All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Mattis Erupts Over Niger Inquiry and Army Revisits Who Is to Blame – The New York Times

A senior officer who escaped punishment for the ambush that killed four American soldiers will be reprimanded. A junior officer’s reprimand is rescinded.

Residents fear losing Capistrano Beach as storms chip away at their ‘piece of paradise’

Walking along a battered stretch of her beloved beach, Sandie Iverson ticked off the destruction from recent storms. The boardwalk and a seawall collapsed. Palm trees were ripped from their roots.

As winter rains alight on Southern California, Iverson couldn’t help but wonder what fresh calamity…

Charlottesville: James Fields guilty of murder for driving car into crowd

3500.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=forma

  • Jury finds Fields, 21, guilty of first-degree murder
  • Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in August 2017 crash

A jury has found 21-year-old James Alex Fields Jr guilty of first-degree murder for intentionally driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally, killing one woman and injuring dozens.

Fields was charged with first-degree murder and other felonies in the August 2017 crash that killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Her death came after police forced a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville to disband, after participants had clashed with counter-demonstrators earlier.

Continue reading…

How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

he Kochs’ chief political lieutenant, Richard Fink, developed what he called a three-stage model of social change. Universities would produce “the intellectual raw materials”. Thinktanks would transform them into “a more practical or usable form”. Then “citizen activist” groups would “press for the implementation of policy change”. To these ends the Kochs set up bodies in all three categories themselves, such as the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Cato Institute and the “citizens’ group” Americans for Prosperity. But for the most part they funded existing organisations that met their criteria. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a network of academic departments, thinktanks, journals and movements. And they appear to have been remarkably successful. As researchers at Harvard and Columbia universities have found, Americans for Prosperity alone now rivals the Republican party in terms of size, staffing and organisational capacity. It has pulled “the Republican party to the far right on economic, tax and regulatory issues”. It was crucial to the success of the Tea Party movement, the ousting of Democrats from Congress, and the staffing of Trump’s tra

Source: How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian

Deadly pig virus could hit US in a year, warn experts

3408.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=forma

African swine fever has been spreading rapidly in China and has also travelled from Russia and Eastern Europe to Belgium. Experts fear it is only a matter of time before it reaches the US.

A global outbreak of African swine fever will reach the US within a year unless border protections are tightened and imports of high-risk pork products banned, warn biosecurity experts. It would cost the US economy $16.5bn (£12.9bn) in the first year alone, it has been estimated.

An ongoing epidemic of the virus, which is deadly for pigs but cannot yet be transmitted to humans, has prompted the US Department of Agriculture to review and strengthen its border protections. After outbreaks in Belgium and China this year, the USDA has increased the use of sniffer dogs at major ports, airports, land borders crossings, and has also built quarantine stations and increased passenger and cargo inspections on flights from China and Russia, the worst hit countries.

Continue reading…

Revealed: the hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson | UK news | The Guardian

A separate study of about 600 Twitter accounts, believed to be directly tied to the Russian government or closely aligned with its propaganda, found significant numbers had tweeted prolifically in Robinson’s defence.

Source: Revealed: the hidden global network behind Tommy Robinson | UK news | The Guardian

John Kelly interviewed by Mueller’s team and expected to quit – report | US news | The Guardian – “Building their own wall and circling the wagons for last stand”

Chief of staff answered questions related to potential obstruction of justice, CNN reported, and is not on speaking terms with Trump

Source: John Kelly interviewed by Mueller’s team and expected to quit – report | US news | The Guardian