defense Minister, who gave lecture at the University of Toronto in 2008 where he said it is “ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard.” He was referring to black budget special access programs, which receive no oversight from Congress. This means that not even the government knows about the developments happening in this area, all for “national security” purposes.

It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects which both congress and the commander in chief know nothing about.

To The Stars Academy

It’s almost 2019, and the topic of UFOs has exploded into the mainstream, especially with former rock superstar Tom Delonge gathering defense intelligence officials, world-renowned scientists and more to relay this information to the public via the ‘To The Stars Academy.’ They’ve already released multiple videos of UFOs, and have publicly stated that there are programs within the government that study this phenomenon.

They have Luis Elizondo, a former director of a government ‘aerospace threat identification’ program. This was all disclosed via establishment mouthpieces like the New York Times and the Washington Post. They’ve also admitted to recovering materials from these ‘unidentified’ objects. You can read the latest updates about what’s going on with that and mainstream UFO disclosure, in general, below.

Black Budget Projects

The black budget is something we easily get information about, and for those who try to bring out information it is difficult to investigate. One example is the efforts of journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin of the Washington Post in 2010. Their investigation lasted approximately two years and concluded that America’s classified world has “become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, and how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” You can read more about that, and see more examples, in this CE article.

Here is one of many statements from people who have been “in the know” so to speak. There are thousands of verified quotes on this subject, and we now have the electro-optical data and evidence to back up all of this witness testimony.

We have, indeed, been contacted – perhaps even visited – by extraterrestrial beings, and the US government, in collusion with the other national powers of the Earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public. (Second Look, Volume 1, No 7, Washington, DC, May, 1979)

What are the intentions of the cabal when it comes to UFO disclosure? We’ve been lied to about so many things by them, that it’s become hard to believe anything we hear from mainstream mouthpieces. Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama, who I believe are establishment puppets, have brought up the subject, acknowledged it, but have refused to share any information on it. They did so in cryptic, often comedic ways on popular television, on the Jimmy Kimmel show. It’s hard to know what to make of their comments, or even their overall knowledge about this.

So What About Trump?

Has Donald Trump been briefed? Yes he has, according to Dr. Steven Greer. Greer is the founder of The Disclosure Project, an initiative that has brought forth hundreds of military/defense/political personnel from all over the world, with verified credentials, to publicly share their testimony about their experiences with UFOs and extraterrestrials. He also released a film last year, called “Unacknowledged.” It was one of the most popular, if not the most popular film on Itunes & Netflix in 2017. It’s highly recommended if you are new to this subject and don’t already know much about it.

Greer has amassed great credibility for his claims. For example, many years ago he claimed to have had meetings at the Pentagon with some very high-ranking people. After this, Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell admitted that he also attended these meetings with Greer. What came out of these meetings is that not many people knew the details of this topic, nor wanted to discuss it. Wikileaks documents have also been released which saw astronaut Edgar Mitchell communicate with US politician John Podesta. You can access those documents and read more about them here.

He’s been able to develop relationships with individuals he has interviewed from various branches and ranks of the military as well as within the intelligence and defence communities.

In my opinion, Podesta, Clinton, Obama and Bush are all cabal puppets. Therefore, anything they say about terrorism, national security, or UFOs, is probably lathered up with some ‘disinformation’ soap. Without this point, if we completely disregard it, there is still more than enough evidence to show that they are simply following the will of their masters. But that’s a topic for another article, back to UFOs!

Greer says he has briefed people close to Trump about the UFO/extraterrestrial issue in this interview. He has also claimed to have briefed past presidents, like Obama and Clinton, and provides those documents on his website, Sirius Disclosure. It seems credible, especially when his claim to have had high-level meetings within the Pentagon was verified by Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has so far not answered any questions that have been asked about UFOs. Will There Ever Be A Full Mainstream UFO Disclosure?

Given the fact that this topic seems to be controlled by a small group of very powerful people who gets to decide what humanity can and can’t know, I’d say that as long as this group maintains power, the reality of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings will be hidden from humanity in official channels. A censorship plan has also been spoken about for years by those within. Roscoe Hiellenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, for example, pointed out decades ago in the New York Times that, “through an official campaign of secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.” He went on to state that they are operating under intelligent control.

That being said, there is a serious effort by multiple nations, and perhaps those within this power structure as well, to reveal these truths to humanity. This is evident by all of the whistle-blowers with verified credentials who have shared their experiences, as well as the release of evidence in the form of radar trackings and electro-optical data.. There is a serious push for mainstream disclosure, this can’t be denied and is quite evident by the article linked earlier. Establishment mouthpieces are slowly disclosing this reality.

In 1979 Spanish General Carlos Cavero told the world the following:

“Everything in a process of investigation both in the United States and in Spain, as well as the rest of the world. The nations of the world are currently working together in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon an international exchange of data.” (via Richard Dolan, “UFOs & The National Security State”)

Why Any Disclosure At All?

Why would the New York Times, CNN and the rest of them share any of this truth? Can we believe what they say? Perhaps not everything they say is false, but for years we’ve seen major geopolitical issues completely twisted by the mainstream media, and evidence of ‘perception manipulation’ that is fostered by their close relationship with US intelligence agencies. There is also the testimony of multiple award-winning mainstream media journalists who emphasize how mainstream media outlets are paid by governments, corporations and intelligence agencies to present a specific narrative.

Is the establishment trying to lay the foundation for a ‘war against aliens’ like they made a ‘war against drugs’ and a ‘war terror?’ Or are we seeing the white hats within these groups push for the disclosure of information? All this remains to be seen, but we must understand why this topic would be extremely difficult to disclose and to be honest, it’s probably a mix of both.

For one, you have the energy question. These crafts are clearly not using petroleum. Have we harvested technology from these crafts? If released, what would that mean for the oil industry and our economy? Who would benefit, who would lose? What about the historical questions, the scientific questions? What about our laws of science and what we understand about ourselves and perhaps human origin? What about the idea that there are intelligent extraterrestrials surveying, visiting, and interacting with people here on Earth!

Tremendous Implications

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the disclosure of this information leaves no area of humanity untouched. As you can imagine, it has tremendous implications and it’s something that would change the world forever. I am sure the existence of extraterrestrials and the fact that we’ve been visited and are being visited, is not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to discovery.

Most important will be the impact on consciousness, the deeper investigation into metaphysical realities, and the validation of non-material science. One can expect that disclosure will impact our understanding of who we are and why we are here, and perhaps there is some sort of spiritual lesson to be reaped from the realization that we are not the only ones. There is a CE podcast featuring CE founder Joe Martino, myself, and a “contactee” who discuss this exact topic. You can listen to that, it’s linked at the bottom of this article, for more information.

The Takeaway

Humanity is just now waking up, and ready to take the steps necessary to move out of infancy. Understand “them” will help us to understand ourselves. We are all connected in some strange form, and the future is exciting. It’s a topic that, most importantly, we DON’T have to be afraid of or react to with fear, despite the fact that that this type of reaction seems to have been programmed into us. We need to deprogram ourselves from what Hollywood has presented us with, and start to examine the actual evidence and what’s really going on here.

I don’t believe you have to be afraid to discuss or talk about this topic with your peers and your family anymore. It’s no longer taboo, and the more we speak up, speak out, and generate discussion, the closer we get to finding out what’s really going on. It’s definitely an exciting time to be alive.

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-creator-of-bojack-horseman-comes-from-a-home-of-funny-jews/

The creator of 'BoJack Horseman' comes from a home of funny Jews

Jerusalem draws in animation bigwigs from all over

Antisemitism czar slams German cartoon as ‘Nazi propaganda’

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Bojack Horseman. (photo credit: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT)

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While growing up in Palo Alto, Raphael Bob-Waksberg was a serious consumer of popular culture. He would watch TV for hours on end and view movies over and over until he memorized them. In particular, he was a huge fan of “The Simpsons.”

“We used to talk about Bart and Lisa at the dinner table as if they were real people,” said his mother, Ellen Bob.

Nowadays, the conversation around American tables is more likely about “Bojack Horseman” a successful Netflix animated series created by Bob-Waksberg. The show’s fifth season premiered on Sept. 14.

In addition, Comedy Central recently acquired the rights to reruns of “BoJack Horseman,” reportedly making it the first Netflix show to enter TV syndication in the United States. Season 1 reruns are scheduled to begin on Sept. 26.

The show is an adult drama-comedy set in an imaginary Hollywood populated by humans and anthropomorphized animals (the eponymous main character, BoJack Horseman, has a horse’s head and man’s body), and has catapulted Bob-Waksberg’s career to new levels in the real Hollywood.

In addition to his work as head writer and showrunner for “BoJack,” Bob-Waksberg is developing new shows for Netflix and Amazon. He’s also writing a book of short stories scheduled to be published next year by a major imprint.

The 34-year-old’s success has come as no surprise to family, friends, rabbis and teachers in the Bay Area who nurtured his creativity and independent thinking from an early age.

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“I think Raphael was really headed in that direction since his teen years,” said family friend Nechama Tamler, a longtime Jewish educator who early on recognized his writing and performing talent.

Simultaneously sad and funny, but mostly funny, “BoJack” is a satire about the elusive nature of happiness. It has gained praise for its intelligent writing that does not adhere to the typical sitcom formula, and there is no emotional closure at the end of each episode. It’s an ongoing, frustrating effort for characters to learn and grow from their mistakes, and to grapple with the meaning of existence.

The titular character, the deeply flawed BoJack Horseman (voiced by Will Arnett of “Arrested Development”), struggles after his successful acting career flounders. Fans still recognize BoJack for his role as a young, single guy who adopts three orphans in a popular late 1980s sitcom called “Horsin’ Around.” However, now he’s a 50-something depressive addicted to alcohol and drugs. Critically, he lacks the required self-awareness to stop from hurting himself and those closest to him.

When Todd (voiced by Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad”), a slacker who lives on BoJack’s couch and suffers the equine actor’s constant indifference, has had enough of BoJack’s apologies, he yells at him: “You can’t keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself, like that makes it OK. You need to be better … You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It’s you.”

The message is that there are no easy answers, and that making amends takes hard work. Ultimately, actions speak louder than words.

Bob-Waksberg’s father, David Waksberg, recognized the Jewishness of this value immediately.

“When a friend asked me about it after the first season, I said it was about teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for the Jewish concept of repentance.

For his part, Bob-Waksberg wasn’t quite sure how to answer when asked whether his Jewish identity influences his writing, and in particular the melancholic humor of “BoJack.”

“Asking me that question is like asking a fish how much being in water has affected it,” he said.

Bob-Waksberg grew up in Palo Alto in the late 1980s and 1990s with two younger sisters, Becky and Amalia, in a family that was — and still is — very involved in the Jewish community. David Waksberg worked to free and resettle Soviet Jewry, and is now the CEO of the San Francisco-based Jewish LearningWorks, the central agency promoting Jewish education in the Bay Area. Ellen Bob ran a Judaica store (Bob and Bob) with her mother for 26 years, and in 2011 joined Congregation Etz Chayim as executive director.

Humor was always central to life at home.

“We like to laugh … big belly laughs,” Ellen Bob recalled. “David is a great storyteller and joke teller. He would regale the kids with routines from Steve Martin, Woody Allen … and songs from Tom Lehrer. I’m more of a wisecracker. Like my son, nothing gives me more pleasure than to make someone laugh.”

She said she is always pleased when her son makes a point of telling his interviewers (and there are many) that his was a happy childhood, and that BoJack’s family is not based on his family of origin.

“I’m delighted to be known as Raphael’s mother, as long as people don’t think BoJack’s mother is based on me,” she said, alluding to Beatrice Horseman (Wendie Malick), a neglectful and abusive heiress to a sugar cube company who appears primarily in flashbacks.

In looking back on his childhood and adolescence, Bob-Waksberg pointed to Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School (now Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School), the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre and the Gunn High School drama program as other outlets where his creativity was rewarded.

“In school, there were a handful of teachers who understood me. And there were many who didn’t. I didn’t make it easy for them,” he joked.

Rabbi Sheldon Lewis, rabbi emeritus at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, recalled Bob-Waksberg as “not an easy student” in the religious school.

“It was because he was so clever and beyond his years in creativity, humor and mischief,” he said.

Despite having grown up in the Palo Alto academic pressure cooker, Bob-Waksberg was never saddled with any expectation that he would become a doctor, lawyer or founder of a startup. His parents were always supportive of his creative leanings.

“It was pretty clear to me that he was going to need to figure a way to make a living through the arts because it was the only thing he knew how to do,” his mother said.

Like “BoJack Horseman,” the shows Bob-Waksberg is writing for Netflix and Amazon are also animated. It’s not a format the graduate of Bard College in New York originally planned to work in when he moved to Los Angeles after trying his hand at comedy writing in the Big Apple.

In his spare time, he collaborated off and on for a decade with his high school friend, illustrator Lisa Hanawalt, on a cartoon featuring human-like animals, which became the basis for “BoJack.” Hanawalt is now a production designer and producer for the show.

The program was in development with Michael Eisner’s company, Tornante, for a couple of years before it went to Netflix, which wanted it to be put into quick production for a summer 2014 premiere.

“I didn’t know I would get into animation. I was initially writing for live action, but ‘BoJack’ is the one [project] that went,” Bob-Waksberg said.

He said this decade has been an exciting time to be working in animation, and that he has an appetite for more.

“Animation is a format, not a genre,” Bob-Waksberg said. “There is a lot to do in animation for adults. What has been done in the past has been limited in scope and has lived in the shadow of ‘The Simpsons.’ The new shows I am developing are about women, which is really fresh.”

Much has changed for Bob-Waksberg in the past few years. On the personal side, he was married a year ago.

Bob-Waksberg and his wife have not yet found a synagogue in Santa Monica that feels like the right fit for them, but they welcome Shabbat on Friday evenings at home.

“My wife grew up more observant than me, so she has been a good influence and has helped me reconnect to Jewish practice,” Bob-Waksberg said. “We even had benchers [blessing booklets] at our wedding, which surprised my parents.”

Professionally, Bob-Waksberg has become more aware of his role and responsibility in the pop culture universe. First, he checks himself as to whom he hires, ensuring that he brings in writers and cast members of diverse backgrounds.

Additionally, he doubts he would now make some of the jokes he made about anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Nazis in the show’s first season.

“Those jokes were made in the spirit of Mel Brooks, in the sense that you have to laugh at the things that scare you,” he said. “But now I think a lot about how what is said on ‘BoJack’ will be perceived by the audience.”

Speaking to that point, Bob-Waksberg recalled how, as he was growing up in Palo Alto, other kids would tease him with anti-Semitic taunts they had heard on the Comedy Central animated series “South Park.” The writers of that show meant it to be satirical and did not intend to actually be anti-Semitic, but that was lost on Bob-Waksberg’s young tormentors.

He would hope that viewers take dialogue from “BoJack” in context, understanding that it is not what the writers are saying, but rather the flawed characters’ thoughts or opinions. However, Bob-Waksberg said he is more averse these days to taking a writing risk, lest the point be lost or weaponized.

“If we make jokes that are bad for society,” he said, “then it is on us.”

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axekerose54 · 4 years ago

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Let's be real: 2020 has been a nightmare. Between the political unrest and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it's difficult to look back on the year and find something, anything, that was a potential bright spot in an otherwise turbulent trip around the sun. Luckily, there were a few bright spots: namely, some of the excellent works of military history and analysis, fiction and non-fiction, novels and graphic novels that we've absorbed over the last year.

Here's a brief list of some of the best books we read here at Task & Purpose in the last year. Have a recommendation of your own? Send an email to [email protected] and we'll include it in a future story.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

I loved Phil Klay’s first book, Redeployment (which won the National Book Award), so Missionaries was high on my list of must-reads when it came out in October. It took Klay six years to research and write the book, which follows four characters in Colombia who come together in the shadow of our post-9/11 wars. As Klay’s prophetic novel shows, the machinery of technology, drones, and targeted killings that was built on the Middle East battlefield will continue to grow in far-flung lands that rarely garner headlines. [Buy]

- Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli by Max Uriarte

Written by 'Terminal Lance' creator Maximilian Uriarte, this full-length graphic novel follows a Marine infantry squad on a bloody odyssey through the mountain reaches of northern Afghanistan. The full-color comic is basically 'Conan the Barbarian' in MARPAT. [Buy]

- James Clark, senior reporter

The Liberator by Alex Kershaw

Now a gritty and grim animated World War II miniseries from Netflix, The Liberator follows the 157th Infantry Battalion of the 45th Division from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of Italy and the Battle of Anzio, then on to France and later still to Bavaria for some of the bloodiest urban battles of the conflict before culminating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It's a harrowing tale, but one worth reading before enjoying the acclaimed Netflix series. [Buy]

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The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff

If you haven’t gotten this must-read account of the September 11th attacks, you need to put The Only Plane In the Sky at the top of your Christmas list. Graff expertly explains the timeline of that day through the re-telling of those who lived it, including the loved ones of those who were lost, the persistently brave first responders who were on the ground in New York, and the service members working in the Pentagon. My only suggestion is to not read it in public — if you’re anything like me, you’ll be consistently left in tears. [Buy]

- Haley Britzky, Army reporter

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Why do we even fight wars? Wouldn’t a massive tennis tournament be a nicer way for nations to settle their differences? This is one of the many questions Harvard professor Elaine Scarry attempts to answer, along with why nuclear war is akin to torture, why the language surrounding war is sterilized in public discourse, and why both war and torture unmake human worlds by destroying access to language. It’s a big lift of a read, but even if you just read chapter two (like I did), you’ll come away thinking about war in new and refreshing ways. [Buy]

- David Roza, Air Force reporter

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

Stalingrad takes readers all the way from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. It gives you the perspective of German and Soviet soldiers during the most apocalyptic battle of the 20th century. [Buy]

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America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich

I picked up America's War for the Greater Middle East earlier this year and couldn’t put it down. Published in 2016 by Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army officer who served in Vietnam, the book unravels the long and winding history of how America got so entangled in the Middle East and shows that we’ve been fighting one long war since the 1980s — with errors in judgment from political leaders on both sides of the aisle to blame. “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift?” the book jacket asks. As Bacevich details in this definitive history, the mission creep of our Vietnam experience has been played out again and again over the past 30 years, with disastrous results. [Buy]

- Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole

In Burn In, Singer and Cole take readers on a journey at an unknown date in the future, in which an FBI agent searches for a high-tech terrorist in Washington, D.C. Set after what the authors called the "real robotic revolution," Agent Lara Keegan is teamed up with a robot that is less Terminator and far more of a useful, and highly intelligent, law enforcement tool. Perhaps the most interesting part: Just about everything that happens in the story can be traced back to technologies that are being researched today. You can read Task & Purpose's interview with the authors here. [Buy]

- James Clark, senior reporter

SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre

Like WWII? Like a band of eccentric daredevils wreaking havoc on fascists? Then you'll love SAS: Rogue Heroes, which re-tells some truly insane heists performed by one of the first modern special forces units. Best of all, Ben MacIntyre grounds his history in a compassionate, balanced tone that displays both the best and worst of the SAS men, who are, like anyone else, only human after all. [Buy]

- David Roza, Air Force reporter

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network is a gripping novel which follows two courageous women through different time periods — one living in the aftermath of World War II, determined to find out what has happened to someone she loves, and the other working in a secret network of spies behind enemy lines during World War I. This gripping historical fiction is based on the true story of a network that infiltrated German lines in France during The Great War and weaves a tale so packed full of drama, suspense, and tragedy that you won’t be able to put it down. [Buy]

Katherine Rondina, Anchor Books

“Because I published a new book this year, I've been answering questions about my inspirations. This means I've been thinking about and so thankful for The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. I can't credit it with making me want to be a writer — that desire was already there — but it inspired me to write stories where the fantastical complicates the ordinary, and the impossible becomes possible. A girl in a nice dress with no one to appreciate it. An unremarkable boy with a remarkable knack for finding things. The stories in this book taught me that the everydayness of my world could become magical and strange, and in that strangeness I could find a new kind of truth.”

Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, which was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Read an excerpt from The New Wilderness.

Bill Johnston, University of California Press

“I’ve revisited a lot of old favorites in this grim year of fear and isolation, and have been most thankful of all for The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Witty, reflexive, intimate, queer, disarmingly occasional and monumentally serious all at once, they’ve been a constant balm and inspiration. ‘The only thing to do is simply continue,’ he wrote, in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul'; ‘is that simple/yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do/can you do it/yes, you can because it is the only thing to do.’”

Helen Macdonald is a nature essayist with a semiregular column in the New York Times Magazine. Her latest novel, Vesper Flights, is a collection of her best-loved essays, and her debut book, H Is for Hawk, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

Andrea Scher, Scholastic Press

“This year, I’m so grateful for You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. Reading — like everything else — has been a struggle for me in 2020. It’s been tough to let go of all of my anxieties about the state of the world and our country and get swept away by a story. But You Should See Me in a Crown pulled me in right away; for the blissful time that I was reading it, it made me think about a world outside of 2020 and it made me smile from ear to ear. Joy has been hard to come by this year, and I’m so thankful for this book for the joy it brought me.”

Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including this year’s Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time.

Nelson Fitch, Random House

“Last year, stuck in a prolonged reading rut that left me wondering if I even liked books anymore, I stumbled across Tenth of December by George Saunders, a collection of stories Saunders wrote between 1995 and 2012 that are at turns funny, moving, startling, weird, profound, and often all of those things at the same time. As a writer, what I crave most from books is to find one so excellent it makes me feel like I'd be better off quitting — and so wonderful that it reminds me what it is to be purely a reader again, encountering new worlds and revelations every time I turn a page. Tenth of December is that, and I'm so grateful that it fell off a high shelf and into my life.”

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and the Carve the Mark duology. Her latest novel, Chosen Ones, is her first novel for adults. Read an excerpt from Chosen Ones.

Ian Byers-Gamber, Blazevox Books

“Waking up today to the prospect of some hours spent reading away part of another day of this disastrous, delirious pandemic year, I’m most grateful for the book in my hands, one itself full of gratitude for a life spent reading: Gloria Frym’s How Proust Ruined My Life. Frym’s essays — on Marcel Proust, yes, and Walt Whitman, and Lucia Berlin, but also peppermint-stick candy and Allen Ginsburg’s knees, among other Proustian memory-prompts — restore me to my sense of my eerie luck at a life spent rushing to the next book, the next page, the next word.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, The Arrest, is a postapocalyptic tale about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Riverhead

“I’m incredibly grateful for the magnificent The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. This book — a mélange of history, memoir, and reportage — is the reconceptualization of Native life that’s been urgently needed since the last great indigenous history, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s at once a counternarrative and a replacement for Brown’s book, and it rejects the standard tale of Native victimization, conquest, and defeat. Even though I teach Native American studies to college students, I found new insights and revelations in almost every chapter. Not only a great read, the book is a tremendous contribution to Native American — and American — intellectual and cultural history.”

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is author of the novel Winter Counts, which is BuzzFeed Book Club’s November pick. He is also the author of the children’s book Spotted Tail, which won the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Read an excerpt from Winter Counts.

Valerie Mosley, Tordotcom

“In 2020, I've been lucky to finish a single book within 30 days, but I burned through this 507-page brick in the span of a weekend. Harrow the Ninth reminded me that even when absolutely everything is terrible, it's still possible to feel deep, gratifying, brain-buzzing admiration for brilliant art. Thank you, Harrow, for being one of the brightest spots in a dark year and for keeping the home fires burning.”

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, and her next book, One Last Stop, comes out in 2021.

"I'm grateful for V.S. Naipaul's troubling masterpiece, A Bend in the River — which not only made me see the world anew, but made me see what literature could do. It's a book that's lucid enough to reveal the brutality of the forces shaping our world and its politics; yet soulful enough to penetrate the most recondite secrets of human interiority. A book of great beauty without a moment of mercy. A marriage of opposites that continues to shape my own deeper sense of just how much a writer can actually accomplish."

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, and his latest novel, Homeland Elegies, is about an American son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a post-9/11 country. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Vanessa German, Feminist Press

“I'm most thankful for Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether. It's a YA book set in 1930s Harlem, and it was the first Black-girl-coming-of-age book I ever read, the first time I ever saw myself in a book. I appreciate how it expanded my world and my understanding that books can speak to you right where you are and take you on a journey, at the same time.”

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Read a story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

Philippa Gedge, W. W. Norton & Company

“As both a writer and a reader I am hugely grateful for Patricia Highsmith’s plotting and writing suspense fiction. As a writer I’m thankful for Highsmith’s generosity with her wisdom and experience: She talks us through how to tease out the narrative strands and develop character, how to know when things are going awry, even how to decide to give things up as a bad job. She’s unabashed about sharing her own ‘failures,’ and in my experience, there’s nothing more encouraging for a writer than learning that our literary gods are mortal! As a reader, it provides a fascinating insight into the genesis of one of my favorite novels of all time — The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as the rest of her brilliant oeuvre. And because it’s Highsmith, it’s so much more than just a how-to guide: It’s hugely engaging and, while accessible, also provides a glimpse into the mind of a genius. I’ve read it twice — while working on each of my thrillers, The Hunting Party and The Guest List — and I know I’ll be returning to the well-thumbed copy on my shelf again soon!”

Lucy Foley is the New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party. She has also written two historical fiction novels and previously worked in the publishing industry as a fiction editor.

“The books I'm most thankful for this year are a three-book series titled Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend. Walking a fine line between comedy and horror (which is much harder than people think), the books follow Jack, an employee at a gas station in a nameless town where all manner of horrifyingly fantastical things happen. And while the monsters are scary and more than a little ridiculous, it's Jack's bone-dry narration, along with his best friend/emotional support human, Jerry, that elevates the books into something that are as lovely as they are absurd.”

T.J. Klune is a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries.

Sylvernus Darku (Team Black Image Studio), Ayebia Clarke Publishing

"Nervous Conditions is a book that I have read several times over the years, including this year. The novel covers the themes of gender and race and has at its heart Tambu, a young girl in 1960s Rhodesia determined to get an education and to create a better life for herself. Dangarembga’s prose is evocative and witty, and the story is thought-provoking. I’ve been inspired anew by Tambu each time I’ve read this book."

Peace Adzo Medie is Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020). His Only Wife is her debut novel.

Jenna Maurice, HarperCollins

“The book I'm most thankful for? Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My mother and father would read me poems from it before bed — I'm convinced it infused me not only with a sense of poetic cadence, but also a wry sense of humor.”

Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is BuzzFeed Book Club’s December pick. Read an excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Meg Vázquez, Square Fish

“My childhood best friend gave me Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle for Hanukkah when I was 11 years old, and it's still my favorite book of all time. I love the way it defies genre (it's a political thriller/YA romance that includes a lot of scientific research and also poetry??), and the way it values smartness, gutsiness, vulnerability, kindness, and a sense of adventure. The book follows 16-year-old Vicky Austin's life-altering trip to Antarctica; her trip changed my life, too. In a year when safe travel is almost impossible, I'm so grateful to be able to return to her story again and again.”

Kate Stayman-London's debut novel, One to Watch, is about a plus-size blogger who’s been asked to star on a Bachelorette-like reality show. Stayman-London served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures, from former president Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher.

Katharine McGee is grateful for the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Chris Bailey Photography, Firebird

“I’m thankful for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I discovered the series in elementary school, and it sparked a love of big, epic stories that has never left me. (If you read my books, you know I can’t resist a broad cast of characters!) I used to read the books aloud to my younger sister, using funny voices for all the narrators. Now that I have a little boy of my own, I can’t wait to someday share Redwall with him.”

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of American Royals and its sequel, Majesty. She is also the author of the Thousandth Floor trilogy.

Beth Gwinn, Time-Life Books

"I am thankful most for books that carry me out of the world and back again, and while I find it painful to choose among them, here's one early and one late: Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, which comes out in 2021 but I devoured just two days ago, and the long out-of-print Wizards and Witches volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series, which is where I first read about the legend of the Scholomance."

Naomi Novik is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nebula Award–winning novel Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the nine-volume Temeraire series. Her latest novel, A Deadly Education, is the first of the Scholomance trilogy.

Christina Lauren are grateful for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Christina Lauren, Little, Brown and Company

"We are thankful for the Twilight series for about a million reasons, not the least of which it's what brought the two of us together. Writing fanfic in a space where we could be silly and messy together taught us that we don't have to be perfect, but there's no harm in trying to get better with every attempt. It also cemented for us that the best relationships are the ones in which you can be your real, authentic self, even when you're struggling to do things you never thought you'd be brave enough to attempt. Twilight brought millions of readers back into the fold and inspired hundreds of romance authors. We really do thank Stephenie Meyer every day for the gift of Twilight and the fandom it created."

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sinrau · 4 years ago

Link

Former Vice President Joe Biden

Joe Biden The Memo — Michelle Obama shines, scorching Trump Trump lashes out at Cuomo after his Democratic convention speech Biden seeks to win over progressives and Republicans on night one MORE has successfully courted a number of prominent Republicans for his White House bid, with several speaking on his behalf at the Democratic National Convention this week.

Dissatisfaction with President Trump

Donald John Trump The Memo — Michelle Obama shines, scorching Trump Trump lashes out at Cuomo after his Democratic convention speech Biden seeks to win over progressives and Republicans on night one MORE among some Republicans predates Biden becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee this year, though several high-profile Republicans have recently come out to back Biden.

Below are the Republicans who have formally endorsed him for president:

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich

Kasich, who served as governor for eight years before launching his 2016 presidential bid, delivered a speech on the first night of the Democratic convention this week where he sought to quell fears that Biden may be straying too far left.

“I’m sure there are Republicans and independents who couldn’t imagine crossing over to support a Democrat,” Kasich said on Monday. “They fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind. I don’t believe that because I know the measure of the man. It’s reasonable, faithful, respectful, and, you know, no one pushes Joe around.”

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman

Whitman, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in California as a Republican in 2010, was among the members of the GOP who spoke on the first night of the Democratic convention.

“I’m a longtime Republican and a longtime CEO,” Whitman, who is the current CEO of Quibi, said during the convention. “And let me tell you, Donald Trump has no clue how to run a business, let alone an economy.”

Former N.Y. Rep. Susan Molinari

Molinari, who represented New York from 1990 to 1997 and served as vice chair of the House Republican Conference, was among the Republicans who spoke during the first day of the Democratic convention. In a brief address she said Biden is “exactly what this nation needs at this time.”

Former Trump administration official Miles Taylor

Taylor, who served as chief of staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in an ad released Monday by the group Republican Voters Against Trump where he called the Trump presidency “terrifying.”

On Tuesday, Trump dismissed Taylor as a “disgruntled employee” and said he did not know and had never heard of him. Taylor responded to the president’s tweet with a photo of the two of them in the Oval Office.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday Taylor said it is time for Republicans “to put country over party.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman

Whitman, who served as governor from 1994 to 2001 before leading the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George W. Bush, also gave a brief statement during the convention on Monday.

She said the election “isn’t about a Republican or Democrat. It’s about a person: a person decent enough, stable enough, strong enough to get our economy back on track; a person who can work with everyone, Democrats and Republicans, to get things done.”

“Donald Trump isn’t that person; Joe Biden is,” Whitman added.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell Overnight Defense: Air Force general officially becomes first African American service chief | Senators introduce bill to block Trump armed drone sale measure | State Department’s special envoy for Iran is departing the Trump administration Air Force general officially becomes first African American service chief Trump participates in swearing-in of first African American service chief MORE

Powell, who served under former President George W. Bush, said in June that he would be voting for Biden.

“I certainly cannot in any way support President Trump this year,” Powell said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Powell said Trump “has not been an effective president” and “lies all the time,” starting with his first day in office about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. He also said he is “very close to Joe Biden,” noting that he has worked with the former vice president for four decades.

The former secretary of State previously endorsed President Obama in 2008 and 2012 as well as Hillary Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton The Memo — Michelle Obama shines, scorching Trump NY Democrat Omeed Malik joins Daily Caller as minority investor, contributing editor Biden allies express confidence as convention begins MORE in 2016.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina

Fiorina, who also ran against Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, said in an interview on The Atlantic’s “The Ticket” podcast that she is voting for Biden.

“I’ve been very clear that I can’t support Donald Trump,” Fiorina said. “And elections are binary choices… I am encouraged that Joe Biden is a person of humility and empathy and character. I think he’s demonstrated that through his life. And I think we need humility and empathy everywhere in public life right now. And I think character counts.”

Here are the high-profile Republicans backing Biden #web #website #copied #toread #highlight #link #news #read #blog #wordpresspost #posts #breaking news# #Sinrau #Nothiah #Sinrau29 #read #wordpress

#IFTTT #WordPress

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belladonnadream · 7 years ago

Photo

Stevie n Mick 9-11 Memorial

Stevie Nicks September 11, 2016 · September 11th, 2016

As I always say on this day~ No one needs to remind me~ of what happened in New York on September 11th, 2001. I was there~ at the Waldorf~ sleeping~ when the first plane hit the first tower. We, 7 of us, had come in from Canada that night~ landed at 2:30 in the morning~ ready to spend my day off in my favorite city. I went to bed at 7:30am... It was a beautiful day~ looking out the windows before I laid down. I was so excited to be there~ I had such hopes for that beautiful day~ and then the world stopped. The world changed. As the day went by you could not see the sun~ we put wet towels around all the windows. It was as if the world had ended.

I kept a journal all through the four days we were there. As we drove away from New York on Friday at sunset (on a bus) heading towards Atlantic City (show on Saturday had not been canceled) we looked back across the water at the fallen towers and the sad grey city. We drove slowly, taking pictures in our minds~ knowing that nothing ~ NOTHING ~ would ever be the same. And we cried. Silent grey shadowed tears of disbelief~ I think we cried all the way to Atlantic City. I don’t think any words were even spoken, and we prayed that the world would heal and get better.

It hasn’t.

Our world is dangerous. The warnings are everywhere. People are afraid. I am afraid and I hate being afraid. I want to be strong and fearless. I want anyone who reads this to do everything they can to help this world~

Please God show them the way Please God ~on this day~ Spirits all~ give them the strength Peace can come if you fight for it~ I think we’re just in time to save it Please God Give them the strength On this day Please God Please God Please God Show them the way~

These words are from a song you have yet to hear~ about this day...

I am re-posting my journal entries again for you to read~ I wrote them for all of us. Consider these words as you go through the next sixty days~

Love to All, Stevie Nicks

2001

Dearest Everyone- This is my journal entry for September 11, 2001. I wanted to share it with you, because I was in New York; because it was the heaviest thing I have ever experienced ~

Love, Stevie Nicks

Sept. 11, 2001 11:30 a.m. We got into New York via private jet at 2 o’clock this morning, coming into New York from Toronto, Canada. I have been listening to Shawn Colvin’s song, Another Plane Went Down, from her new album, A Whole New You, all the way here while trying to compose a letter to Gladys Knight about Aaliyah, her niece; about my dream. Airports, planes everywhere, music, music, tears in my eyes, Sulamith (my yorkie) was upset all the way from Canada, psychic, dreamlike, flying, flying, flying.

And now, it has happened. Two planes dove into the World Trade Center Towers ~ 4 hijackings in 3 hours. The Trade Center is gone, thousands of people are dead. The Pentagon was attacked kamikaze style, and one plane they are pretty sure, was on its way to the White House.

Everyone is pretty sure it was Osama Bin Laden, the evil high tech murderer hiding in Afghanistan...

People are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge trying to get home. I am here at the world famous Waldorf=Astoria, the hotel where the presidents stay ~

I will write as the day unfolds~

I am pretty sure Radio City will cancel; I think their offices were in the Towers...I am so sad for them...

Aircraft warships are on their way to us here in New York and to Washington... I don’t really know what we are going to do now – the airports are completely shut down-

My heart is broken.

8:42 a.m. First Tower 9:04 a.m. 2nd Tower 9:40 a.m. Pentagon 9:59 a.m. South Tower falls 10:28 a.m. North Tower falls (people jump) 11:29 a.m. United flt 99 crashes in rural Pennsylvania 5:20 p.m. #7 Tower collapses

Sept. 12, 2001 4:42 a.m. in the morning

We are a devastated city I feel I am a part of this city. We are a strong, brilliant city. We are watching a piece of history We are living through a tragedy Like no one – has ever seen...

The fire chief of New York is dead. His assistant fire chief is dead. One of my champions from Warner Brothers wife is gone. She was coming home from Boston after settling their twin daughters at a University. Their grandmother was with their Mom.

M.H. called from Toronto. He is there with the Backstreet Boys. One of their carpenters went home because his wife was having a baby. He was on one of those planes. We are a grieving city A surreal city ~ It is 5:09 a.m. in the morning We are still a dark city – But soon it will be dawn – and the dreamlike reality of yesterday will turn into the true reality of what has really happened.

I have seen grown men cry today. They seem to be having the most trouble with this. They are the protectors –

And they feel so helpless ~ They can’t stand it.

It seems that, as Don Henley so brilliantly said ~ “This is the end- of the innocence.”

5:15 a.m.

I sit here at 5:15 in the morning – in shock. The tears just don’t stop. As a writer, I am driven to write what it has been like to be 20 minutes away from the Twin Towers ~ To be here at the world famous, Waldorf=Astoria Hotel, home of foreign diplomats and gathering place of politicians, in a suite where I am quite sure Heads of State have met, and discussed the problems of the world. The living room is all dark wood, ceiling to floor, and you can just imagine John Kennedy sitting at the desk. It is stunning. This hotel is where the presidents have always stayed, and this grand old hotel is in full lockdown. All but two entrances are closed, the driveway through the hotel – shut, all the cars - moved out.

I feel strangely safe here in New York now – and the city still looks awesome from my windows, still sparkly, still beautiful, almost like – from this room- Nothing ever happened- Almost...

The television news people are extraordinary – all of them. They are tired; you can see it in their changing faces, as the day has gone by. Of course, I feel like I know them all, like they are really dear friends, choking up and recovering, just like me, hour after hour... You can’t go through something like this with a city. You become attached.

You become “war buddies.” It is just so deep. It is 6:10. It is sunrise

6:38 a.m.

It was a beautiful sunrise. It has turned the white curtains pink, the room pink- I swear. The sun is one half inch over the city horizon, the sky is peacock blue, sky blue but the city is still glowing pink. If I had been sleeping since Monday and I looked out this window, I would think, “It just looks like a beautiful New York fall day, my favorite thing, let’s shop! It looks just like it did Tuesday morning when I went to bed, just before this all happened. The view is so beautiful that looking up at it, almost makes you start to feel good, and forget, and then, honestly you feel guilty, and then you feel worse and sick to your stomach. If they can’t sleep, then I’m not going to sleep either... So today is both beautiful and frightening, looking out from 36 floors up, can I tell you how unimaginable it would be if I looked up and saw a big jet flying towards me, in this country? Not possible. My question – “How could this happen?”

I am overwhelmed with how extraordinary the firemen and the policemen are. They just don’t give up. They “don’t stop.” They are awesome...and so is Mayor Guiliani. I would ALWAYS want them on my team. They are my heroes.

Well, I think I have to sleep now. In an interview from the street, a man says in tears, “You do not want to see the things I’ve seen today...I am traumatized.” “I am traumatized for life...”

That is the truth...We are all traumatized.

“I’m tired. I’m thirsty – I’m wild eyed In my misery.”

God Bless everyone that lost someone ~ And all of those ~ that are gone... I am so sorry ~

Stevie Nicks 7:06 in the morning

P .S. The room is still glowing pink – I swear...

Last Thought...September 14, 2001

Please everyone, do not blame people for this just because they are Muslim – or come from some other ethnic group. If you do, you let Osama Bin Laden win – as surely as if you helped him put those planes through those towers. You - become him. He wins. Consider this carefully...

2011

September 11, 2011 9-11 Nine Eleven 2001

It is four o’7~ 4:07 in the afternoon. It is Sunday. It is the 10th Anniversary of the attack on the great towers of New York City. The twins~ those two awesome skyscrapers who stood above our beautiful city. I say “our” because I became a New Yorker on that day.

I am not watching television, at least not yet. I do not need T.V. to jar my memory. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday. Landing in New York at 2:30 in the morning~ coming in from Canada to spend my one day off in New York. Looking forward to playing Radio City Music Hall~ one of my favorite places to play. Driving into the city from the airport~ excited~ it’s always a romantic drive for me~ like something wonderful could happen~ New York City~ just like I pictured it. Awesome. Awesome...

And awesome it was. Arriving at the world famous Waldorf=Astoria Hotel. Famous people live there. Political dignitaries live there. Wallace Simpson and the ex-King of England~ lived there for 5 years in the suite with the 3 great arched windows. History oozes from its great walls. When you are there~ you are part of history. We got to our suite at about 4 in the morning~ the very grand~ all dark wood suite~ we unpacked~ the sun was coming up over the city~ the 4 windows in the living room full of pink light~ extraordinary pink~ bathing the brown Bosendorfer in light~ the sun is up~ it is 7:30. I say to the girls~ “Maybe we should just go out now and have breakfast and go shopping~ and sleep later. I was looking out one of the windows at the city that was now full of people and cars and cabs and limousines~ crazy energy~ and we laughed, realizing how tired we were after 2 shows in a row and the flight from Canada...Maybe a little sleep would help~ then we’ll hit the streets. Sulamith Wulfing and I went to bed~ dreaming of going out later~ maybe finding a little diamond something~ and off we went to sleep.

Right after the second plane hit the second tower, Karen woke me. I don’t remember exactly what she said. I just remember jumping up and running to the window where I had stood 3 1⁄2 hours before. Looking down at that same street, no cars, no cabs, and no people. Just empty. Not beautiful~ just frighteningly silent. No way out~ just fear.

Karen was on the phone with my manager Sheryl. She had been on the phone with her when the plane hit the first tower. Because of that~ we had a line out to the world. Sheryl was able to have someone call our parents and my band in Canada and let people know we were all right.

The Waldorf went into lock down. It is the presidents hotel, so lock down is something the do well. Then we waited. We turned on the big T.V. in the living room and watched ~ and watched~ and watched.

Because we were hooked up to T.V. all over the world~ we saw things that I think most people didn’t see. Spanish T.V.~ people actually jumping. That was momentary~ pulled immediately by the networks. The first newspaper with a horrid image on the front page~ not seen again. We kept the newspaper.

As the hours went by we, like everyone else in the city who wasn’t close to ground zero~we just sat and watched T.V. and cried. I never left the suite. From Tuesday afternoon to Friday night when we drove away to Atlantic City I just sat in front of the T.V. and cried. The sunsets were extra beautiful. All that dust and smoke makes sunsets and sunrises more beautiful. Like smoke on stage makes the lights more beautiful. After that, soon after that actually, I developed an allergy to dust and smoke. I don’t use smoke on my stage anymore. It shuts down my throat~ I can’t sing in it~ and it’s not beautiful.

It’s 4:58p right now~ the devastation I felt that day is starting to creep in. My throat is starting to close up~ and my eyes are starting to fill with tears.

I guess that’s how it will always be. All those people lost. All those families ruined. All those hearts broken. I was 20 minutes away. I did not lose a best friend or a child or a lover. But part of my heart went down with those towers... And that will never change...

Stevie Nicks 9-11-11

#Stevie Nicks #Fleetwood Mac #Stevie Nicks History #9-11

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thebluequest · 5 years ago

Text

Close to Glory (ia)

It’s 11:27 AM CST, and I’m waiting at the Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, WI. My flight home is in 45 minutes. Father’s day is being observed a weekend early in Creve Coeur, Missouri. You see, I’m a hockey fan because of my old man. He grew up in Detroit, born a Red Wings fan, in all the irony you can imagine. But since he moved there in the 80′s, he’s switched to the good guys wearing Blue in St. Louis. Since as long as I remember, my family has been hockey fans, and it’s to his credit.

So tonight we’re getting a couple steaks, firing up the grill over some beers and taking in the biggest St. Louis Blues game in history. Two dads just taking it easy. What are you up to?

---

Man oh man it’s been a long time coming for the Blue Notes. The annual spring tradition of watching the Blues crumble under pressure, succumb to bad luck, bad officiating, the Sharks, the Red Wings, the Blackhawks didn’t come this year. It’s summer now, and somehow the home team is still skating. I hear the Stanley Cup arrived just a few hours ago. At first, it didn’t seem real did it?

I mean, remember when Roman Turek jumped over a puck against San Jose? Remember Yzerman in double OT? Remember how meaningless the President’s trophy year was?

St. Louis has long been a baseball town, but the Blues are the team that more accurately reflects the city in my humble opinion. St. Louis used to be a big town. It’s glory days were over a century ago. Since then, the city has been hollowed out (literally), with the money moving outward and the taxpayers refusing to fund its center. The north side has deteriorated with abandonment and civil strife. Ferguson happened. Car plants have shut down. The Rams left. Anheuser Busch stopped being local. St. Louis Bread Co became Panera. We even made national news for cutting bagels incorrectly.

Meanwhile, the Blues came to St. Louis in 1967, and looked to be a perennial contender for the cup, by making it to the finals the first 3 years in a row. They were outmatched each of those years by the more seasoned original 6 Montreal Canadiens and (also ironic) Boston Bruins, but it looked to be a good start for perhaps a storied franchise. Unfortunately, in a cruel turn of fate, they never returned to the finals from 1970 forward. The team nearly relocated, were underfunded (more than once), and suffered countless bad trades, shipping off of great coaches and Mike Keenan. All of this translated into bad playoff juju and zero championships.

The namesake of the team is based off the genre of music that is often characterized by it’s low and slow, but grinding tempo that has a whole lot of soul. The lyrics are frequently a tool that singers use to ease the pain of their daily trials and tribulations. Singing and having the Blues is a deep, deep feeling. Which is why your St. Louis Blues are so aptly named.

It seems at times, that the Blues carry the emotional burden of a city tested. Their style of play has long been heavy, grinding and gritty. Their performance over the last few decades has often been disappointing, perhaps mirroring the spirit of St. Louis. We have the Blues, they are the Blues. A collective feeling personified on ice.

I think this is why this Stanley Cup run has been so emotional for St. Louis. The team that reflects its soul, is final-ly, leaning into the grind and dealing it back. So far, no ref, no team, no bad bounce has deterred our Blues. The callused franchise looks to be just that. The cause for celebration gets higher and higher. Positive vibes have hit the streets. People are united, and we actually believe for once this thing can happen. Maybe, just maybe, its an omen. Perhaps, it means the tides of an old city are turning.

Tonight could see perhaps the biggest sports celebration in St. Louis history. That silver chalice is often referred to as the hardest trophy to capture in sports. You have to go no farther than St. Louis, MO to know that’s true. Such a prize, in front of such history, would be iconic and the stuff of legend. The end of this 52 year quest is nigh.

*************************

Some off the cuff remarks about the game:

-I can’t believe Boston’s reaction so late in the playoffs to a non call by a ref. I mean, did they not have any bad calls up to this point? Did they not win the cup just a few years ago? Yeesh, you’d think Boston has never seen a hockey game refereed by the garbage that is NHL officiating. If they keep that mindset tonight, they will surely crumble in game 6.

-Jordan Binnington is my pick for Conn Smythe. Rookie goaltender has outmatched every goalie in each of the 4 series and is stone cold

-Vladimir Tarasenko is having his moment. Great poise in the finals and he’s racked up a lot of points. It’s really cool to see a Russian become an adopted son of St. Louis in the way he has. Congrats to his new baby!

-Scoring has been spread out among forwards (and defensemen). 5 on 5 we are the best team this post season which is why we are here. The 3rd and 4th lines in particular are x-factors and why we ultimately wear teams down.

-If Robert Thomas is in fact a go tonight that will be huge for closing this out. I know Maroon gets the credit, but we would have lost game 7 against Dallas without him.

-Bob Bortuzzo is such a Blues player

-What do you think Brett Hull will do when we win tonight? Looking forward to some folklore stories to surface.

-Craig Berube, the chief, was finally the medicine we all needed. Post game interviews/locker room hasn’t been this entertaining since Tony La Russa was in STL.

LGB

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go-redgirl · 6 years ago

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Joe Biden Reportedly Involved in Controversial Early Stages of 2016 Russia Probe

NEW YORK — Former Vice President Joe Biden was reportedly one of the few Obama administration officials who participated in secretive meetings during the early stages of the Obama-era intelligence community’s initial operations regarding suspected Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

That tidbit was contained deep inside a 7,700-plus word Washington Post article published June 23, 2017 in which the newspaper also detailed the highly compartmentalized nature of the original Russia interference investigation and the manner in which other U.S. intelligence agencies were deliberately kept in the dark. Part of the efforts eventually involved unsubstantiated and ultimately discredited charges made by the Christopher Steele dossier that Trump campaign officials were colluding with Russia.

Biden’s largely unreported role in the initial Obama administration meetings on the matter of Russian interference could spark further questions now that Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion claims.

Only last week, Barr commented that the intelligence community’s early handling of the Russia investigation may itself raise questions. He noted that it was first handled at a “very senior level” and then by a “small group.”

In an interview on Fox News, Barr stated:

The thing that’s interesting about this is that this was handled at a very senior level of these departments. It wasn’t handled in the ordinary way that investigations or counterintelligence activities are conducted. It was sort of an ad hoc, small group — and most of these people are no longer with the FBI or the CIA or the other agencies involved. I think there’s a misconception out there that we know a lot about what happened. The fact of the matter is, Bob Mueller did not look at the government’s activities.

The lengthy Washington Post article from 2017 detailed the closed circle of Obama administration officials who were involved in overseeing the initial efforts related to the Russia investigation — a circle than was narrowly widened to include Biden, according to the newspaper report.

According to the newspaper, in the summer of 2016, CIA Director John Brennan convened a “secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.”

The Post described the unit as so secretive it functioned as a “sealed compartment” hidden even from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community; a unit whose workers were all made to sign additional non-disclosure forms.

The unit reported to top officials, the newspaper documented:

They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.

The number of Obama administration officials who were allowed access to the Russia intelligence was also highly limited, The Post reported. At first only four senior officials were involved, and not Biden. Those officials were CIA Directir John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey. Their aides were all barred from attending the initial meetings, The Post stated.

The circle of those who attended the secretive meetings on the matter soon widened to include Biden, The Post reported (emphasis added):

The secrecy extended into the White House.

Rice and White House homeland-security adviser Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the Situation Room to weigh the mounting evidence of Russian interference and generate options for how to respond. At first, only four senior security officials were allowed to attend: Brennan, Clapper, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey. Aides ordinarily allowed entry as “plus-ones” were barred.

Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Biden and others. Agendas sent to Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon — arrived in envelopes that subordinates were not supposed to open. Sometimes the agendas were withheld until participants had taken their seats in the Situation Room.

Adding another layer of secrecy, the newspaper reported that when the closed Cabinet sessions on Russia began in the White House Situation Room in August, the video feed from the main room was cut off during the meetings.

The feed, which allows only for video and not audio, is usually kept on so that senior aides can see when a meeting takes place.

The paper reported:

The blacked-out screens were seen as an ominous sign among lower-level White House officials who were largely kept in the dark about the Russia deliberations even as they were tasked with generating options for retaliation against Moscow.

It was not clear what went on inside those meetings and how many included Biden’s participation. The meetings progressed during the period that the Steele dossier was reported to the FBI.

The dossier was cited as evidence in three successful FISA applications signed by Comey to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The second and third were renewal applications since a FISA warrant must be renewed every 90 days.

Comey, Brennan and Clapper have been the subjects of a dispute in recent weeks over which top Obama administration officials advocated for the infamous dossier to be utilized as evidence in the Russia collusion investigation, as Breitbart News reported.

The dossier was produced by the controversial Fusion GPS firm which was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee via the Perkins Coie law firm.

Last year, meanwhile, Biden publically defended the Obama administration’s handling of the Russia probe amid accusations that the Obama White House didn’t do enough and waited until after the election to make the Russia interference charges public.

“I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out,” Biden said last January at a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “The bottom line was it was tricky as hell. It’s easy to say now, well maybe we should have said more. But I’ll ask you a rhetorical question — can you imagine if the President of the United States called a press conference in October … and said, ‘Tell you what, the Russians are trying to interfere with our elections and we have to do something about it.’ What do you think would have happened?”

Trump, however, previously suggested Obama’s not being forceful enough on the matter was politically motivated.

Taking to Twitter, Trump wrote:

The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win … and did not want to ‘rock the boat.’ He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow.

Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.

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yeouami · 8 years ago

Text

Dealing with family who still believes in Trump, their God and Saviour, and won’t listen to reason.

So I just posted this on facebook:

My former English teacher shared this after seeing it on her friend's page, and I just had to share it, too.

(Especially with you, C.F. and H.D.F. - and anyone else among my friends/family who still believes in Trump as their God and Saviour. Please don't tell me, you wouldn't also be pissed if the following scenario were real. Maybe now you can understand a little better, why there are still so many people who don't agree with Trump's presidency. And I'm not only talking about Democrats here. More and more Republicans are waking up to seeing his wrongdoings for what they are..)

--- Imagine this scenario: Hillary Clinton is president. It's learned that she has deep ties to Putin and the Russian spy agency. She puts utterly unqualified billionaires in cabinet posts. She pursues public policies that benefit her and her billionaire friends. She puts her daughter Chelsea in a position of influence in the West Wing, gives her her own office and allows her to use that position to forward her own business interests. And Chelsea's husband is her chief advisor. The private business trips taken by Chelsea and her husband are paid for by the taxpayers. She refuses to release any tax returns, she blocks access to the visitor logs in the White House and Bill refuses to live in the White House so our tax dollars are spent keeping him safe in Chappaqua. Hillary spends almost every weekend lounging in her own, privately-held resort. Her private resort gets reimbursed for any and all "official" government functions (including security) because she chooses to conduct all her "business" and personal functions there. She and her family live in three White Houses at the same time. In an interview, she names the wrong country she bombed while bragging about the chocolate cake she was eating while she ordered said bombing. I could go on and on. The point is that the outrage, the outcries, the screaming by Republicans would be heard around the world and impeachment proceedings would already be underway. By the way, this is not about political party affiliation. Let's face it, if Hillary - or any woman or minority candidate - had five children from three partners s/he would never have survived the primary.

--- COPY and PASTE if you want all your friends to see this.

#NotMyPresident #sorrynotsorry #thetruthcannolongerbedenied#itstimetowakeupamerica

And received this reply by H.D.F. (who happens to be my Uncle, who lives in California):

Don't believe our liberal press . They are so out of touch with the American people . They told the American people that Trump would lose by a landslide to Clinton . We all know how that turn out . Many liberal turn on Clinton in the traditional liberal states . Like Wisconsin Michigan Ohio Florida and many more . As far as Putin goes, I don't think they have a close relationship . He showed this when he launched 60 tomahawk missles at air base in Syria . Now about his taxes . No ones cares here about his taxes . Only the liberal rich people do . What liberal people refuse to understand . The people who sent him to Washington wanted change . The last eight years of Obama and Clinton policy has not been good in America for a large segment of the population . It showed in the election . I look fawned to the French election . Neither major party is going to second round . You have two outsider . That is major change no matter who win . Look forward to may 7th . Keep up the good fight. Your voice is important.

To which I replied:

If not the liberal press, who else is there to trust? Sure, you should never take anything that's said as 100% true, but it can't ALL be lies. They thought Trump would lose because they believed that the US citizens would be sane enough not to vote for someone as mentally deranged as him. His whole campaign was built on agitation and lies. Most of which are gradually being exposed, and can't be ignored for much longer. As for Putin, sure, only they know how close they really are. But you can't deny that there isn't some kind of connection in the background. How else would they have known to take all the important personell out of said area before the missiles hit..? Also, those f-ing expensive missiles still make me mad as hell. Why did he have to use so many?? What about the veterans, homeless and public education, everyone always seems to be complaining about not having enough money, that could've really needed the money wasted on those missiles???? Are you really ok with that??? Why is it then, that most of the protesters I see are from middle to low income families? The rich could actually care less about his tax returns, cause for one, they probably don't care about their own, and two, they just care about the money they receive from supporting him. Those protesters are just vocalizing their right to have him do the same thing they are FORCED to do, so they wouldn't be prosecuted, while HE GETS A FREE PASS. Money or status should not be a guarantee for him to just get away with it. You can't seriously think that's RIGHT...? Don't you think it's weird how the unbiased news I've been watching over the last eight years, never showed how terrible of a president Obama supposedly was? Sure, not everything can always go well and not every promise made during the campaign can be held. But did it ever occur to you, that he tried his best while having to face one defeat after another because the Republicans just simply didn't want HIM to win the vote on something that could've made the lives of so many Americans better, while they knew that their decision would just make everything worse. But no, a true Republican can't let a major improvement, a Democrat proposed, go through, because obviously they wouldn't get the recognition they think they'd deserve. The Democrat would rightfully receive it, and there is no way they could lose to the Dems like that. This is sadly the painful truth we've been living in for quite a while now. The problem is that most people still don't seem to see the bigger picture. They're quite selfish in a way. Sure, having the coal mines running again may give some people their jobs back. (And obviously those people would never have dreamed to vote for a presidential candidate who advocates clean energy to fight climate change) But what they seem to forget is the future. The future we all will have to live in. And not just us. Our children, grandchildren and so on will have to deal with the result of what is now done wrong. I really don't get how those people just ignore what's going on and only care about themselves in the now. They probably won't be around anymore when the consequences hit hard, so they might think it doesn't have anything to do with them. But this is our responsibility right now. So many of the older generations have already messed things up for the younger ones, by voting for what they believe is right for them at this very moment, not once considering the change that has already taken place over the last decades. Just take a look at how liberal-minded youth responds to racism, homo- and xenophobia. We're trying to understand each other so that we can live in peace as one human race. With how evolution stands now, there is no black and white anymore. Obama's presidency showed the world that the US was doing it's part toward a better future for all of us. I can't say the same about Trump's presidency. And with what he has shown the world so far, I highly doubt I ever will. As for France, it's pretty much the same situation as with the US elections. Macron is what everyone wished Trump to be when he came from out of nowhere and promised all those wonderful things for America, while Le Pen is what he turned out to be. So yeah, I'm totally looking forward to May 7th. Same to you. Believe in what you want to and stand up for it. Just please, don't do it blindly. Your voice is important, too. Mostly to Trump for that matter ;)

Sorry for the long post. I know he’s gonna reply with more nonsense along the lines of “Make America Great Again” or something like that.. I’d really love some objective thoughts on this. Also, if you also happen to be in the same situation and need some arguments, feel free to use mine..

P.S. Just so this all makes more sense: I’m German-American and spent a few years (during my childhood) in California. For the past 15 years I’ve been living in Germany again and wasn’t exposed to only biased American news. Therefor I’m pretty confident in the sources of my arguments.

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unionrising · 8 years ago

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Who are the trolls?

What we know about the men (and sometimes women) who spend their days trying to provoke a reaction on the internet.

Dissociative anonymity ("my actions can't be attributed to my person"); invisibility ("nobody can tell what I look like, or judge my tone"); asynchronicity ("my actions do not occur in real-time"); solipsistic Introjection ("I can't see these people, I have to guess at who they are and their intent"); dissociative imagination ("this is not the real world, these are not real people"); and minimising authority ("there are no authority figures here, I can act freely").

"There’s the disturbing possibility that people are creating online environments purely to express the type of racist, homophobic, or sexist speech that is no longer acceptable in public society, at work, or even at home.”

Feminist writer Lindy West receives a daily deluge of hate on Twitter and Facebook for her work on everything from body image to rape. The abuse became unbearable when one tormentor created a fake Twitter account for West’s father, who had recently passed away, and tweeted cruel comments about West.

Alt-Right Racists Teach Newbies How To Troll

Andrew Anglin’s blog, The Daily Stormer, is an anti-semitic breeding ground for racist trolls that Anglin claims is the “most visited alt-right website” in the world. “Now is the time to reach out to the masses to exponentially increase our numbers and finish (((them))),” Anglin wrote; the triple parentheses is alt-right code for Jews. ...encouraging his followers to continue being as racist as possible.“So make sure to tone down the hate speech and bigotry, okay guys? We have to appeal to norms,” he wrote in a post. “LOL! Just kidding. Keep on gassing kikes as usual, my friends. Don’t ever change.”

The Unbelievable Harassment Black Women Face Daily on Twitter

“I get attacked on a daily basis," she told AlterNet in an interview. “There’s not a day that goes by when someone isn’t trolling or harassing me. But what I’ve also noticed is that the kind of direct defense that I receive has been relatively minimal, and it usually comes from the same people every time. Some people say to me, 'Oh I see you’re handling it, so I figure that you’ve got it' or 'You’re such a strong woman. You got it. You take it on your shoulders and you’re just so good at it.' And I don’t know if it’s the strong black women trope or something else, but a lot of people feel I don’t need the help and so they don’t. I also think some people are afraid of catching the same kind of heat if they intervene directly.”

"I've had lynching threats. People send me terrible historical pictures of our ancestors being lynched. So proportionately speaking, if you're not a person of color, you will not get that. Let's say there are 100 insults in the world, there are more of them that apply to us. When a white woman gets terrible harassment about being raped, attacked or killed, that's very serious as well. But there's no way she can get the lynching threats with historical pictures of black people. So there's a whole other section of ugly, hideous things people feel they can say to us."

The truth about trolls and the men they worship

A man who threatens women can generate more concern within the tech industry than female victims of abuse. Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, a well-known provocateur, hacker, and anti-Semite, is part of an internet subculture where might makes right, where the only moral code is for the superior to enforce their will on the inferior.

The “alt-right” now had an opportunity to inject racism, misogyny, and xenophobia into mainstream American politics. Provocative but obscure online rhetoric was quickly morphing into something more serious and powerful: the normalization of the politics of hate.

What was once obscure rhetoric and hate speech festering in the backwaters of the internet has since bloomed into a loose-knit extremist movement with the prospect of unprecedented influence in the White House. Here's how it happened.

2014 - Gamergate trolls target female video game developers and journalists, creating a model for the social-media mobs of the alt-right.

April 2015 - The New York Times and the Washington Post each partner with author Peter Schweizer, Breitbart's senior editor-at-large, for reporting based on his controversial investigative book Clinton Cash. During the 2016 election, Breitbart News offers a "free global broadcast" of the film adaptation—written and produced by Bannon.

June 2015 - Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president, electrifying white nationalists with his disparagement of Mexican criminals and "rapists." Trump soon garners endorsements from nearly two dozen neo-Nazi, KKK, and other extremist leaders.

October 2015 - Trump tweets an image of himself as Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the alt-right.

March 2016 - Milo Yiannopoulos and a fellow Breitbart writer publish a lengthy "Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right," denying the movement's leaders are racist and calling them "dangerously bright."

September 2016 - "Racialist" leaders, led by Richard Spencer, hold a press conference characterized as a "coming-out party" for the movement. Yiannopoulos ramps up a tour of college campuses. The Anti-Defamation League lists cartoon character Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol.

November 2016 - Spencer says the alt-right is "the vanguard of Trumpian populism" and will be a "critical force" pushing Trump "in the right direction." Trump names Bannon as his White House chief strategist.

It never would have happened without Trump acting as troll in chief. Already admired by extremists for his ongoing birther crusade against President Barack Obama, Trump riveted their attention when he announced his White House run and vowed to build a border wall to keep out Mexican criminals and "rapists." That soon earned him praise from a who's who of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and militia supporters.

Prior to Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, former head of the alt-right “news” website Breitbart, as his campaign chief (and later White House chief strategist), many people and members of the media wrote off the site and its reporters as trolling the general populace — even though it claimed around 8 million readers at the beginning of the year, a number that would jump to over 18 million thanks to the election. As polls and pundits dismissed Trump’s chances of winning in the lead-up to the election, many people dismissed alt-right trolling, too.

"It's not just that [journalists] are leftists and cucks," anti-Semite Richard Spencer railed at a recent meeting filmed by The Atlantic. "Indeed, one wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem."

"I am not a troll, but I kind of get them," says Spencer. "They are real and in some ways they have advanced the movement more than I have."

Trump's brazen political style thrilled the trolls—and he showed them, by engaging them throughout his campaign, that they could have political currency.

It’s not a failure of human intelligence that many people failed to take “trolling” more seriously. Much in the same way that fake news on Facebook was easy to dismiss until people realized its potential to massively influence many voters’ viewpoints, trolling obfuscates truth and reality, often through satirical means, in order to mask sincere propaganda.

The alt-right has elevated fringe trolling into a virulent form of propaganda that Spencer and others dub "meme magic." Trolls push hateful memes such as the Jewish "Happy Merchant" and the black "dindu nuffin" (a slur meant to echo "I didn't do nothin'") without fear of censure, thanks to the anonymity of Twitter and other platforms. Some journalists have speculated that the spread of this content is in part the work of Russian troll farms, though the extent of foreign involvement is unknown.

San Francisco-based entrepreneur and alt-right blogger Curtis Yarvin laid out a political philosophy known as neoreaction or the "Dark Enlightenment." Combining a technocratic sensibility with reactionary political thought, neoreaction rejects Enlightenment concepts such as democracy and equality and instead advocates something much closer to authoritarianism.

Peter Thiel, who reportedly donated more than $1 million to Trump's campaign and was named to his transition team in November, has circled neoreactionary ideas. "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," he wrote on the Cato Institute's blog in 2009, adding that women and "welfare beneficiaries" have through their voting habits "rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."

Trolling distorts reality in order to trick you into dismissing its message

Meme culture allowed the alt-right’s white supremacy to spread online. “Don’t feed the trolls” failed spectacularly as a tactic during the 2016 election cycle, stunning many people who assumed the alt-right’s tactics were juvenile and easily seen-through.

One of the most significant and pernicious ways that members of the alt-right use trolling is to create a sincerity-proof chamber of distortion surrounding what their actual message is. They do this by pretending that what they’re really doing is satirically spoofing how progressives and members of the media view conservatives.

If you try to play along with the alt-right’s hyperbole by intellectualizing it (for example, by painting it primarily as cultural commentary), dismissing it as trolling, or simply ignoring it altogether, you risk glossing over actual dangerous messages: racist, misogynistic, bigoted, and violent symbolism and language.

Anglin lays out the unifying themes of the alt-right movement — misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, and white nationalism — and explains how meme culture, trolling, and conspiracy theories have linked them under one umbrella term. Further garnishing that hate-filled combination with a large dollop of irony is what allows the alt-right’s troll culture, according to Anglin, to spread its white supremacist message.

Anglin acknowledges in his blog post that the alt-right’s use of ironic hyperbole “can be confusing to the mainstream, given the level of irony involved. The amount of humor and vulgarity confuses people.”

But he’s also very clear that the point of using irony is to mask something utterly straightforward: “The true nature of the movement, however, is serious and idealistic.” In a postmodern, post-ironic culture, he argues, “absolute idealism must be couched in irony in order to be taken seriously.”

What Anglin calls “idealism,” many people consider dangerous white nationalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/09/trolls-men-witch-hunt-internet

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-white-nationalists-hate-racism-power

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/alt-right-timeline-bannon-breitbart-trump

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/23/13659634/alt-right-trolling

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindness-weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man

http://www.alternet.org/unbelievable-harassment-black-women-face-daily-twitter

http://www.newstatesman.com/helen-lewis/2013/07/who-are-trolls

http://www.vocativ.com/354901/alt-right-racists-teach-newbies-how-to-troll-following-hillary-clinton-speech/

http://b1nd1.deviantart.com/art/Internet-Jerks-207469542

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2015/02/twitter-ceo-vows-fix-trolling-problem

#milo yiannopoulos #richard spencer #steve bannon #weev #andrew anglin #curtis yarvin #peter thiel #breitbart #stop trump #white supremecists #misogyny #anti-semitism #racism

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ewebresult · 4 years ago

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Everything You Need to Know About Video Marketing

What if the secret to marketing success was hiding in the palm of your hand? Between Youtube, social media, and various streaming networks, users are consuming more video content than ever before. If you want your business to engage with your customers, you must include video marketing in your strategy. Unfortunately, some companies don’t know the first thing about video marketing. However, our guide will provide everything you need to know to take your business to the next level!

Why Learn About Video Marketing?

Our guide is designed to help you learn all about video marketing. Before we dive into that, let’s explore why video marketing is so important.

The primary reason is that consumers crave engaging videos. They are much likelier to click on a video that looks interesting instead of reading a few stale paragraphs covering the same topic.

When someone finds an engaging video, they are likely to share it with their friends, family, and colleagues. With the right video content, you can transform consumers into brand ambassadors that provide a kind of digital “word of mouth” marketing.

Video is also a kind of “secret sauce” you can add to other marketing methods. For example, a captivating video on your landing page is certain to boost conversions. Additionally, mentioning a video in a subject line makes users much likelier to click on that e-mail you sent.

It’s also important to build up a steady library of evergreen video content. You can benefit from these videos for many years, even if your overall marketing approach or demographic changes. Video is certain to boost conversions and improve your branding.

The Power of Narrative

Now that you know the importance of video marketing, we need to understand what your customers want from a video. It all starts with a good story.

Now, “story” is the keyword here. Your audience is naturally wary of hearing a sales pitch. If your video is simply a sales pitch in a different format, they are likely to tune you out.

Instead, consumers crave a narrative that resonates with their own particular needs and desires. Before you try to craft a video, it’s important to explore the demographic and psychographic information you have about your audience. As always, analytics is a great way to flesh this information out.

Once you have that info, you can build a video around an engaging story. Maybe your video is about two people falling in love at first sight, or you can make a video about a hapless man who navigates an increasingly hilarious day.

As for your company and product, try to stay in the background of these scenes. Placing your logos or slogans too prominently in the video can distract from the narrative and veer it right back into “sales pitch” territory.

When it’s done well, video marketing lets you have the best of both worlds. An emotional video can instantly capture the hearts of consumers, and afterward, they will associate your business with the video that brought them so much joy.

The Right Length

Video length is tricky to master. For example, platforms like Netflix and Youtube help illustrate the public’s love for streaming video. At the same time, most of the video content on those platforms is far too long for an official marketing video.

How long should your videos be? We recommend no shorter than 30 seconds and no longer than two minutes. This is usually enough time to get the customer’s attention, tell a convincing narrative, and then leave on a memorable note.

In some cases, the ideal length for a video is determined by where your consumers will watch it. Many Youtube advertisements, for example, are as short as 15 seconds. That is also the same length of time that Facebook recommends for marketing videos on their platform, though they can accommodate videos as long as four hours.

It may sound daunting to create a captivating story in only 15 seconds. Keep in mind you can always work with video marketing professionals to bring your vision to life, no matter how short or how long the video will be.

Product Demonstrations

One of the best things about video marketing is also one of the worst things about it. What are we talking about? The sheer number of video possibilities at your disposal!

Aside from the need to tell a story, there are countless different ways to approach video marketing. This can be daunting at first, so we’re going to focus on a handful of proven video types.

The first type is a product demonstration. Video provides an easy and intuitive way to explain the different features and benefits of a product in a way that is much more exciting than standard web copy.

Product demonstrations are a great way to help customers visualize the product. Once they know what the product looks like, it is that much easier for the consumer to imagine owning such a product.

You can also scale product demonstrations up or down to suit any video length. Whether it’s an in-depth video or a short overview, these videos will make a world of difference in explaining your products and boosting your conversions.

“How-To” Videos

“How-to” videos are a close cousin to product demonstration videos. In these videos, you provide customers with step-by-step visual instructions for completing a complex task.

In some cases, a “how-to” video may focus on assembling or operating a complex product. As an example, just look at the high-quality videos IKEA has created to help customers assemble and install their various products.

In other cases, you can create how-to videos that enhance how customers use your products. For example, a business that sells furniture may create videos about interior decorating. This bolsters customer loyalty because it provides relevant information, and that loyalty translates to continued sales over time.

Ultimately, it’s important to create how-to videos because customers actively seek them. When someone’s refrigerator or stove breaks down, they are far likelier to find a repair video online rather than dust off their old instructions.

By creating your how-to videos, you can get ahead of the curve regarding the content your customers crave.

SEO and Video Marketing

As we said before, one of the strengths of video marketing is that it integrates so well with your other methods of marketing. Perhaps the best example of this is that you can use video marketing to boost your SEO.

To do this, incorporate keywords into video titles and descriptions. This naturally helps customers find your content even as it helps your content get closer to the first page on user searches. To maximize the video SEO, try to incorporate a link to a high-authority site on the first line of your video description.

Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to SEO and video marketing. Just take the SEO that you are currently targeting, incorporate it into titles and descriptions, and enjoy the boost to your traffic!

Engaging Interviews

When it comes to content writing, one of the best things you can do is engage in guest posting. This helps you leverage the popularity of another person or business and effectively grow your audience.

The video version of that technique involves teaming up with popular influencers. While things like sponsorships can help build your brand, users also love interviews with famous and interesting people.

These videos can be pretty simple as they involve asking the other person questions, preferably about your business or products. The person’s honest answers may be enough to convert customers who were otherwise on the fence.

You can also interview members of your team. Audiences love to get a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the businesses they love, and interviewing employees helps to humanize those businesses in a big way.

Hooks: More Important Than Ever

With blogs, the hook is very important. It’s difficult to get someone invested in reading hundreds or even thousands of words if you don’t get their attention right away.

This philosophy is even more important when it comes to video marketing. If you can’t seriously grab your viewers’ attention in 10 seconds, then you’ve already lost them.

Remember, you are competing for audience attention in a field that is crowded with funny, engaging, and captivating videos. You need to grab their attention right away with a combination of interesting information and innovative presentation.

Once you have their attention, you can keep it by addressing audience needs and concerns as well as how your products and services can make things better. Remember, a product is a solution, and customers won’t buy this solution until you fully explain the problems they need to solve.

Exploring Different Video Formats

What do you think of when you think about watching online videos? Most people imagine holding their smartphones horizontally and watching a widescreen presentation.

However, that doesn’t line up with user experiences. Most of your consumers prefer to hold their phones vertically. By shooting vertical videos, you can reach more customers (just look at the success of vertical videos on TikTok.)

You can also create things like interactive videos and even 360-degree videos. This kind of content instantly helps your videos stand out from the pack and impress consumers with your innovation and imagination.

Branding Videos

We’ve focused on branding here and there. But would you believe that creating branding videos is a winning move for your company?

These videos are a great opportunity to discuss your company’s core values and overall mission. And this goes a surprisingly long way towards winning over different audiences.

That’s because many audiences (Millennials and “Zoomers” chief among them) prefer to buy from companies they share values with. By putting your mission and values front and center, you can tap into the growing customer desire for more ethical consumer experiences.

Quality Over Technology

Why do you think more companies don’t explore video marketing? In many cases, companies hold back because they imagine that it takes a small mountain of expensive equipment to create high-quality videos.

However, that is simply not true. It’s possible to create an engaging video with little more than a smartphone and a script. In fact, that’s the exact combination that has propelled countless influencers to fortune and fame.

If you want to have it both ways, you can work with a professional video marketing company. Such companies can help script, shoot, and produce every video you need. This lets you create high-quality videos without buying, mastering, and storing lots of video equipment and software.

Generating Momentum

One rookie mistake many companies make about video marketing is that they think it should only be an occasional thing. For example, a manager may imagine that his business will only create a handful of videos throughout the year.

In reality, successful video marketing is tied to your marketing momentum. Think about the most successful streamers and online influencers. In most cases, they are creating new content each week and releasing it on a reliable schedule.

That’s why you need a robust video marketing plan that includes content for the entire year. That may sound intimidating, but it is the key to building an online audience, boosting your brand, and increasing conversions.

Anything But Boring

Our final advice about video marketing is nice and simple. It’s three little words that should guide all of your video content: “anything but boring.”

Your videos might be funny, emotional, or even provocative. The goal is to elicit an emotional response from your consumers, which causes them to share your content.

Ultimately, you don’t have to overthink this philosophy. Just think about the kind of online video content you enjoy the most and then brainstorm ways to channel that same energy into your content.

What Comes Next?

Now you know all about video marketing, but do you know who can bring the videos of your dreams to life?

We specialize in corporate videography along with SEO, web design, and much more. To see how we can make your video marketing dreams into a reality, contact us today!

Learn More

Everything You Need to Know About Video Marketing | EWR Digital – Houston, TX

The post Everything You Need to Know About Video Marketing appeared first on EWR Digital.

#Website Design Houston #SEO Houston #Branding Houston

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glenmenlow · 5 years ago

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Six Rules For A Post Virus Brand Revitalization

When the economy starts up post-coronavirus, many brands will need to be reenergized. Plan now for post-coronavirus revitalization. According to consultancy McKinsey (“How marketing leaders can both manage the coronavirus crisis and plan for the future”), “In a crisis, it’s natural to focus only on the near-term business results and adopt a pure survival strategy. But that could mean winning the battle but losing the war.”

For the short-term, there are several ongoing, must-do actions for brands.

Continue to speak to your loyalists. You need those customers who love the brand. Before spending resources on attracting new customers, the first priority is to focus on the customers who have favored your brand in the past.

Continue to communicate. Going dark may save resources, but while you are silent, another brand is stepping into the breach of your abandonment. Data from McKinsey show that those enterprises surviving after a crisis were those that “kept communicating with customers through the downturn.” Advertising Age came to the same conclusion in the article, “History shows marketers who keep spending during downturns fare much better.”

Continue to generate new ideas, supporting innovation and renovation. Consultancy BCG’s (Boston Consulting Group) analyses show that “In recessions and downturns, 14% of companies outperform both historically and competitively because they invest in new growth areas.”

Prepare now for a post-corona future. Below are Six Rules for brand revitalization. Leaving this strategic thinking and planning until the last minute will cause both a loss of valuable time and loss of your competitive edge.

Rule 1. Refocus The Enterprise

Right now the enterprise is focused on the here and now. After the virus, refocus the enterprise around the basic, common goals. Internal challenges come first. Employees will want to know what is going on and what will happen to them. Employees do not mind refocusing, especially when the enterprise is in flux, is on a downturn or is coming out of a crisis. But, employees do expect to know in what direction they are rowing and to what destination they are headed.

Luke Saunders, founder of Farmer’s Fridge, fresh food vending machines replenished several times a day (“smoked cheddar Cobb Salad, pesto pasta bowls with chopped spinach and mozzarella pearls, chipotle turkey sandwiches” and more) at nearly 100 hospitals across the country, is already focusing on the future potential for contactless food offerings. In an interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Saunders said that he and his team are currently ideating about what the world will look like for the next year or two and how Farmer’s Fresh can leverage its brand.

Rule 2. Restore Brand Relevance

Remaining relevant is critical to a brand’s health. A crisis such as the coronavirus turns relevance on its head. Relevance is a key driver of purchase intent. A brand is relevant if it is perceived to be addressing current customer needs and problems. Restoring relevance requires allocating resources to 1) a thorough knowledge of the current marketplace, 2) needs-based occasion-driven market segmentation and 3) revitalizing the brand’s promise – major shifts in consumer behavior may mean a serious review of the brand’s relevant differentiated benefits. The world will be different. What will make a brand relevant tomorrow will likely change. There will likely be an increased focus on health and safety. People will be more comfortable with communicating and working in a virtual world. Business travel may decline as virtual meetings become common.

Hal Lawton, CEO of Tractor Supply Co. told The Wall Street Journal that altered customer behavior is already changing their strategic plans. Tractor Supply customers are adopting technology (e-commerce, mobile and contactless payment) more quickly than previously thought, at least two to three years ahead of what the company expected. Mr. Lawton says this is already altering plans for the capabilities of future Tractor Supply Co. stores.

Rule 3. Reinvent The Brand Experience

A brand is a promise of relevant and differentiated trustworthy experience. Reinventing the Brand Experience requires investment into 1) innovation and renovation; 2) marketing; 3) growing the brand’s Trustworthy Brand Value Equation. (A brand’s Trustworthy Brand Value Equation is the mental calculation of what one gets [functional, emotional, and social benefits] relative to what one pays [the costs to the customer in terms of money, time and effort] multiplied by trust.); 4) ensuring the brand is perceived to be a fair value (fairness is more than mere price; fairness contains justice. Justice means that the benefits-per-costs equation is equitable, dependable, fair.).

The executive vice president and chief brand officer at restaurant chain Denny’s told Nat Ives of The Wall Street Journal that Denny’s is hoping to introduce home meal kits soon, an added change from the current take-home meals currently being sold. In addition, the brand is selling family size portions of favorite meals such as its Grand Slam breakfast. Feeding families at home is a new focus for the brand.

Rule 4. Reinforce A Results Culture

A results culture evaluates progress based on producing measurable results leading to high quality revenue growth. A results culture rests on measurable milestones and rewarding people based on performance where progress is tracked in a Balanced Brand-Business Scorecard. People manage what management measures, recognizes and rewards. A Balanced Brand-Business Scorecard evaluates whether the right people are producing the right results in the right way to meet the right goals.

Boeing’s Board of Director was criticized for promising its new chief executive a $7 million bonus if he got the 737 Max flying this year. Although the result would be excellent for Boeing, the reward was perceived as tainted since it could compromise safety. Rewards must be aligned with all results across the enterprise.

Rule 5. Rebuild Brand Trust

Trust is a precious asset for institutions and brands. Unfortunately, trust in institutions – governments, universities, religions and businesses, as well as trust in experts and celebrities, continues to decline. Building trust as a source of organizational wealth – Trust Capital – is an important driver for enduring, profitable growth. Creating Trust Capital allows a company or a brand to generate a trust reserve that helps through crises of brand or corporate character. A trust reserve of Trust Capital builds strong relationships over time. Brands that focused on building trust and generating trust capital prior to the coronavirus have a head start in post-crisis brand revitalization.

According to Barron’s, the financial weekly from Dow Jones, consumers are “…looking to peers and corporations to provide leadership and visible solutions” as opposed to post-9/11 when the government stepped into the role of trusted leader with the solution of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This is an amazing opportunity for brands.

Rule 6. Realize Organizational Alignment

Alignment means everyone is working together toward the same destination, the same view as to where the brand is headed, the same brand goals, the same common definitions, the same priorities and the same common metrics. Aligning the enterprise requires enterprise-wide commitment to a common ambition and strategy for achieving that ambition.

The CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp (Angie’s List, Match Group including Match, Tinder and OK Cupid, Vimeo), Joey Levin speaking with The Wall Street Journal, said that its small new business NurseFly was overwhelmed. NurseFly matches nurses looking for work with those hiring for hospitals or other healthcare facilities. Since some of IAC’s other businesses were slow, the lead recruiter for IAC aligned all the other IAC recruiters around, “Let’s build these NurseFly jobs as quickly as possible.” Mr. Levin continued, “Overnight, NurseFly had as many recruiters as it had employees, who are trying to fill jobs at NurseFly now.”

Powerful alignment requires sharing of information across the organization, across geography, across functions. BCG reports the idea of sharing information is a way to generate “collective imagination” essential for innovation and renovation. The chairman of LEGO Group believes that this has been key for LEGO’s creativity.

Most agree that the world will be altered post-coronavirus. This means that right now brand-business enterprises should be strategically planning their revitalizations to match and satisfy rearranged customer needs, habits and new customer problems. The Six Rules for Brand Revitalization are a helpful guide for brand-business enterprises to plan now in order to have a platform to succeed while coping with a new brand-business world order.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Larry Light, CEO of Arcature

At The Blake Project we are helping clients from around the world, in all stages of development, redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change through online strategy workshops. Please email us for more.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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