Monday, April 9, 2018
Danielle Gersh's Warm Weather Forecast
It's going to be around 90 throughout the Southland today, wonderful warm weather.
Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Tehran's Advantage in a Turbulent Middle East
From Vali Nasr, at Foreign Affairs, "Iran Among the Ruins":
More.
A must read:— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) February 17, 2018
Iran among the ruins: @vali_nasr on Iran’s regional strategic calculus. https://t.co/WbZyJ6N0YZ
Over the last seven years, social upheavals and civil wars have torn apart the political order that had defined the Middle East ever since World War I. Once solid autocracies have fallen by the wayside, their state institutions battered and broken, and their national borders compromised. Syria and Yemen have descended into bloody civil wars worsened by foreign military interventions. A terrorist group, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), seized vast areas of Iraq and Syria before being pushed back by an international coalition led by the United States.You can see why leftists love this article, heh.
In the eyes of the Trump administration, and those of a range of other observers and officials in Washington and the region, there is one overriding culprit behind the chaos: Iran. They point out that the country has funded terrorist groups, propped up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and aided the anti-Saudi Houthi rebels in Yemen. U.S. President Donald Trump has branded Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” with a “sinister vision of the future,” and dismissed the nuclear agreement reached by it, the United States, and five other world powers in 2015 as “the worst deal ever” (and refused to certify that Iran is complying with its terms). U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has described Iran as “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.” And Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has charged that “Iran is on a rampage.”
Washington seems to believe that rolling back Iranian influence would restore order to the Middle East. But that expectation rests on a faulty understanding of what caused it to break down in the first place. Iran did not cause the collapse, and containing Iran will not bring back stability. There is no question that many aspects of Iran’s behavior pose serious challenges to the United States. Nor is there any doubt that Iran has benefited from the collapse of the old order in the Arab world, which used to contain it. Yet its foreign policy is far more pragmatic than many in the West comprehend. As Iran’s willingness to engage with the United States over its nuclear program showed, it is driven by hardheaded calculations of national interest, not a desire to spread its Islamic Revolution abroad. The Middle East will regain stability only if the United States does more to manage conflict and restore balance there. That will require a nuanced approach, including working with Iran, not reflexively confronting it.
More.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Dakota Johnson in Tight Leggings
At Taxi Driver, "Dakota Johnson Cameltoe in Tight Leggings."
BONUS: At the Nip Slip, "Dakota Johnson Topless and See Through Bikini on 'Fifty Shades Darker' Set! (PHOTOS)"
BONUS: At the Nip Slip, "Dakota Johnson Topless and See Through Bikini on 'Fifty Shades Darker' Set! (PHOTOS)"
Shohei Ohtani Makes History in Angels' 13-9 Comback Victory Over Athletics
The Angels are off to a great start. They're 6-2 so far, and both pitching and hitting are almost unrecognizable from last year.
I'm excited!
At LAT, "Down 6-0, Angels' bats awaken with homer by Ohtani and beat the Athletics 13-9":
I'm excited!
At LAT, "Down 6-0, Angels' bats awaken with homer by Ohtani and beat the Athletics 13-9":
Holy Cow. Shohei Ohtani just drove a solo HR to dead-center that splashed the water in the fake rock formation, his third HR of the season. #Angels
— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) April 7, 2018
Shohei Ohtani: 112.4 mph. 449 feet. Incredible. #Angels pic.twitter.com/vxJbBMfdp2
— David Adler (@_dadler) April 7, 2018
This Sho is Certified Fresh💯🍅 pic.twitter.com/GQnAgd3jaN
— Angels (@Angels) April 7, 2018
What a way to end a crazy game! pic.twitter.com/GsY5c6iILa
— Angels (@Angels) April 7, 2018
Kevin Williamson, Thought Criminal
This is really good. So good, I've gained a new appreciation for Jonah Goldberg's writing. He's very thoughtful, articulate, fair, and measured.
At National Review:
At National Review:
The G-File is out. It is lengthy, among other things. https://t.co/nYM74LQvyc
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) April 6, 2018
An Oral History of the 1968 Columbia Uprising
This is actually pretty fascinating.
At VF:
At VF:
The @1968CU protests, recalls one participant, came out of a moment in time in which “it was a question of whether the country would survive a civil war” https://t.co/Ku0KhMlDi5
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) March 30, 2018
In April 1968, hundreds of students at Columbia University took over campus buildings in an uprising that caught the world’s attention. Fifty years later, they reflect on what went right and what went wrong.More.
At Columbia University in April 1968, about a thousand students forcibly commandeered five campus buildings, effectively igniting the mass student revolts of the 60s. The events that began haphazardly on April 23 soon grew into a public crescendo of awakening that changed the course of the American student protest movement. It was a year when political, racial, sexual, and cultural forces exploded into a “revolutionary volcano,” as novelist Paul Auster, then a junior at Columbia, described it. It was also the year when two widespread movements—civil rights and anti-war—combined forces to stoke a flame of youth rebellion not seen domestically in half a century.
That spring 50 years ago, Columbia’s compact, six-city-block campus on Manhattan’s bohemian Upper West Side became a petri dish, fermenting and fomenting discord that would engulf the nation. By the end of the year, American deaths in Vietnam exceeded 35,000 soldiers. Anti-war protests multiplied, the draft continued to loom like a Sword of Damocles over the lives of 27 million young men, the peaceful civil-rights movement intensified along with the increasingly militant Black Power movement, the sexual revolution and early feminism movement transformed gender roles, and the unstoppable popularity of psychedelic drugs and rock music (the musical Hair opened on Broadway that month) created an unbridgeable chasm of a generation gap. All of these movements for social change—including the conservative counterrevolutionaries—were out in full force on the Columbia campus that April.
University president Grayson Kirk “was a walking anachronism,” says Paul Cronin, editor of the new, definitive book on the Columbia student uprising, A Time to Stir: Columbia ‘68. “He was clueless and unresponsive to the attitudes, needs, and demands of his students.” It turns out that Kirk and his board of trustees, members of New York’s corporate and media elites, were as out of touch with youth culture as President Lyndon Johnson and his F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was so threatened by what he saw at Columbia that, in May, he ordered his agency to initiate a secret counter-intelligence program, 2,000 F.B.I. agents strong, aimed at anti-war demonstrators and the New Left.
Not since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964–65 had a campus of a major university been shut down by its students. The student rumblings of 1968 started in February, when two black South Carolina State University students, protesting a segregated bowling alley, were shot and killed by state troopers in Orangeburg. (A third young black man, a high school student, was also killed, as he waited to walk his mother home from work.) In March, students at the historically black Howard University, in Washington, D.C., staged a four-day protest and sit-in. But Columbia captured the attention of the nation because of its stature as an Ivy League college situated in the media capital of the world. The protest was so large (720 students arrested), it lasted so long (a week of building occupations, followed by a month-long strike), and the police reaction was so brutal and bloody, that it was seared into the national conscience.
As tens of thousands of high-school students all over the country organize demonstrations demanding gun-control reform from politicians in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, we may now be witnessing the first full-fledged American student protest movement since the late 60s. “I got chills when I heard Emma González speak about her generation’s fledgling movement to stop gun violence,” said former ‘68 Barnard/Columbia Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.) activist Nancy Biberman. A lifelong housing and social-justice advocate in the Bronx, Biberman is heartened by the new wave of protest that has roused high-school students from decades of apathy. “Imagine that a student movement might emerge again and play a catalyzing role in ending the slaughter of innocent people.”
Our young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority, from whatever source derived, and they have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destruction. I know of no time in our history when the gap between the generations has been wider or more potentially dangerous.
— Columbia University president Grayson Kirk, April 12, 1968
Dear Grayson, . . . You call for order and respect for authority; we call for justice, freedom, and socialism. There is only one thing left to say. It may sound nihilistic to you, since it is the opening shot in a war of liberation. I’ll use the words of LeRoi Jones, whom I’m sure you don’t like a whole lot: “Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up.”
Yours for freedom, Mark [Rudd] April 22, 1968
Citizen's Righteous Rant Defending 2nd Amendment Goes Viral:
From Nice Deb, at Pajamas:
Citizen's Righteous Rant Defending 2nd Amendment Goes Viral https://t.co/LJ6FHzRkv3 #Video via @pjmedia_com
— Debra Heine (@NiceDeb) April 6, 2018
Friday, April 6, 2018
Trump Administration Imposes New Sanctions on Russia
This is all over Memeorandum, from the Treasury Department, "Treasury Designates Russian Oligarchs, Officials, and Entities in Response to Worldwide Malign Activity."
And at LAT, "Trump administration announces Russia sanctions for 'attacks to subvert Western democracies'":
And at LAT, "Trump administration announces Russia sanctions for 'attacks to subvert Western democracies'":
Trump administration announces new Russia sanctions for 'attacks to subvert Western democracies' https://t.co/Af5aAASC3j
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 6, 2018
The Trump administration on Friday announced new sanctions against seven Russian oligarchs, 12 companies and 17 senior government officials for a variety of acts, including what one official called “attacks to subvert Western democracies.”
“Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.” Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a news release.
Mnuchin criticized the Russian government for engaging in “a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine, supplying the Assad regime with material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities.”
President Trump has spoken of his desire to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has at times spoken warmly of him, but he has also insisted his administration has been tough on the regime...
Migration is Baloney
Seen on Twitter:
#Migration is:
— IOM - UN Migration (@UNmigration) April 1, 2018
• inevitable
• desirable
• necessary
this Easter, let’s not forget those who are caught in crises around the world 🌎 pic.twitter.com/e7fT1FE0D1
Bullshit. Send them home. https://t.co/I0aKw4Zyg0
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 3, 2018
When Leftists Take Off the Mask
Seen on Twitter. Just wow.
If you are a MAGA or a 2A enthusiast, I legitimately do not care about your life/well-being or the lives/well-being of your family. I don't care if you can't defend yourselves against intruders or whatever. I just don't care if you live or die.
— 🏳️🌈Jenny "Lazangia" Trout (@Jenny_Trout) April 3, 2018
Nasim Aghdam Was Angry Over YouTube 'Apocalyspe'
At LAT, "Woman suspected of opening fire at YouTube had battled against platform":
So the San Bruno YouTube HQ shooter was Female, foreign, a Vegan animal activist, off the rails mentally ill, didn't use an AR-15, and shot up a building in the strictest gun control state in America....how fast do you think the mainstream media is going to bury this? pic.twitter.com/oHnkSiolGv— Mindy Robinson (@iheartmindy) April 4, 2018
The website is a catalog of a woman's passion for animal rights and her anger at YouTube.Still more.
She complains of "close-minded" YouTube employees suppressing her page views and stifling her content. She gripes about a lack of revenue.
"Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!" she wrote on the site, which includes videos promoting veganism and photos of a woman in an array of outfits, including long gowns and a camouflage unitard. She speaks in Persian and Turkish.
"There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!"
It's the website investigators are looking at as they try to piece together the motive of a woman — identified as Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39 — who stormed onto YouTube's sprawling San Bruno, Calif., campus with a 9-millimeter handgun and opened fire in a courtyard during lunchtime, wounding three people before turning the gun on herself.
The eruption of gun violence Tuesday in Silicon Valley hit a nation still reeling from recent mass shootings and gripped by a tense gun control debate.
"This is a terrible day in the United States, when once again we have a multiple-casualty situation," said Dr. Andre Campbell, a trauma surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, which is treating victims.
The shooting left a 36-year-old man in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman with serious injuries and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition. A fourth person suffered an ankle injury while fleeing.
In a tweet, President Trump thanked law enforcement and first responders, and said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody involved."
Law enforcement sources told The Times they initially believed the shooting was a domestic incident, but San Bruno police said late Tuesday there's "no evidence" the shooter knew the victims or targeted specific people. Investigators are now focusing on the alleged shooter's grudge against YouTube.
The YouTube account tied to the website was shut down "due to multiple or severe violations" of the company's policies against spam, deceptive practices and misleading content. But it's unclear exactly when.
The website investigators are probing, titled "Nasime Sabz," translates in Persian to, "Nasim the green." YouTube videos created by an account of the same name can no longer be viewed, but the site also features videos from other sources criticizing YouTube's policies, as well as clips promoting animal rights and veganism. Instagram and Facebook accounts listed on the website were deactivated Tuesday.
Aghdam was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in 2009, speaking at an animal rights protest outside Camp Pendleton.
"For me animal rights equals human rights," said Aghdam, who at the time worked as a construction company office manager. "Just because they can't talk doesn't mean we should take advantage of them."
About two weeks ago, Aghdam vented to her family that YouTube stopped compensating her for her videos, her father told the Bay Area News Group.
Ismail Aghdam said that the family had called police to report his daughter missing Monday because she hadn't answered her phone for two days. He said he had told police she might be going to YouTube because she "hated" the company.
Police in Mountain View, Calif., say they spotted a woman who went by the name Nasim Aghdam asleep in a car in a city parking lot early Tuesday morning and notified her family.
The first reports of a shooting came in to San Mateo County dispatchers before 1 p.m.
Zach Vorhies, a senior software engineer, was sitting at his desk on YouTube's campus when he heard the fire alarm blaring.
He grabbed his electric skateboard and hurried toward an exit. Outside, he heard yelling. On a patio where tech workers often grab lunch, he saw a man lying motionless on his back, blood staining his shirt. As he stared, a police officer with an assault rifle popped through a nearby gate.
Vorhies skateboarded away.
He was one of hundreds of YouTube employees whose workday was thrown into chaos as panic spread across the technology hub south of San Francisco.
"I thought, 'This is a mass casualty event,'" said Vorhies, 37. "I was terrified."
Some employees in a meeting heard rumbling and thought there had been an earthquake. It seemed serious, not just a standard emergency drill. As they moved toward an exit, they heard that someone had a gun.
"I looked down and saw blood drips on the floor and stairs," Todd Sherman, a product manager for YouTube tweeted. After peeking around for threats, he headed down the stairs and out the front of the building.
Police in tactical vests, helmets and rifles swarmed the campus soon after, coming upon a chaotic scene as workers ran from the area. Television footage showed people filing away with their hands up...
Thursday, April 5, 2018
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