I bring you today's top two stories:
Trump and Putin hold talks as world watches
Trump meets Putin: the showy pro-wrestler faces off with the savvy judo master
Body language experts see reserve, deference, power plays in Trump-Putin meeting
What I saw was Trump holding his hands in his lap in the shape of a pyramid. Combined with the okay hand signal during the campaign when the charlatan said believe me, I'm convinced it's one of the in-our-face laughers and mind-f***s if nothing else. I know it's just the way he holds his hands, yuh-duh-duh. Nothing to see there unless you know what to look for. It doesn't matter what I think of them. They are not for me. Most people don't see them or dismiss such things, and so did I for years and years. Fortunately, the universe is made of only Heaven and Earth.
"At G-20, world aligns against Trump policies" by Michael Birnbaum Washington Post July 07, 2017
HAMBURG, Germany — The growing international isolation of the United States under President Trump was starkly apparent Friday as the leaders of major world economies mounted a near-united opposition front against Washington on issues ranging from climate to free trade.
What?
Was apparent in the team photo-op, too. Trump was in front, but on the end.
At a gathering of the Group of 20 world economic powers — normally a venue for drab displays of international comity — there were tough clashes with the United States and even talk of a possible trans-Atlantic trade war.
The tensions were a measure of Trump’s sharp break with previous US policies.
They were also a warning signal of Washington’s diminished clout, as the leaders of the other 19 nations gathered in Hamburg considered whether to sign statements that would exclude Trump or to find some sort of compromise. ‘‘We will respond with countermeasures if need be, hoping that this is not actually necessary,’’ European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters.
That is war talk, and without the U.S., the E.U. is kaput. Have fun fighting Russia alone.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made little attempt to paper over the differences after the first day of meetings. ‘‘The discussions are very difficult,’’ she said.
Related: "In 1986, Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated as president of Austria despite controversy over his alleged ties to Nazi war crimes."
She described the view of most participants that ‘‘we need free but also fair trade,’’ a rejection of Trump’s skepticism about the value of sweeping free-trade agreements. And she predicted that the lower-level officials charged with negotiating a final statement deep into the night ‘‘had a lot of work ahead of them.’’
Some of the clearest divides had to do with climate change.
Pfffft!
They shutting down the EUSraeli Empire's war machine? Didn't think so.
Btw, how did all those big wigs get there? What was the hypocritical hydrocarbon footprint we are all paying for?
More than 10,000 protesters took to the streets of Hamburg again Friday to vent their anger at the summit meeting and the global political and economic system. Friday’s protests started early.....
I can't tell you how happy I am that the war-promoting, agenda-pu$hing pre$$ has picked up the torch for all of us. No need for me to continue.
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"Treaty is reached to ban atomic bombs, but nuclear nations shun it" by Rick Gladstone New York Times July 07, 2017
NEW YORK — For the first time in the seven-decade effort to avert a nuclear war, a global treaty has been negotiated that proponents say would, if successful, lead to the destruction of all nuclear weapons and forever prohibit their use.
Negotiators representing two-thirds of the 192-member United Nations finalized the 10-page treaty this week after months of talks. The participants did not include any of the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries, which conspicuously boycotted the negotiations.
The document, called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, was formally adopted Friday at UN headquarters in New York during the final session of the negotiation conference.
It will be open for signature by any member state starting Sept. 20 during the annual General Assembly and will enter into legal force 90 days after it has been ratified by 50 countries.
“The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years,” said Elayne Whyte Gómez, Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and chairwoman of the conference, which was broadcast live on the UN website.
Cheers and applause erupted among the delegates after the vote was tallied — 122 in favor and one against — the Netherlands, the only NATO member that participated in the conference. Singapore abstained.
Some critics of the treaty, including the United States and its close Western allies, publicly rejected the entire effort, calling it misguided and reckless, particularly when North Korea is threatening a nuclear-tipped missile strike on US soil.
Today is a big day in Korean history, for in 1950, President Harry S. Truman named General Douglas MacArthur commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea, and in 1994, Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s communist leader since 1948, died at age 82."
“We have to be realistic,” Nikki R. Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said when the talks began in March. “Is there anyone who thinks that North Korea would ban nuclear weapons?”
In a joint statement released after the treaty was adopted, the United States, Britain, and France said, “We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it.”
That would make them rogue states, wouldn't it?
The statement said that “a purported ban on nuclear weapons that does not address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary cannot result in the elimination of a single nuclear weapon and will not enhance any country’s security, nor international peace and security.”
Disarmament groups and other proponents of the treaty said they had never expected that any nuclear-armed country would sign it — at least not at first.
Rather, supporters hope, the treaty’s widespread acceptance elsewhere will eventually increase the public pressure and stigma of harboring and threatening to use such weapons of unspeakable destruction, and make holdouts reconsider their positions.
I would have thought the land mines failure would have had them more grounded.
“This treaty is a strong categorical prohibition of nuclear weapons and is really rooted in humanitarian law. It’s a good starting point for changing perceptions,” said Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Geneva-based coalition of groups that advocated the treaty, said in an interview Thursday.
She and other supporters of the treaty contend that the coercive power of such an agreement can exert enormous influence on public and government opinion.
Treaties that banned biological and chemical arms, land mines, and cluster bombs have shown how weapons once regarded as acceptable are now widely, if not universally, reviled. That is the kind of outcome sought by proponents of the nuclear ban pact.
They are reviled, but still being used!
“While the treaty itself will not immediately eliminate any nuclear weapons, the treaty can, over time, further delegitimize nuclear weapons and strengthen the legal and political norm against their use,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based group that supports the treaty.
Nuclear weapons have defied attempts to contain their spread since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, ending World War II.
Those are war crimes 1 and 2 in all history as far as single individual acts go, dropped on a defeated nation that was allowed to keep its emperor anyway.
The destruction wrought by those weapons helped give rise to the nuclear arms race and the doctrine of deterrence, which holds that the only way to prevent an attack is to assure the destruction of the attacker. Proponents of deterrence argue that it has helped avert a calamitous global war for more than 70 years.
Besides the United States and Russia, which are believed to have the largest nuclear arsenals, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea all have nuclear bombs.
The feeling here has long been unless Israel gives up theirs, the whole deal is off. No way I want them being able to blackmail the world as they do now.
Fihn said the standoff between North Korea and the United States over the North’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles illustrated what she called the fallacy that the deterrence theory can keep the peace.
“The theory only works if you are ready to use nuclear weapons, otherwise the other side will call your bluff,” she said. Deterrence, she added, is also “based on a perception that leaders are rational and sane.”
Whose perception is that because I've found most of mine to be drenched in blood.
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I don't like all this recent talk of using nuclear weapons. It's like they are preparing you for a mushroom cloud.
"The United States and Russia struck an agreement Friday on a cease-fire in southwest Syria, crowning President Trump’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Israel also is part of the agreement. Like Jordan, Israel shares a border with the southern part of Syria and has been concerned about a spillover of violence as well as an amassing of Iranian-aligned forces in the south of the country....."
I've been here every day this month and the talks this week in Kazakhstan were not covered at all, and Tillerson also repeated the US position that a ‘‘long-term role for the Assad family and the Assad regime’’ is untenable.
Once again, despite all the smoke, sound, and fury of the propaganda narrative, the goal is the same as it's ever been -- REGIME CHANGE!
Btw, the spillover is going the other way.
"The Islamic State launched a wave of suicide attacks in the Old City around midday, threatening the government’s gains. The development appeared to underscore the fragility of military victories against the Islamic State in Mosul, where forces exhausted by the grueling eight-month offensive there find themselves vulnerable to counterattacks as they try to reestablish control. Iraqi units have cornered the militants in a sliver of land near the Tigris River. The offensive has been led by elite US-trained special forces, but as the Islamic State mounts a final stand, territory to the north is being held by Iraq’s regular army and the police. Iraqi commanders said Friday that the battle for the last 100 square yards of Islamic State territory had slowed considerably because of the number of civilians still trapped in the area....."
Before continuing, I just want to know how the "wave of suiciders" can threaten a government occupation? Can they hold ground to reestablish control? Drive the occupiers out? The terrorists now occupy a sliver of land of 100 square yards. They are finished (if they are even there still). Of course, history does show us how the Germans beat back the Allied pincer in Berlin in April 1945 so.....
I gotta tell you, I know it's a WaPo pos and that's the problem. It's rank propaganda, and poorly written at that.
That's the best of my print; the rest is web version addition:
"US-led coalition airstrikes in Mosul have shattered neighborhoods and left hundreds of civilians dead, according to monitoring groups. In a report released Friday, the Pentagon said 603 civilians have been killed since the air campaign in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State began in 2014, nearly half of them in or near Mosul. Bombing raids between April 19 and May 23 killed 119 civilians, the report said. The report said nearly half of all those civilian deaths occurred in or near Mosul, but did not further specify locations. The coalition defines a credible casualty assessment as one that ‘‘more likely than not’’ resulted in civilian deaths. Monitoring groups say the toll is far higher and have urged the coalition to investigate more of its strikes. In a separate development, the UN migration agency said Friday that it has suspended some operations in two camps near city of Mosul because of security concerns. The International Organization for Migration spokesman Joel Millman said six water-tanker trucks sent by the Ministry of Displacement and Migration were prevented from entering the Hajj Ali camp, where temperatures have topped 110 degrees in recent days....."
You are not even safe in the desert:
"23 killed in car bomb, attack in Egypt’s Sinai" Associated Press July 07, 2017
EL-ARISH, Egypt — Islamic militants unleashed a suicide car bomb and heavy gunfire on an Egyptian military checkpoint in northeastern Sinai Peninsula on Friday, killing 23 troops and wounding 33, officials said.
Among those killed in the attack — the deadliest on the country’s military this year — were five officers, including a high-ranking special forces colonel, Ahmed el-Mansi, according to security officials.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. However, Egypt has been battling an intensifying insurgency in northern Sinai in recent years, mainly by militants from an Islamic State affiliate.
The assault started when a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint at a military compound in the village of el-Barth, southwest of the border town of Rafah, followed by heavy gunfire from dozens of masked militants on foot, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
--souce--"
Also see:
Sessions visits Guantánamo Bay prison
Hawaii asks appeals court to weigh in on travel ban
VA makes public its disciplinary action against employees
2 men charged in deadly Oakland warehouse fire seek lower bail
Georgia health commissioner named CDC director in Atlanta
Photo next to article is about a man with a bomb in a bank.
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Mayor Walsh is leaving his mark on City Hall Plaza
Amid spike in violence, Walsh holds public safety summit
Told yesterday crime down!
Teen allegedly pulled away from Boston slaying scene by his mother
In broad daylight, in cold blood
Puzzling, to say the least.
6-year-old girl survives fall from window in Dorchester
White men have nothing to complain about
The MBTA is trying to stop ‘manspreaders’ with cute GIFs
Cabbie in airport crash facing charges
Related(?):
"In 1947, a New Mexico newspaper, the Roswell Daily Record, quoted officials at Roswell Army Air Field as saying they had recovered a ‘‘flying saucer’’ that crashed onto a ranch; officials then said it was actually a weather balloon."
"In 1975, President Gerald R. Ford announced he would seek a second term of office, and in 2011, former first lady Betty Ford died in Rancho Mirage, California, at age 93."
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"US stocks climbed Friday after the government said hiring grew at a stronger pace in June. Technology and consumer-focused companies led the way as investors were glad to see a positive sign for the economy. Stocks regained much of the ground they lost Thursday. Technology companies jumped, and retailers like Amazon and McDonald’s traded higher. Bond yields climbed and the dollar got stronger. Gold fell. ‘‘The data itself shows a pretty strong labor market,’’ said Sean Lynch, co-head of global equity strategy for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute. He said it ‘‘probably lays to rest some of the worries (that) we were taking a step back from an economic standpoint.’’ Despite Friday’s gains, technology stocks have had a bad month."
They are living in a world of delu$ion, and I suppose they can. The wealthy elite prosper in good times or bad.
"Hiring surged in June in a surprising show of US economic vitality eight years into the recovery from the Great Recession. Pay gains remain weak, though, a stark reminder of one of the economy’s key shortcomings. Unemployment ticked up to 4.4 percent from 4.3 percent, but mostly for a good reason: More Americans started looking for work, a sign of confidence in the economy. Last month, economists worried that hiring would slow as employers struggled to fill jobs from a dwindling supply of unemployed workers....."
$igh.
If they will constantly shovel lies amongst the corn kernels of truth occasionally buried in their steaming swirly, what wouldn't they lie to you about? The economy is ba$ic, isn't it?
Have a Good Life, readers.
