Select Page ::

Altstadt Echo – Reposed In Nihilism – Resident Advisor

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Altstadt Echo - Reposed In Nihilism It's not surprising that Altstadt Echo's music found its way into Regis's DJ sets, including his Blackest Ever Black mixtape The Boys Are Here. Altstadt Echo's riffs on the sparse, stepping style explored by the Downwards boss a few years back, before Sandwell District disintegrated and post-punk took over. The drums are crisp and meticulously arranged in loping broken-beat rhythms, the sound design cavernous and the mood elegantly gothic. (Modern Cathedrals, the name of Altstadt Echo's label and party in his Detroit hometown, describes it nicely.) The goth streak extends to the titlesjust recently he was experiencing "Gentle Indifference." This EP for Eye Teeth, a sub-label of Interdimensional Transmissions, finds him Reposed In Nihilism.

This disaffected pose doesn't always lead to compelling music. The title track is neatly put together, but its careful accretions of field recordings, scuzzy drones and flecks of downpitched voice lack a certain spark. Altstadt Echo finds more striking contrasts elsewhere. Bouncing percussion gives "Ersatz" more urgency, while bright synth stabs work as a counterbalance to the abyssal dub chords weighing down the end of each bar. On "The Necessary Facade," uncanny pristine rave chords ping-pong around the sombre space, like flashes of light in the churchly gloom.

Altstadt Echo - Reposed In Nihilism - Resident Advisor

Party Report: Hideout Festival 2017 – Deep House Amsterdam (press release) (blog)

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Upon touching down at Croatias Split Airport for 2017s, seventh edition of, Hideout Festival, I truly didnt know what to expect from it, the location or the crowd.

I can admit here that, contrary to (Im sure) many out there, Im not necessarily a person drawn to the tropics, an over amount of sunshine, or beach culture in general. In fact, my previous weeks Iceland excursion was, at first, much more up my alley with its constant overcast, rain, and sub 10 degree temperatures. So, going from cold Reykjavik pretty much immediately to the sunny shores of the Adriatic seemed a bit too drastic a weather change for me, and one I wasnt sure how Id react to.

Well, to my pleasant surprise, the massive happening that is Hideout Festival turned into one of the most pleasant and comfortable festival experiences I have recently experienced, with some 20,000 fans flying in from around the world for a weeks worth of proper dance music hedonism. Aside, there were also some 150 artists on hand to man the festivities. These artists spanned the musical spectrum from Grime (Stormzy, AJ Tracey, Wiley, Kurupt FM) to Drum n Bass (DJ Hype, Shy FX, My Nu Leng) to House (Heidi, Jamie Jones, Steve Lawler) to Techno (Marco Carola, Paco Osuna, Alan Fitzpatrick), and everything in between.

To go in depth into everything that went down at Hideout would simply be an impossible feat. The event, which spanned seven proper days, included its primary hub of world renowned festival locations scattered across Zrce Beach (Papaya, Aquarius, Kalypso, Euphoria, Noa), each pseudo open air venues, featuring state of the art production elements, as well as all the frills that come with tropical clubbing (pools, bikinis, cabanas, bottles, etc). These venues programmes included all day soirees, while also occurring around the area were a host of boat parties, secret events, and scattered does for the curious and the (more importantly) awake. For example, the seminal house act Basement Jaxx were on hand for a hidden beach party, while BBC Radio 1 broadcasted live from the event on its Friday, bringing sets from the likes Danny Howard, Dusky, Skream, B.Traits and Eats Everything to their devoted fanbase. As for the boat partys, well, barring the unfortunate rain out of Wednesdays events, other boats featuring the likes of Solardo and Denis Sulta were a natural jump off (not overboard, thank godbut as a kick start to the rest of the night). Of course, however, it was our own collaboration with Detroits MK and his Area10 brand, which featured Doorlyand the man himself, setting sale on the SS Champagne (I made up the SS partnot sure if they use that nautical term in Europe, t be honest), which was a high point event for us, and for the festival. 3 hours of sold out funk, house, and soul from MK and Doorly really set the vibes right from the sea to the shoreand the crystal clear waters and picturesque sunset werent too shabby either!

Musically, and again it is difficult to be everywhere, highlights came from a variety of locations and artists. Aside from the funk of our aforementioned boat party, several appearances and sets stood out to mesome that I knew who and what was going on and some that I didnt. I can tell you for sure that the sunrise sets at each of these venues will always be a site to beholdI attended twoAlan Fitpatrick (Noa) and Heidi (Papaya). Heidi is something of a Hideout favorite, who also hosted her Jackathon Pool Party that same day, while Alan Fitzpatrick is simply a crowd favorite. Each of these artists, though different in sound, possesses a similarly dynamic stage presence, which exudes fun and energyclearly on display for the faithful who made it to the end of each respective nights musical programs.

Additional musical highlights came from the always reliable The Martinez Brothers, who took to Noa on the events Thursday alongside a heavyweight crew of Marco Carola and Amsterdams own Joey Daniel. My travel mates to the event, The Martinez Brothers once again showed their chops for selection and party starting (not to mention, maintenance), before Music Ons main man closed things down in typical dramatic fashion. Finally, I will also give a shout out to a great b2b set, which also came on Thursday, in the form of Steve Lawler b2b Darius Syrossian (Aquarius). Always having been a personal favorite, going way back to his Dark Drums days, Lawler must have surely been itching to get down given the cancelattion of his Wednesday ViVA pool party. With Do Not Sleeps Darius Syrossian, a game partner in musical crime, the two went strong into the wee hours, solo and b2boh, that night also featured some guys named Hot Since 82 and Skream(who seemed to be everywhere during the week) as well.

As you can see, the scope of this event is huge. I havent even gotten to speaking about the ridiculously colorful elrow takeover of Kalypso, by way of their famed Rowlympics concept, which went down each day & night and in typical jovial fashion. That event featured everyone from Andres Campo, Lord Leopard, Patrick Topping, Jasper James, Waze & Odyssey, and many of the artists already mentioned here.

All in all, Hideout was an extremely pleasant surprise to me. Thought the crowd veered towards the younger side of the spectrum, the alcohol was flowing like water, and inhibitions were DEFINITELY minimized, their still was a certain chaotic order to the whole thing. For one, its hedonism felt in placealmost necessary, to be honest, with nothing standing out as too out of control (all things considered, of course). Also, for an alcohol heavy, spring break type event, I was not witness to a single fight, conflict or sexual assault situation, which is a testament to the crowd, especially on the events latter hours. Though other festival locations that dot Croatias extensive coastline may feature more historical landmarks, Pag Island and Zrce Beach (as well as its surrounding township) does hold all the quirks one would come to expect from holiday, seaside locations, from pristine weather (the occasional torrential rainstorm aside) to some of the freshest seafood around, and an overall affordability that always comes welcome when traveling to Eastern Europe. It was a well organized, well run, and personable event, with many of its top brass cavorting around with fans, press, artists, and locals, all of which seemed up for it at all moments.

So, thank you to Hideout Festival and its crew for providing an event that was simply FUN. No pretention; no frowns; no fightsjust an all around good time!.

View post:

Party Report: Hideout Festival 2017 - Deep House Amsterdam (press release) (blog)

Trump’s Anti-Cairo Speech – National Review

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Obamas Cairo Address, June 4, 2009

About five months after the inauguration of Barack Obama, the president gave a strange address in Cairo. The speech was apparently designed to win over the Muslim world and set Obama apart from the supposed Western chauvinism of the prior and much caricatured George W. Bush administration.

Obama started off by framing past and present tensions between Muslims and the West largely in the context of explicit and implied Western culpability: past European colonialism, and the moral equivalence of the Cold War and disruptive Westernized globalization.

In a pattern that would become all too familiar in the next seven years, Obama reviewed his own familial Muslim pedigree. This was his attempt to persuade Islam that a president of the United States, no less, now uniquely stood astride the EastWest divide with a proverbial foot in both America and the Middle East.

Obama nobly lied that Islam had been paving the way for the Wests Renaissance and Enlightenment (neither claim was remotely true). Equally fallacious was Obamas additional yarn that Muslim Cordoba was a paragon of religious tolerance during the Spanish Inquisition (it had been liberated by the Reconquista Christian forces nearly 250 years before the beginning of the Inquisition, and by 1478 few Muslims were left in the city). The message its veracity was irrelevant was that a humble and multicultural Barack Hussein Obama alone had the historical insight and cultural background and authenticity that would allow him to serve as a bridge to peace between two morally equivalent rivals.

Obama then rattled off a series of relativist, on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand, split-the-difference remedies to the current tensions with radical Islamism (all couched in vague euphemisms). The proposition was that the West should accept blame, and so should the sometimes culpable Islamic world. Only then would good compromises follow given the assumption that conflict always arises out of ignorance and misunderstanding rather than that the guiltier side of a dispute knows precisely why it has chosen an aggressive and hostile path.

Seven years later, Obamas outreach and his successive lengthy recitals of all the bad things America has done in the world and all the good America has done to encourage and placate Muslims (including redirecting NASA to the agenda of Muslim outreach) had come to nothing.

Indeed, the years of Obamas presidency saw a sharp uptick in jihadistattacks against Europe and the United States, the rise of ISIS in Iraq, the genocide in Syria, and a series of appeasing gestures that spiked tensions, from the false red line in Syria to the bombing of and skedaddle from Libya to the disastrous and deliberate laxity in diplomatic security that culminated in the tragedy in Benghazi. Obama left office having alienated the moderate Sunni Arab nations, appeased an anti-Western Iran, and abdicated American power in the Middle East. Calm did not follow. For Middle Easterners, the Obama era meant that the United States was a lousy friend and a harmless foe, the common denominator being that one could ignore the pretensions of such a naive rhetorician.

A realist might have asked Obama, If the president of the United States did not believe in the singularity of his nation, then why in the world would foreigners? And if the nominal head of the West contextualized his culture when abroad, then why wouldnt its autocratic enemies see that concession as weakness to be exploited rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated?

The Trump Antithesis

Donald Trumps speech in Poland was an implicit corrective to Barack Obamas Cairo speech. Whereas Obama had blamed the West for many of Islams dilemmas, Trump praised the singular history and culture of the West. (His implicit assumptions might have been that better than the alternative was good enough, and American sins are those of humankind, but its remedies are uniquely Western.)

Whereas Obama listed supposed cultural achievements of Islam (most of them of dubious historicity), Trump rattled off examples of Western exceptionalism, its unmatched culture, values, and concrete achievements, all of them persuasive:

We are the fastest and the greatest community. There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations. We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers. We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.

While Obama was in an Islamic country and Trump in a Western one during these respective speeches, the difference in tones transcended location and marked antithetical historic strains of Western culture. Obama believed that the crisis of the West originated in its arrogant, high horse historic overreach, and clingerism; this hubris demanded a corrective deference to equally brilliant or indeed superior alternate cultural paradigms.

It never would occur to Obama that immigration (a concrete arbiter of culture) is a one-way pathway for a reason. Muslims seek out Europe and the United States to relocate, not vice versa. Immigrants seek to live among non-Muslims rather than with only Muslims again, for a reason.

The world outside the West depends on Western-driven technology again, not the other way around. The top 20 universities in the world are not in the Middle East, Africa, China, or Latin America. Western influence that transcends its population and geography is the logical result of a system that promotes self-criticism and rationalism, free expression, market capitalism, the rule of law, and consensual government rather than gender apartheid, tribalism, autocracy, statism, and religious intolerance.

There is again a reason why there is not a single church in Riyadh but plenty of mosques in the West, and why blasphemy or being gay can get you killed in Iran but not in Dayton, Ohio. Muslims can walk into the Vatican; not so Christians into Mecca.

Trump had his own but quite different worries, namely that the West should rightly be more, not less, confident and assertive: Our adversaries, however, are doomed because we will never forget who we are. And if we dont forget who are, we just cant be beaten. Americans will never forget. The nations of Europe will never forget.

Trump saw complacence, laxity, and perhaps even decadence as the crisis of the West. In historical terms, Trumps speechwriters would say that the Greek city-state lost at Chaeronea in a way it had not 142 years earlier at Salamis because of an insidious enervation of will, and because laxity largely became a dividend of material bounty and license. In Periclean fashion, to avert such decline, each generation must pass on more than what it inherited:

The Warsaw Uprising] heroes remind us that the West was saved with the blood of patriots; that each generation must rise up and play their part in its defense and that every foot of ground, and every last inch of civilization, is worth defending with your life.

Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield it begins with our minds, our wills, and our souls. Today, the ties that unite our civilization are no less vital, and demand no less defense, than that bare shred of land on which the hope of Poland once totally rested. Our freedom, our civilization, and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory....

I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.

From the pessimistic Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle to the glum Roman critics like Petronius, Tacitus, Juvenal, and Suetonius to the German nihilists such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler, the inherent challenge of the West was rarely the permanent end of freedom and material wealth. Instead, the difficulty has been largely that we have the burden to use properly our bounty and must decide how to handle unchecked personal liberty and comfort.

Capitalism enriches a society but also risks enervating the senses and the spirit by shrinking human aspirations into material acquisitiveness. Consensual government entails responsibilities as well as rights if it is not to descend into individual excess as citizens forget that they often should not do what they are legally entitled to do. In the Western war between personal liberty and mandated equality, hoi oligoi struggle to convince hoi polloi that they are not the enemies of the people but their co-benefactors, even when many among the former care little for the interests of the many.

Trump is president at a time when only about 63 percent of the American work force is employed. Entitlements are at unprecedented levels and are increasingly divorced from demonstration of undeniable need. Fury breaks out not from cutbacks in largess, but from modest decreases in promised but unsustainable increases.

The law is seen an encroachment on personal expression and thus ignored when it demands sacrifice. Poverty is redefined not so much as material want but as coveting something that someone wealthier does have but otherwise does not need.

Logic is the key to knowledge, but when it poses as the final arbiter of all natural inquiry without deference to the mysteriousness of god, it creates a self-destructive Oedipal arrogance that man can become his own deity. In such a landscape, how does such a civilization of individuals so eager to live the good life defend itself against a wretched jihadist so ready to die in order to welcome a sexual paradise to come?

How does one give up urban metrosexuality and the world of Pajama Boy to change diapers and raise children?

In a world of Facebook and Google, why would a U.S. Ranger be admired for his physical strength and elemental courage? And in a Western world where the government declares it is not just the arbiter of fairness but also the deliverer of equal results, what corner of life is left untouched from the all-powerful and moralistic state?

Byzantium perished not from a dearth of Greek Fire, but from a dearth of people willing to fight from inside its walls against the hundreds of thousands below, each one promised material pleasures in the hereafter for killing Christian Westerners. How is a suburbanite expected to die in a god-awful place like Fallujah, when he is told that computers and lasers make the dirty war of the past obsolete?

The billionaire, thrice-married, and creature-of-luxury Donald Trump, in his 70th year, was warning the West in Poland that precisely because it is very rich, extremely wealthy, singularly leisured, and technologically sophisticated, it faces the most peril amid failed enemies who hate those who are more successful for encouraging their own taboo desires for something that they cannot create.

In sum, Trumps anti-Cairo message is that only a disciplined, strong West confident in its past and sure of its present success will deter enemies, appeal to neutrals, and keep friends. Trump should not have had a need to deliver such a self-evidentbut now rare message. That he alone had the courage to state the obvious and was criticized for doing so reminds us that the corrective to our Western malady is seen as the problem, not the cure.

READ MORE: Trump Struck a Righteous Blow against Universalism Trump Defends the West in Warsaw Editorial: The West and Its Discontents

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, to appear in October from Basic Books.

Trump's Anti-Cairo Speech - National Review

Amarnath Yatra attack marks crucial turn in Kashmir militancy: What will govt do to assert relevance in Valley? – Firstpost

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

The terror attack on Amarnath pilgrims on Monday night, killing seven (five of them women) and injuring 19 others, by suspected Kashmiri militants has raised new questions about the nature of militancy in the Valley.The militants attacked a bus full of pilgrims in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district at around 8.20 pm on Monday, while they were returning from Baltal to Mir Bazar after the pilgrimage.

This is only the second time Amarnath pilgrims have been fired upon and killed; the first time such incident happened in the year2000, when the base camp for the pilgrimage located at Pahalgam was attacked, in which 32 people including 21 pilgrims were killed.

Representational image. IBN

A later inquiry into the killing, however, revealed that the main target of the militants were the security forces deployed to provide protection to the pilgrims; though many pilgrims became victims when they came under the indiscriminate firing by the militants.

But Monday's attack was clearly intended to kill and wound Hindu pilgrims, as security forces were not present there to provide cover. This has raised questions over the composite culture that Kashmiris have been proud of for generations.

The attack also poses questions about the security set-up in Kashmir to provide protection to the pilgrims. The official version of the incident so far tells us that the bus attacked by militants was not registered nor were the pilgrims travelling in it. The official account says that the registered pilgrims and buses had moved in a convoy along with the security cordon on Monday afternoon.

How were unregistered pilgrims and buses allowed to travel, despite several security check posts? How was the bus allowed to travel well after 7 pm deadline fixed for the movement of pilgrims? This raises a question on the oversight exercised by the security set-up.

The security apparatus will, of course, now move into ahigher gear to hunt down the specific militants involved in this terror attack and bring them to justice. But the question is: How does the state deal with the rising militancy, which is seemingly spiralling out of control?

As Monday's attack showed, Kashmiri militants are now operating in autonomous zones of their own autonomous in terms of both organisation and space. They owe no allegiance to any leader or organisation. The public face of the Kashmiri militancy, Hurriyat Conference, has categorically condemned Monday's attack.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the Hurriyat leader, minced no words when he said: "As the unfortunate news of the yatris' killing reaches us, leadership and people of Kashmir are deeply saddened and strongly condemn it. To us, the pilgrims have and will always be respected guests."

This is a sentiment that had prevailed in Kashmir for generations. That explains why the Amarnath pilgrims were not set upon by the aggrieved Muslim youth even in the tense after years of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Pakistan-based militant organisation Harkat-ul-Ansar had given a call in 1994 to all Kashmiris to disallow the Amarnath pilgrimage until their demand for the removal of bunkers at Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar was conceded by the government.

The government agreed to remove the bunkers but the Pakistani militant group raised further demands, which many Kashmiris found egregious. They disregarded the Pakistani boycott of the pilgrimage call and instead extended cooperation to the pilgrims.

In fact, in all the years the Kashmiri militancy was at its peak in 2008, 2010 and 2016 the Amarnath pilgrimage has had a successful run without any kinds of man-made disruption. In fact, many pilgrims had nice things to say about the hospitality they received from the local Muslim population (the only major incident in which large-scale deaths were reported was in 1996, when uninterrupted rain in the region resulted in a freezing cold wave that killed more than 200 pilgrims and paralyzed hundreds of others, some permanently).

In that regard, the 10 July attack marks a new chapter in Kashmiri militancy. How the people of Kashmir deal with it would determine the future of Kashmiri sub-nationalism (Kasmiriyat, as they say). If they come out on the streets in large numbers to unequivocally condemn this attack and demonstrate their solidarity with the Amarnath pilgrims, they will succeed in reaffirming the spirit that embodies the much-vaunted composite culture of Kashmir.

If the people of Kashmir refrain from exhibiting their popular anger against the dastardly act of a few militants that has besmirched their long-held beliefs and actions, then they would possibly drive Kashmir into a cul-de-sac of communal inferno with severe repercussions for years to come.

It is also a testing time for the Hurriyat Conference to establish its credentials as the protector of Kashmiri interests. The Hurriyat leaders have, time and again, asserted that their fight is against the security forces, which they accuse of resorting to severe human rights violations; the Hurriyat leaders are also ranged against the existing political establishment which, they insist, has deprived them of genuine political rights.

But if Kashmir as a melting pot of cultures, religions and beliefs has to be protected, then the militant attacks on pilgrims, in fact on any innocent congregation, must be condemned without any reservation. If the Hurriyat fails to do so, it would fail in its duties to the Kashmiris and would be pushed towards further marginalisation in Kashmiri affairs.

The role of the state and the central government is also crucial at this juncture. It is a matter of strange coincidence that the militant attack on the Amarnath pilgrims has happened twice in our history, both times when aBJP-led government has been ensconced in power at the Centre.

It serves a greater irony that the first attack against the pilgrims occurred when Atal Bihari Vajpayee who had coined the famous words 'Kashmiriyat (Kashmirs composite culture), insaniyat (humanism) and jamhooriyat (democracy)' as the governing principles of Kashmir was the prime minister.

The second attack has taken place when Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has called for sterner state action to curb militancy, compared to Vajpayee is holding absolute power. Modi carries an additional burden on his head as his party is also sharing power in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Modi government would be tested in the days to comeand would have to decide if it would dismiss the state government and impose governor's rule in Jammu and Kashmir to deal with the rising menace of militancy.

Read the original here:

Amarnath Yatra attack marks crucial turn in Kashmir militancy: What will govt do to assert relevance in Valley? - Firstpost

Armenian Film Festival Sparks LGBT Outrage, Cries Of Censorship – RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Armenia's Golden Apricot international film festival has run into controversy as rights activists accuse organizers of censorship for scrapping part of the event that featured two films dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) themes.

The two features, Listen To Me: Untold Stories Beyond Hatred and Apricot Groves, were scheduled outside the competitive portion of the weeklong festival under the rubric Armenians: Internal And External Views.

Festival organizers, however, canceled the entire slate of 36 films by Armenian directors, as well as foreign productions about Armenia and Armenians, to be shown in the section, saying only that they "apologize for any inconveniences."

The move immediately sparked a backlash from filmmakers and rights groups who said it was a thinly veiled attempt at censorship reminiscent of the Soviet era and the Ottoman Empire.

"We condemn the actions of both the Union of Cinematography of Armenia, that has dared to censor the special program of the Golden Apricot International Festival because of the themes broached in the films Listen To Me: Untold Stories Beyond Hatred and Apricot Groves," more than 100 of the country's filmmakers, artists, and rights advocates said in a letter to the organizers.

"Golden Apricot should immediately restore the screening of all films regardless of the format. Otherwise the Golden Apricot International Festival should accept that they are the ones who are legitimizing the censorship and changes in the festival."

Facing Prejudice

Though homosexuality has been legal in Armenia since 2003, the subject is still taboo within Armenian society, which is firmly guided by the Apostolic Church.

The country does not recognize formalized same-sex relationships performed locally, has no antidiscrimination laws, and gay men are declared mentally ill and unfit for military service.

In the documentary Listen To Me, written by Hovhannes Ishkhanyan and directed by Gagik Ghazerah, 10 members of the LGBT community relate their experiences of coming out to their friends, families, and community.

Included in the group is Tsomak Oganezova, the owner of a gay pub in Yerevan that was firebombed and vandalized with Nazi symbols in 2012. Oganezova has said she left Armenia after the attacks "to be with those like me."

Pouria Heidary Oureh's Apricot Groves is about Aram, an Iranian-Armenian trans man who has lived in the United States since childhood. The story follows him as he returns to Armenia to meet his girlfriend's conservative family and make preparations for their marriage.

Both films have already been featured at festivals around the world.

"Understanding the fact that this is not only discrimination against the Armenian LGBT community, and a violation of freedom of expression and freedom to create, but also a slap to Armenian cinematography, we are calling upon the Ministry of Culture of Armenia, the staff, and sponsors, and partners of the...festival to put all their efforts to restore the whole...program," supporters wrote in a petition to Culture Minister Armen Amiryan*, the Cinematographers Union, and festival organizers.

'Officially Sanctioned Hate'

Given the hostile conditions they face, many LGBT people say they remain closeted to avoid discrimination and violence.

In 2015, a local tabloid outed dozens of LGBT advocates, calling on readers to shun them and providing links to their Facebook profiles. The victims filed suit against the publication, but the court ruled in favor of the paper and made the plaintiffs pay $100 in fees.

That incident came after a 2012 study was published showing 55 percent of Armenians would reject a friend or relative if they came out.

"Hate speech in Armenia is rising day by day," activist Mamikon Hovsepyan said after being one of the journalists outed by the tabloid. "The homophobic media has the support of government officials and promotes aggression and hate toward LGBT people."

This year, jury members at the Golden Apricot festival include Britain's Hugh Hudson, who directed the Oscar-winning 1981 epic Chariots Of Fire, and Dutch director Tom Fassaert.

*CORRECTED from original version.

See the original post:

Armenian Film Festival Sparks LGBT Outrage, Cries Of Censorship - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

AP Stylebook Updates Spur Controversy Over Worries of Conservative Censorship – Washington Free Beacon

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

BY: Katelyn Caralle July 11, 2017 10:36 am

The Associated Press Stylebook, the traditional journalist stylistic handbook for decades, has sparked controversy over new updates that have right-leaning journalists and politicians concerned about potentially biased language.

The AP annually updates its stylebook in the spring to give journalists guidance on style and grammar. These changes are often analyzed and publicized, but the most recent updates have some observers particularly concerned.

Fox News host Shannon Bream on Tuesday listed changes that have some people questioning if the intent is to censor words more likely to be used by conservatives.

"The AP Stylebook tells people to change pro-life' to anti-abortion,'" Bream reported. "Militant,' lone wolves,' or attackers,' those are the preferred terms rather than terrorist' or Islamist.' And illegal immigrant' or undocumented,' well those are no longer considered acceptable words."

Dave Hoppe, former chief of staff to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), discussed the importance of language and the AP's changes along with the campaign director at the Center for Progress Action Fund, Emily Tisch Sussman.

"The thing you have to look at is that use of language is a very powerful tool. And to make choices like this, and I think in some cases bias choices like this, is something you have to watch very carefully," Hoppe said. "In extreme cases, this is actually censorship. So one has to be careful and be fair to use the language that both sides like."

One change that seems to be causing the most discussion is the disparity between "pro-life" and "anti-abortion."

Bream read off the change that instead of using "pro-choice" or "pro-abortion," journalists should use "pro-abortion rights." The AP also guides journalists to no longer use the term "abortionists" because it claims that term only refers to people who perform clandestine, or unsafe, abortions.

Bream then asked whether it is possible for language to truly be neutral in any story that raises such controversial and emotional topics.

Sussman said these standards exist so everyone can agree on and be aware of what is being reported.

"It's important to have a distinction if you are anti-abortion, pro-abortion, or pro-choice. There are people who can be anti-abortion and pro-choice, that is possible," Sussman said. "So I think it's important that we have clear guidelines."

"Use the word pro-life,' that is the phrase preferred by people who are pro-life. There's no problem in using it; it's not confusing to people to use it. It's very clear what they mean," Hoppe said. "That you use one set of words as opposed to the other and are told specifically not to use a certain set of words, it seems to me is bias and that's where the power of language can come in to try and turn people's minds and turn their thoughts away."

Sussman disagreed, arguing that it is important to be as specific as possible when talking about emotional issues like abortion and immigration.

"I do think that being anti-abortion is as specific as possible. I don't think that being pro-life is as specific as possible," Sussman said. "That would imply that someone would be pro-life in other contexts like death penalty or health care."

"To choose the language that someone prefers, I don't think is specific," she added. "As culture is moving, our definitions have to evolve as well."

Some other AP guideline amendments include calling migrants or refugees fleeing to Europe "people struggling to enter Europe." The AP also says that journalists should describe people who dispute that the world is warming as either "climate-change doubters" or "those who reject mainstream climate science."

Read the original post:

AP Stylebook Updates Spur Controversy Over Worries of Conservative Censorship - Washington Free Beacon

Bolshoi Ballet denies bowing to censorship over canceled Rudolf Nureyev show – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

The Bolshoi Ballet has denied bowing to a controversial Russian law banning "homosexual propaganda" after it cancelled a new production about Rudolf Nureyev three days before the premiere.

The long-anticipated production had been due to open on Tuesday but was called off at the weekend amid speculation that authorities had balked at its depiction of Nureyev's love life.

Vladimir Urin, the theater's director general, said on Monday that he had cancelled the ballet about the Soviet dancer-turned-defector because rehearsals showed it was not ready.

"The ballet was not good," he said, saying it had been postponed rather than cancelled and would open in May next year instead.

Earlier the Tass news agency cited a culture ministry source saying Vladimir Medinsky, Russia's minister of culture, cancelled the production because he feared it broke a controversial law banning the promotion of homosexuality to minors.

Mr Medinsky's ministry confirmed he had spoken to the director, but denied issuing a "ban."

"Yes there was a long conversation with Urin," Irina Kaznacheeva, a spokeswoman for the culture ministry said in a statement. "But a ban is the not the ministry's working style."

Rudolf Nuryev was one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of his generation. In 1961 he became was one of the first acclaimed Soviet artists to defect to the West, where he had successfulcareer - and a turbulent love life including a string of gay relationships - until his death in 1993.

Go here to read the rest:

Bolshoi Ballet denies bowing to censorship over canceled Rudolf Nureyev show - Telegraph.co.uk

A Korean Punk Band’s Struggles with Censorship – Hyperallergic

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Bamseom Pirates Seoul Infernoby Jung Yoon-Suk (image courtesy M-Line Distribution)

The Last Waltz, Martin Scorseses quintessential concert film chronicling the last show of the 70s rock group The Band, begins with text declaring across the screen: This film should be played loud. In the decades following the 1976 classic, this advice found its way into the beginning of countless music films. Most recently, the spirit of the message traveled across the globe to South Korea in Jung Yoon-Suks documentary Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno (2017), the story of the college punk duo Bamseom Pirates and their struggles with government censorship. But the onscreen statement near the beginning of Jungs film skews in a more political direction, notifying the viewer, The sounds of the film were left unbalanced to help you experience the imbalances in Korean society. In the background, we hear the Pirates aggressive, discordant music.

As a bellwether of whats to come, the statement works twofold. First, it prepares the viewer for an on-the-ground look at the politics and class conflicts of contemporary South Korea. Second, like the rest of the movie, it presents an endlessly compelling subject in a clodding, inelegant manner.

The film, which is playing at the New York Asian Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, revolves around the arrest of the bands producer and manager Park Junggeun. He is said to have violated the countrys nebulous National Security Laws after posting tweets that were seen as praising the enemy. These tweets, including Dear leader, please buy me some chocolate and Kim Jong-Il is Car Sex, show how vague and easily manipulable the laws are. The messages are shared on-screen in front of images of Park dressed in costumes goofing off with friends, making it even clearer that Park is joking. However, South Korean culture seems to treat any expression of dissent comical or not as aiding the enemy.

Watching the Pirates at work is a riveting experience. Sarcasm and irony infuse everything they do especially their lyrics. In some songs, they seemingly, wholeheartedly endorse North Korean Communists, with choruses like All Hail Kim Jong-Il! But we recognize this stance is a farce in moments where the band discusses its almost nonexistent politics. Having spent his young life firmly on the south side of the DMZ, the drummer of the band, Kwon Yung-man, admits at one point, Honestly I know almost nothing about North Korea. The musicians scream slogans praising their countrys enemies just to provoke the powers that be.

Despite efforts to mirror the bands slapdash aesthetic, the film unfortunately follows a fairly consistent formal structure that keeps it from being engaging. A protest ensues around the privatization of Seoul University and a Korea-US free trade agreement. Then the band Yung-man and bassist Jang Sung-geon performs at the protest, offering a set of their signature punk/metal fusion and nonsense banter. The handheld cinematography that fills most of the film is a visually unspectacular means of chronicling these happenings, and Kwons tendency to tell the camera exactly what the band is doing instead of simply showing it drags the story on.

More interesting is Jungs repurposing of newscasts that intrude on the bands story, giving cultural context for the society that yielded the Pirates. A story about a 1994 meeting between North and South Korean officials, where the Communist representative warns that his country can turn their countries into an inferno if provoked, offers context for the tense political climate on both sides of the DMZ; this anecdote also explains the origins for the name of the Pirates debut album Seoul Inferno, which is excerpted throughout the film. Later in the film, as Park is on-trial, Jung appropriates propaganda from the era, where in a staged conversation two men and two women discuss their thoughts on war with the north. One of them declares, If certain elements within the South cause turmoil when the North attacks, they will pay dearly for their mistakes. Jungs appropriation of this footage paints a vivid portrait of the social consensus allowing the crackdown on Park, which ends in a 10-month jail sentence and two years probation.

Following the delivery of the verdict, however, Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno fails to end on a note acknowledging this very emotional moment. The viewer is treated to shots of the pirates riding in cars through the city at night, a middle-aged man asleep on public transportation, and cats, as well as scenes of the band recording screams, moans, claps, belches, and the whir of power tools. The film suffers for not making a final statement regarding the censorship imposed on artists in South Korea. The fault lies with the filmmaker and not the artists, whose dadaist sensibilities are the reason to watch this documentary.

Bamseom Pirates Seoul Infernois playingat the New York Asian Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center (165 W 65th St, Upper West Side, Manhattan) on Tuesday, July 11.

Visit link:

A Korean Punk Band's Struggles with Censorship - Hyperallergic

Online Anonymity Is Not The Same Thing As Free Speech – WBUR

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

wbur Commentary (Thom/ Unsplash)

Like what you read here? Sign up for our twice-weekly newsletter.

As all the world knows by now, last week our president prepared for his big meeting with Vladimir Putin by receiving round-the-clock briefings on the history of U.S.-Russian relations, as well as the recent accords of the G-20.

Kidding!

Actually, he prepared by tweeting out a video of himself pretend-assaulting a man with a CNN logo superimposed over his head.

The obvious question here is why the leader of the free world or any adult living outside his parents basement would do such a thing. But we all know who Donald Trump is at this point. Expecting him to go more than a few days without trolling is like expecting a leech to go vegetarian.

Whats been more interesting to watch is the fallout, and in particular, the way that Trumps fellowinternet trolls have descended into self-pity at the first sign of public exposure.

As one might expect, media outlets did not take kindly to Trumps tweet, and CNN soon tracked down the man who created the video and posted it on a Reddit site devoted to Trump worship.

The Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to free speech. It doesnt guarantee anyone the right to spew hate speech onlineanonymously.

Like many of the folks who hang out on such sites, the Anonymous Poster (who Ill refer to as AP, because his handle is too profane to print) has a long history of posting racist vitriol.

Here are just a few examples of what AP posted:

*A photo of the gate to a concentration camp with the caption, Solved the refugee problem in Europe.

*Photos of dozens of CNN staffers marked with Stars of David.

*A photo of a Koran being burned with the caption, Dont mind me just posting an image to offend Islam.

*Repeated uses of the N-word in posts such as, I just like dancing when n------ are getting beat down by the cops and FBI stats dont lie n-----. You hood rats account for more that [sic] 50 percent of the murder, rape, robbery, and assault in the USA.

(Fun fact: This last outburst is based on a bogus stat our president tweeted out during the campaign. Classy!)

When Trump first posted the CNN video, AP proudly crowed, Holy s---!! I wake up and have my morning coffee and who retweets my s---post but the MAGA EMPORER [sic] himself!!! I am honored!!

But within a day, AP had issued a long apology, claiming that he wasnt a racist and never meant any of the horrible things he posted online.

So what might explain this sudden change of heart?

Heres a hint: CNN figured out APs true identity and contacted him by email. In other words, he was afraid of being exposed.

Conservative media outlets immediately accused CNN of threatening to blackmail AP by exposing his identity. To which I would respond: nonsense.

The Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to free speech. It doesnt guarantee anyone the right to spew hate speech online anonymously.

Much of the reason the internet has become a cesspool of cruel rhetoric is because folks like AP have weaponized anonymity. They use the internet to say whatever they want without having to face the consequences. Theyve turned the information superhighway into a playground full of coward-bullies wearing masks.

Like Trump, they love to dish out abuse. And like Trump, the moment anyone tries to hold them accountable, theypitch a fit.

They also threatenchildren. Yes, a group of white supremacists responded to the CNN report on AP by posting information about CNN employees, and threatening the kids of CNN employees unless they fired the lead reporter.

What these trolls really want is a safe space to spew hate.

So thats what weve come to: Racists who threaten innocent kids online are demanding digital hoods to protect them from public disapproval. Perhaps the federal government should provide them guns and ammo, as well? Would that Make America Great Again?

We now have a president with a history of tweeting and retweeting material from white nationalist websites. He also has a long history of inciting violence against protesters, the media and other perceived enemies.

Under his watch, hate crimes have predictably surged. Journalists who work to expose the sources of hate speech routinely receive death threats from Trumps racist army all of them anonymous, naturally.

What these trolls really want is a safe space to spew hate. Forcing them to stand behind their words is the least a civilized society can do.

Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for our twice-weekly newsletter.

Steve Almond Cognoscenti contributor Steve Almond is the author of 11 books of fiction and nonfiction. He writes Cog's advice column, #HeavyMeddle, and is the co-host of Dear Sugar Radio.

Link:

Online Anonymity Is Not The Same Thing As Free Speech - WBUR

Court: State Woman’s Profanity-laced Tirade Was Protected Free Speech – Hartford Courant

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

A Connecticut woman who hurled a variety of insults at a grocery store manager was protected by constitutional free speech rights and will be acquitted of a misdemeanor charge, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.

Nina Baccala was arrested in her hometown of Vernon in 2013 after subjecting a Stop & Shop assistant manager to a profanity-laced tirade. Prosecutors said she became enraged when the manager told her it was too late to process a Western Union money transfer.

Baccala called the manager "fat" and "ugly," in addition to profane names, prosecutors said.

Baccala, 44, was convicted of breach of peace and sentenced to 25 days in jail. She appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing that the name calling and insults did not fall within the "fighting words" exemption to constitutional free speech rights.

All seven justices on the state Supreme Court agreed the conviction should be overturned. Four voted in favor of acquittal, while three said there should be a new trial.

Justice Andrew McDonald wrote in the majority opinion that while the words and phrases that Baccala used were "extremely offensive and meant to personally demean" the manager, they were not criminal. He wrote that the evidence was insufficient to support Baccala's conviction under federal constitutional law.

"Uttering a cruel or offensive word is not a crime unless it would tend to provoke a reasonable person to immediately retaliate with violence," McDonald wrote.

He added, "Store managers are routinely confronted by disappointed, frustrated customers who express themselves in angry terms. People in authoritative positions of management and control are expected to diffuse hostile situations."

Prosecutor Mitchell Brody declined to comment Friday. Baccala did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Brody wrote in his opposition to the appeal that Baccala's insults were "fighting words" and that the state's breach of peace law allows prosecution for "abusive language."

The "fighting words" exemption to free speech rights dates back to a 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a New Hampshire case. In that case, Walter Chaplinsky was convicted of breach of peace for cursing at a town marshal in Rochester, New Hampshire, and calling him a "damned racketeer" and "damned fascist."

Upholding Chaplinsky's conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there was an exemption to free speech rights for "fighting words," which it defined as words "that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

See the original post here:

Court: State Woman's Profanity-laced Tirade Was Protected Free Speech - Hartford Courant

Are Atheists Smarter than Theists? – Patheos (blog)

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Are atheists, on average, smarter than everyone else?

It sounds unbearably smug and condescending even to ask the question this way. But whatever ones feelings about the matter, theres some evidence suggesting that this may be the case.

Belief in God correlates inversely with education level, as surveys have long shown. From high school to college to grad school, as you move up the rungs of educational attainment, people are more likely to be atheists, less likely to pray, less likely to say religion is important in their lives. Among those with the most prestigious academic credentials, such as members of the National Academy of Sciences, atheism is a supermajority position.

In this context, Id also mention the Flynn effect. To judge by IQ test scores, each new generation of humanity is a little smarter than the last. And in step with this trend, rates of nonbelief are rising both in America and throughout the world. Some studies also find a direct relationship between IQ scores and atheism.

To be sure, this is a correlation rather than an absolute rule. Its obviously not true that all intelligent people are atheists (because, to name one reason, smart people are better at rationalizing beliefs they acquired for other reasons). Nor are all unintelligent people religious believers (weve seen many counterexamples to that hypothesis, alas). Nevertheless, when you survey large numbers of people, the pattern is unmistakable.

This must be galling to religious apologists, especially those who aspire to be sophisticated and intellectual. It certainly bothers Regis Nicoll of Crisis magazine, who wrote a post attacking the claim that religious doubt is a sign of intelligence.

He begins with an accurate description of the evidence I already cited:

According to a 2017 Pew survey, belief in God is lower among college-educated individuals than among those having no college. Other polls have found that most scientists, including an overwhelming percentage of those in the National Academy of Science, deny the existence of God.

So, how does Nicoll deal with these inconvenient facts? He first attempts to define the problem out of existence, asserting that people who dont believe in God are by definition unintelligent:

Of course, that all depends on what one means by intelligence. In fact, as a friend of mine once quipped: Can a person who flunks the test to the most basic question in life (is there a God?) be considered intelligent? Right, because everything we know about the world, human nature, moral ethics, and lifes purpose hangs on what we believe about their source.

Obviously, this is an entirely circular argument. Whether its unintelligent to reject belief in God depends on whether that belief is true. But even leaving this point aside, it hasnt answered the question: Why does religious doubt correlate with everything else thats associated with greater intelligence, like IQ scores or educational attainment?

This is where most religious apologists segue into talking about the wisdom of the world and how God conceals himself from rational inquiry, only revealing his presence to those who approach the question in a spirit of credulous faith. To my mind, this is as good as a concession, because thats exactly what a false-belief peddler would have to say. It also begs the question of how a person is supposed to choose among the hundreds of incompatible religions that all make this claim.

However, Nicolls essay doesnt take this tack. Even though he raised the question, he seems to lose interest in answering it. Instead, he meanders off on a digression, arguing that atheism fails to account for a hospitable cosmos:

I went on to explain that these speculations grew out of the unsettling recognition that we inhabit a Goldilocks planet in which life teeters on the edge of non-existence. Scrambling to account for these just right conditions, desperate theorists trotted out the multiverse, an infinite manifold of universes that guarantees the existence of our hospitable home, and every conceivable (and inconceivable) one as well.

This is just the fine-tuning argument which Ive responded to at length. Religious apologists who make this argument assume that the physical constants of our universe were selected from among an enormous range of possible values and that only a tiny fraction of those would have led to intelligence. Both assumptions are indefensible given our present knowledge.

To quote myself from a previous post:

If we had known only the physical laws of our universe, we could hardly have predicted, from first principles alone, that it would contain life. We simply dont have the knowledge to proclaim with confidence what other interesting possibilities may be inherent in other sets of physical laws.

In fact, as Ive pointed out, the Earth is a tiny, fragile oasis in the midst of a vast, ancient and chaotic universe. This state of affairs fits better with atheism than it does with any theology that includes a benevolent creator specially interested in us. Its what youd expect to see in a cosmos where life came about by chance rather than as part of a grand design.

From this point on, Nicolls essay descends into plain old creationism. Its as if he was too tired to come up with any argument other than Kent Hovind-style toddler-playground ridicule even though Crisis is a Catholic publication, and evolution has a papal stamp of approval.

Indeed, with other concoctions like self-organization, emergence, memes, selfish genes, and macro-evolution to account for the encyclopedic information in the genome, the narrative of naturalism reads more like a Brothers Grimm tale than Newtons Principia Mathematica. Indeed, a frog-turned-prince story is no less a fairy tale by tweaking the timeframe from a bibbidi-bobbidi-boo instant to 150 million years.

I have to say that if I were Catholic and read this essay hoping for an answer to the question in its title, Id be disappointed. It does a good job presenting the problem, but rather than offering any solutions, it resorts to irrelevant pseudoscience and nyah nyah, sos your old man taunting. Its a tacit admission that he cant explain the atheism-education link.

Assuming this correlation holds up, what could explain it? I dont think its as insultingly simplistic as religion is a stupid belief for stupid people. But I do think that one aspect of intelligence is the ability to come up with the greatest number of possible explanations for the same set of facts.

A person whos not as adept at this will be less likely to doubt the received beliefs of their family or culture. However, a person who can come up with alternatives will be more likely to see religious beliefs for what they are a hypothesis about the world, one possibility out of many and to notice when they lack explanatory power, compared to the alternatives.

Are Atheists Smarter than Theists? - Patheos (blog)

Ukraine Recommits To NATO Membership Over Moscow’s Objections – NPR

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attend a joint news conference in Kiev on Monday. Efrem Lukatsky/AP hide caption

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attend a joint news conference in Kiev on Monday.

Ukraine is set to begin talks with NATO about eventual membership in the western alliance a move that has long raised the ire of Russia.

Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's president, met with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Kiev on Monday.

After their meeting, Poroshenko said he had "clearly stated that we would begin discussion about a membership action plan and our proposals for such a discussion were accepted with pleasure."

Since 2014, Ukraine has been battling a Russian-backed insurgency sparked by Moscow's forced annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The chain of events was set in motion by Poroshenko's election defeat of then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been publicly pro-Russia.

As far back as 2008, Ukraine, an integral part of the old Soviet Union, agreed with NATO's leadership that it would work toward eventual membership in the alliance. But moves in that direction were ignored by Yanukovych.

During a joint news conference with Poroshenko on Monday, the NATO secretary-general also called on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine and said that the alliance would be supplying hardware to protect Ukraine's computers from cyberattacks. Kiev has accused Moscow of being behind a massive ransomware attack last month that quickly spilled across Ukraine's borders and infected computers worldwide.

And as Reuters reports following the meeting: "Russia, deeply opposed to enlargement of NATO towards its borders, weighed in quickly, saying the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine would not promote stability and security in Europe."

According to Reuters, 69 percent of Ukrainians who were surveyed in a June poll supported joining NATO a sharp increase from before Moscow's forced annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Poroshenko has pledged that Ukraine will undertake a series of reforms aimed at qualifying the country for NATO membership by 2020. Those reforms, according to a NATO spokesman quoted by Reuters, would occur in the areas of defense, anti-corruption, governance and law enforcement.

The meeting with NATO's top official comes after Washington appointed Kurt Volker, a former U.S. representative to NATO, as a special representative to Ukraine. It also follows President Trump's public reluctance to commit to NATO's charter, which calls for mutual defense of its members.

See the original post here:

Ukraine Recommits To NATO Membership Over Moscow's Objections - NPR

Nato sends ‘alive and strong’ message from Estonia – BBC News – BBC News

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

BBC News

Nato sends 'alive and strong' message from Estonia - BBC News
BBC News
A site in north-west Estonia is the closest that Nato bases have ever come to Russian territory.

and more »

Nato sends 'alive and strong' message from Estonia - BBC News - BBC News

Fact check: Trump on the ‘blazing’ economy, Russia, NATO – Bismarck Tribune

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Danzig

WASHINGTON (AP) How's that "blazing" economy?

At home and abroad over the past week, President Donald Trump described an America where everyone's getting rich off the stock market, money has started gushing into NATO and practically everything's on the upswing since he took office. On Russian meddling in the U.S. election, he expressed an enduring uncertainty that his U.N. ambassador convinced of Moscow mischief doesn't share.

A look at some of his statements:

TRUMP, on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections: "Nobody really knows." He added: "So, it was Russia, and I think it was probably others also." news conference in Poland on Thursday.

NIKKI HALEY, U.S. ambassador to the U.N.: "Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections." on CNN's "State of the Union."

THE FACTS: The weight of evidence supports Haley's certainty more than her boss' equivocation. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the campaign, and for the purpose of giving Trump an advantage over Democrat Hillary Clinton. The full scope of the interference has not been established, nor whether Russian officials colluded with Trump associates in the campaign.

White House officials said Trump confronted Putin about the interference in their private meeting Friday. Kremlin officials had a different account, saying Trump appeared accepting of Putin's denials that Moscow did anything untoward to shape the election.

In Poland, Trump argued alternately that it could have been Russia, probably was Russia and indeed was Russia, while insisting it could have been other countries, too, and adding, "I won't be specific."

President Donald Trump, with first lady Melania Trump, speaks from the Truman Balcony at the Fourth of July picnic for military families on the South Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, July 4, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

TRUMP: "No matter where you look, the economy is blazing. And on every front we're doing well. And we do have challenges, but we will handle those challenges believe me." remarks at Fourth of July event at White House.

TRUMP: "Really great numbers on jobs & the economy! Things are starting to kick in now, and we have just begun! Don't like steel & aluminum dumping!" tweet July 3.

THE FACTS: The economy is not blazing. At best, it's at a controlled burn.

The performance under Trump has been remarkably close to the relatively tepid growth under President Barack Obama, a record Trump criticized as a candidate. Most economists agree that any president is unlikely to suddenly transform an economy in a matter of months.

The economy grew at a sluggish annual pace of 1.4 percent during the first three months of the year. Growth can be uneven on a quarterly basis. But Federal Reserve officials estimate the economy will grow 2.2 percent this year, 2.1 percent in 2018 and 1.9 percent in 2019. That is pretty close to growth of roughly 2 percent during the recovery under Obama.

Trump can celebrate a 4.4 percent unemployment rate, but that builds on progress made during Obama's tenure. The lower unemployment rate has also translated into smaller job gains under Trump.

Monthly job growth has averaged 180,000 during the first six months of 2017, compared with an average of more than 186,000 last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

TRUMP: "Dow hit a new intraday all-time high! I wonder whether or not the Fake News Media will so report?" tweet July 3.

THE FACTS: Peaks and valleys during the day generally don't make for screaming headlines. Investors generally pay more attention to where stock market indexes stand when trading ends at 4 p.m. Because those markets have been setting records for months, Monday's intraday peak wasn't that notable, though the financial media reported on it. The stock market has been rising under Trump's watch, as it rose under Obama's since 2013.

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, meets with Poland's President Andrzej Duda after arriving at the Royal Castle, Thursday, July 6, 2017, in Warsaw. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

TRUMP: "When I say that the stock market is at an all-time high, we've picked up in market value almost $4 trillion since Nov. 8, which was the election. Four trillion dollars it's a lot of money. Personally, I picked up nothing, but that's all right. Everyone else is getting rich. That's OK. I'm very happy. " Energy meeting with European leaders in Warsaw on Thursday.

THE FACTS: Everyone else is not getting rich. Most Americans lack meaningful stock market investments. Research by New York University economist Edward Wolff found that just 10 percent of the U.S. population owns 80 percent of stock market wealth.

Also, it's likely the rising stock market has indeed benefited him personally. Financial disclosures show the president has multiple brokerage accounts and extensive stock holdings. He owns shares in Apple Inc. (up 24 percent year-to-date), Caterpillar Inc. (up 15 percent) and Microsoft Corp. (up nearly 12 percent) among other companies. Even if Trump didn't buy into the recent stock market gains, his existing shares probably received a boost.

TRUMP, on NATO's core pledge: "To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point out that the United States has demonstrated not merely with words but with its actions that we stand firmly behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment." speech in Warsaw on Thursday.

THE FACTS: Rather than showing a commitment with his actions, Trump has sown confusion with his words. Article 5 has only been used once by other NATO members, to come to the defense of the U.S. after the 2001 attacks on American soil.

Trump suggested during the campaign that NATO members lagging on their own military spending might not be able to count on the U.S. to come to their aid if attacked. And he pointedly did not endorse Article 5 at a NATO meeting in May, unnerving some allies. In June, though, he said: "I'm committing the United States to Article 5." Those words won't be tested with action until or unless a NATO member is attacked.

President Donald Trump announces the approval of a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline, clearing the way for the $8 billion project, Friday, March 24, 2017 in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 24, 2017. From left are, TransCanada CEO Russell K. Girling, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

TRUMP: "We just approved a big pipeline also the Keystone Pipeline. It was under consideration for many, many years, and it was dead, and I approved it in my first day of office." Warsaw energy meeting.

THE FACTS: He did not approve it on his first day in office. During his first week, on Jan. 24, Trump signed an order asking TransCanada to re-submit its application to build Keystone XL, which had been blocked by Obama. Trump suggested at the time that more negotiations would be required with TransCanada before he would approve the project. The project actually got the go-ahead in late March.

TRUMP: "Americans know that a strong alliance of free, sovereign and independent nations is the best defense for our freedoms and for our interests. That is why my administration has demanded that all members of NATO finally meet their full and fair financial obligation. As a result of this insistence, billions of dollars more have begun to pour into NATO. In fact, people are shocked. But billions and billions of dollars more coming in from countries that, in my opinion, would not have been paying so quickly." Warsaw speech.

THE FACTS: The notion of money pouring into NATO because of his tough talk is one of Trump's most frequent fictions. The actual issue is how much NATO countries spend on their own military budgets. They agreed in 2014, well before he became president, to stop cutting military spending, and have honored that. They also agreed then to a goal of moving "toward" spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own defense by 2024. Most are short of that and the target is not ironclad. His tough talk is aimed at nudging them toward that goal.

See more here:

Fact check: Trump on the 'blazing' economy, Russia, NATO - Bismarck Tribune

Fact check: Trump on the ‘blazing’ economy, Russia, NATO … – La Crosse Tribune