All posts by nedhamson

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

Gretchen Carlson Reportedly Recorded Roger Ailes’ Grossness With Her iPhone: Gothamist

Sherman details how Carlson’s decision to fight back started two years ago:Taking on Ailes was dangerous, but Carlson was determined to fight back. She settled on a simple strategy: She would turn the tables on his surveillance. Beginning in 2014, according to a person familiar with the lawsuit, Carlson brought her iPhone to meetings in Ailes’s office and secretly recorded him saying the kinds of things he’d been saying to her all along. “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better. Sometimes problems are easier to solve” that way, he said in one conversation. “I’m sure you can do sweet nothings when you want to,” he said another time.After more than a year of taping, she had captured numerous incidents of sexual harassment. Carlson’s husband, sports agent Casey Close, put her in touch with his lawyer Martin Hyman, who introduced her to employment attorney Nancy Erika Smith. Smith had won a sexual-harassment settlement in 2008 for a woman who sued former New Jersey acting governor Donald DiFranceso. “I hate bullies,” Smith told me. “I became a lawyer to fight bullies.”

Source: Gretchen Carlson Reportedly Recorded Roger Ailes’ Grossness With Her iPhone: Gothamist

Growing your own food in America is now a criminal act? | Green Prophet

“I am disappointed by today’s ruling,” Ricketts said in a statement to the Miami Herald. “My garden not only provided us with food, but it was also beautiful and added character to the community. I look forward to continuing this fight and ultimately winning so I can once again use my property productively instead of being forced to have a useless lawn.”

Source: Growing your own food in America is now a criminal act? | Green Prophet

Announcing South by South Lawn: A White House Festival of Ideas, Art, and Action | whitehouse.gov

Nominate yourself or someone you know to attend the White House’s South by South Lawn. On October 3, the White House will convene creators, innovators, and organizers from across the country for an evening of music, film, and great ideas. It is a call to arms for every American to roll up their sleeves and make a positive mark on our country — and a celebration of the great work so many of us have already accomplished.Know somebody creating change — big or small — in your community? We’re inviting you to nominate yourself or somebody you know to attend. Submit details below by September 10th at 5pm. WHO IS YOUR NOMINEE? *TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHY YOU OR YOUR NOMINEE SHOULD ATTEND: *SHARE A LINK FOR MORE INFORMATION:CITYSTATEZIPINSTAGRAM ACCOUNTTHE NOMINEE’S EMAIL *YOUR EMAIL (IF NOMINATING SOMEBODY OTHER THAN YOURSELF):*Your information may be shared among the White House, South by Southwest, AFI, PCAH, with other agencies and nongovernmental organizations working on South by South Lawn. You must 18 or over to submit a nomination.

Source: Announcing South by South Lawn: A White House Festival of Ideas, Art, and Action | whitehouse.gov

Trump visit to Mexico: I have never seen a Mexican begging in the US | In English | EL PAÍS

Rather than undocumented, 40% of Mexican and Central American immigrants are  really refugees. They are boys and girls fleeing hunger, rape, extreme poverty and threats against their lives by criminal gangs back home. They have been denied a job and a safe and dignified life by their own countries. Rather than a problem of security and terrorism, it is a humanitarian crisis.Yet never in my life have I seen a Mexican begging on the street in the United States. They are honest, hardworking people who contribute to and benefit the economies of both countries in invaluable ways. But, in the interests of both sides, they will remain a community of 11 million invisible people.Rather than undocumented, 40% of Mexican and Central American immigrants are refugeesOur government should have named Trump ‘persona non grata’ a long time ago. Because he preaches hate and division in his own country and shamelessly distorts reality, countless US television stations, international corporations, heads of states and members of his own party have ended relationships and contracts with an individual whose terrifying sociopathic and fascist outbursts have polluted the world and hurt the fundamental values that Americans are proud of.Yet, unexpectedly, our president has asked him to visit our country, giving him an opportunity and a platform that Trump has used to crown himself in Arizona, jokingly promising his followers that the “amigo” who had just opened the door of his house to him did not know yet that he was going to pay for a wall, or that Trump was going to send him back millions of his dirty and criminal people.Our president, with his insubstantial shyster language, did not articulate or demand anything specific from his visitor. Trump has had the unprecedented honor of being the first American presidential candidate to visit our country, thus soiling the memory and history of our nation.One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, Antonio López de Santa Ana gave away almost half of our territory. President Peña Nieto has just given away the little bit of dignity that was left us.

Source: Trump visit to Mexico: I have never seen a Mexican begging in the US | In English | EL PAÍS

A NEW BLOG…FINALLY. | Jane Fonda

I have to confess, under normal circumstances, I would feel some compassion for Donald Trump. I have known and loved men who had some of the same issues as he does. But unlike him, they chose, with time, to move towards the light. I feel certain that things occurred early in his life that caused him to be what he has become. But clearly, he’s made no effort to look at himself objectively and attempt to change/heal.And, as these are far from normal circumstances–the fate of the world is at stake and that is no exaggeration– I have moved past compassion to fear and anger.I will say no more because everything has been said and said and said.I think.So I will pray, and meditate that things are going to turn out all right and that Hillary will win. I will also pray that Democrats will take back the Senate and I’m doing all that I can to make that a reality from afar. Were I not making this movie in Colorado I’d be walking precincts, knocking on doors, not just for Hilary, but for all of the Dem women running for the Senate around the country. I’ve met them and they’re fierce and good.

Source: A NEW BLOG…FINALLY. | Jane Fonda

In the Shadows of Men (excerpt)

Lovely – Makes me remember how big the first home I lived in seems in my dreams, as you say so well. Thanks

نادية حرحش

My grandfather was tough. Everyone in the family feared him, but I was his favorite. He protected me from the tyranny of my mother and the beatings of my grandmother and the teasing of my aunt. He preferred me to my cousin (or so I imagined), the first grandson, who was the eldest and, of course, a male.

Inside of me resides a child that does not grow, a childhood made of memories that begin with the first moment of my life. My childhood departed but never left me. The realities of my childhood are different than what my memory tells me, but my memory is shaped by the repetition of idealized events on the tongues of adults.

What mostly distinguishes my oh-so-heroic childhood are the first hours and months of my life, and I don’t know if my connection to the place where I was born is related to…

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Oil Fires in Iraq : Image of the Day

For the past few months, a smoke plume has shifted with the winds over northern Iraq. In recent years, periodic oil fires have cast a dark pall over this arid landscape. They are one consequence of ongoing war in the region.On August 17, 2016, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired an image (above) of dense smoke plumes roughly 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Mosul. There appear to be multiple sources of fire, most likely oil wells from the Qayyarah oil field. The images in the grid below show the plumes changing direction and thickness since they were first spotted by Landsat 8 on June 14.

Source: Oil Fires in Iraq : Image of the Day

Kurds Fear the U.S. Will Again Betray Them, in Syria – The New York Times AKA: TIK, TOK – trust in Kurds, trust only Kurds.

So, many Kurds shuddered when Turkish tanks and soldiers recently rolled into northern Syria, with American support, to push back against Kurdish gains. They saw it, perhaps prematurely, as a replay of a century of betrayal by world powers, going back to the end of World War I, when they were promised, then denied, their own state in the postwar settlement.“The Kurds are going to scream betrayal at every turn when they think things are not going to go their way, because they’ve had a century of it,” said Joost Hiltermann, the program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, and a longtime expert on the Kurds.The Syrian Kurds say their aim is to establish an autonomous region, not their own state, where their rights are protected, in whatever settlement comes from the long Syrian civil war. And they say they hope that the United States will support them in that desire.To accomplish that, though, they need to connect two of their territories: Afrin, in the west, and Kobani, in the east, an effort that Turkey sees as a national security threat to be thwarted at virtually any cost.

Source: Kurds Fear the U.S. Will Again Betray Them, in Syria – The New York Times

Outbreak: 200 under observation in Madrid over hemorrhagic fever | In English | EL PAÍS

According to the World Health Organization, the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus causes severe viral hemorrhagic fever outbreaks, with a case fatality rate of up to 40%. “The virus is primarily transmitted to people from ticks and livestock animals,” the WHO website explains. “Human-to-human transmission can occur resulting from close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons.”The illness, the WHO states, is endemic in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia, “in countries south of the 50th parallel north.” There is currently no vaccine available for either people or animals.

Source: Outbreak: 200 under observation in Madrid over hemorrhagic fever | In English | EL PAÍS