Stephan: The Dakota pipeline many, including myself, opposed is still not completed but it has already sprung a leak. And protecting it has cost millions -- for which you, the American taxpayer, are footing the bill. I think history will record this pipeline as one of the bizarre last gasps of the carbon energy age. Here is the story of where things stand today.
Police face off against Water Protectors occupying a bridge immediately north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, October 28, 2016. Credit : Angus Mordant / The New York Times)
Last fall, the eyes of the world were fixated on Standing Rock.
Among the images burned into the brains of so many abroad were those of Morton County sheriff’s department, joined by law enforcement officers from across the country, bedecked in military gear and armed to the teeth, brutalizing defenseless water protectors for expressing their first amendment rights and freedom of religion. Eyes were opened when mercs sicced vicious attack dogs on women and children guarding sacred burial grounds with their lives. Folks thousands of miles away watched in horror as they witnessed concussion grenades being thrown into crowds and elders being maced in the midst of sweat lodge raids. People will never forget live stream video picked up by mainstream media, showing hundreds of civilians being shot with water cannons in subzero temperatures by a corporate police state […]
Stephan: The Republican Party, and its creature Donald Trump, with transparent obviousness put their personal power and their party ahead of their country. You just can't make this level of greed and stupidity up. If I wrote it as fiction it would not be believable. Yet in the real world it is all too true.
Credit: Denver Post
President Donald Trump is mulling a reversal of Cuba policies enacted by former president Barack Obama that soften the U.S.’ stance towards the country, including the rescinding of the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ immigration policy.
According to two sources quoted by the Daily Caller, the Republican has been intending to roll back the Cuba policies signed by Obama in January for some time, and is likely to take a tougher line on Cuba.
“The Trump Administration has been ‘ready’ since February 2017 to announce changes, but issues unrelated to Cuba have intervened,” John Kavulich, from the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, told the Daily Caller.
Kavulich told the publication he believes the president will look at an “increased enforcement relating to travel,” and “a focus upon discouraging transactions with entities controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of the Republic of Cuba.”
The intention by Trump to reinstate more stringent polices in regards to Cuba is reportedly backed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including former presidential hopeful and Florida […]
Stephan: There is a clear movement in the United States for race war. We are obsessed with Muslims terrorists, when the real terrorists in America about whom we should be concerned are White supremacists. Up until now White jihadists have been closely aligned with fundamentalist "christian" cultists. But the thing about extremists is that they are always in search of a purer form of extremism, as this report describes.
Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists are turning to Norse mythology as the only pure religion for white people.
Modern-day Odinists, who worship ancient Norse gods like Thor and Odin, believe the “mongrelized” teachings of the Jesus — a Jew — are too passive and weak, reported Reveal.
“Turning the other cheek and it’s all going to be OK, that isn’t the answer a lot of people who are turning to Odinism are looking for,” said Daniel Burnside, a white supremacist and Odinist from Potter County, Pennsylvania. “They’re looking for the idea of, do you want to be the nail, or do you want to be the hammer?”
Odinists typically wear pendants of Thor’s hammer, and the pagan religion’s focus on revenge and action appeals to anxious racists who believe they’re fighting against white genocide.
“We have to be prepared to fight,” said Brandon Lashbrook, an Odinist and neo-Nazi from Centralia, Illinois. “We need to study martial arts, weight train. We need to be prepared and unified, and ready to defend ourselves, and continue to tell society the truth, and help more souls find […]
Stephan: We have gone through a major change as a country, with most Americans having no idea that it has happened or what Donald Trump and his band of zombies have done to damage the social order that has kept peace and propsperity in Europe and America for almost 7 decades . Here is a good assessment of what happened.
Angela Merkel and Donald Trump
Seven years after the end of the Second World War, on the 10th of March 1952, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the newly established Federal Republic of Germany received an astounding note from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union offered to withdraw the troops that then occupied eastern Germany and to end its rule over the occupied zone. Germany would be reunited under a constitution that allowed the country freedom to choose its own social system. Germany would even be allowed to rebuild its military, and all Germans except those convicted of war crimes would regain their political rights. In return, the Allied troops in western Germany would also be withdrawn—and reunited Germany would be forbidden to join the new NATO alliance.
Historians have long debated whether the note represented a genuine offer or a cynical ploy. (Current consensus: ploy.) There’s no debate about what happened next. Determined to anchor Germany securely in the Western camp of nations, German Chancellor Konrad […]
Stephan: This is what the United States looks like from England. Donald Trump has done serious damage to the way the United States is perceived. There is a new geopolitical trend emerging, and America is severely diminished.
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping
Earlier this year Donald Trump received a personal letter urging him not to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
If the US pulled out, the letter said, it would lose a seat at discussions and could not make a case for “the most cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction options”.
Another voice in his ear said the US would weaken its own hand by “basically uninviting itself” from a number of negotiating tables.
Those urging Mr Trump to stick with the agreement made by Barack Obama were not long-haired greenies or earnest activists. Rather, they were the chief executives of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest listed oil company, and Royal Dutch Shell. For they see the danger of the world’s most powerful nation not being present. Trump, apparently does not.
During his election campaign, the Republican candidate dismissed climate change science as a “hoax” and suggested it had been invented by the Chinese.
Having got it in the ear last week from G7 leaders urging him to stick […]
Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists are turning to Norse mythology as the only pure religion for white people.
