President Trump Signs Executive Order Ramping Up The War On … – TheFix.com

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On Thursday morning, President Trump signed three new executive orders, including the Presidential Executive Order on Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking. This executive order addresses multiple kinds of trafficking, including human and drug trafficking.

According to CNN, this EO is aimed at combating transnational drug cartels, prescrib[ing] steps for various federal agencies to increase intelligence sharing among law enforcement partners. Theorder established an inter-agency task force to compile a report detailing "the progress made in combating criminal organizations" along with "recommended actions for dismantling them."

In essence, this EO makes good on President Trumps campaign promises to combat rising drug addiction and overdose deaths in the United States through law enforcement and border patrol. He is echoing tough on crime language that originated with President Richard Nixon in the 1970s and continued through the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

The War on Drugs that Richard Nixon initiated has been deemed a policy failureon all levels by the United Nations. A 2013 study in the British Medical Journal found that despite efforts to limit the supply of these drugs, since 1990 prices have fallen while the purity of the drugs has increased, the Guardian reported.

The presidents EO claims that drug cartels are drivers of crime, corruption, violence, and misery. It goes on to say the trafficking by cartels of controlled substances has triggered a resurgence in deadly drug abuse and a corresponding rise in violent crime related to drugs. However, to say thatinternational drug trafficking is to blame forthe rise in drug abuse, addiction, and crimeis a stretch, at best.

Particularly when much of the current addiction epidemic in the U.S. can be tied to Big Pharma and the overprescription of certain drugs by doctors. Not only that, in communities where decriminalization has been prioritizedlike the police-run Angel Programin Gloucester, Massachusettshelping people struggling with addiction to get treatment instead of arresting them for drug use or drug possession has resulted in a reduction of ancillary crimes associated with drug use.

The one area that these drug war policies have been effective is in the mass incarceration and destruction of communities of color in the United Statesthe black community in particular. Nixons former domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman later admitted that the War on Drugs was designed to target black people, saying in an interview, We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

The result, which intensified after Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Crime Bill, has been the incarceration of black folks on an incredibly large scale. According to a 2016 report by the Drug Policy Alliance,while black people comprise 13% of the U.S. population and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races, they make up 31% of those arrested for drug law violations, and nearly 40% of people incarcerated in state or federal prison for drug law violations.

Ramping up the drug war mindset is bad news for those touched by addiction. It took nearly half a century to realize that "fighting" drugs with aggressive law enforcement is more harmful than effectiveat a huge cost, in terms of lives lost and billions of tax dollars wasted.

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President Trump Signs Executive Order Ramping Up The War On ... - TheFix.com

Trump Goes Full Nixon on Law-and-Order Executive Orders, Vows ‘Ruthless’ War on Drugs and Crime – AlterNet

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AlterNet
Trump Goes Full Nixon on Law-and-Order Executive Orders, Vows 'Ruthless' War on Drugs and Crime
AlterNet
And in a sign of a return to the dark days of drug war over-sentencing, he called for harsher mandatory minimum prison sentences for "the most serious" drug offenders, as well as aggressive prosecutions of drug traffickers and cracking down on ...
Trump Paves the Way for an Expanded Police StateFlagpole Magazine
Tough on CrimeSlate Magazine
Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement OfficersThe White House
The White House
all 38 news articles »

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Trump Goes Full Nixon on Law-and-Order Executive Orders, Vows 'Ruthless' War on Drugs and Crime - AlterNet

Death of a businessman: How the Philippines drugs war was slowed – Reuters

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(Note: Strong language in seventh paragraph)

By Karen Lema and Martin Petty

MANILA When Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte summoned his security chiefs to an urgent meeting one Sunday night last month, his mind was already made up.

His military and law enforcement heads had no idea what was coming: a suspension of the police force's leading role in his signature campaign, a merciless war on illegal drugs.

There was only one reason for the U-turn, three people who attended the Jan. 29 meeting told Reuters. Duterte was furious that drugs-squad cops had not only kidnapped and murdered a South Korean businessman, they had strangled him to death in the headquarters of the Philippines National Police itself.

"He was straight to the point - 'I am ordering you to disband your anti-drug units, all units'," said Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who was at the meeting in the presidential palace.

Duterte decided that the much smaller Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) would take over the drugs crackdown, with support from the military.

It was a stunning turnaround by Duterte, who had until then stood unswervingly behind his police force through months of allegations that its officers were guilty of extra-judicial killings and colluding with hit men in a campaign that has claimed the lives of more than 7,600 people, mostly drug pushers and users, in seven months.

The blunt-spoken president had repeatedly defied calls from United Nations, the United States and the European Union to rein in his war on drugs, calling them stupid and 'sons of bitches'. Duterte's aides were used to his mercurial style, but they were taken aback that the killing of one foreigner would be enough to stop him in his tracks.

One explanation is that relations with South Korea are of huge importance to the Philippines for development aid, tourism, overseas employment and military hardware.

But security officials said it was the audacity of the killing of Jee Ick-joo and the attempt to use the war on drugs as a cover for kidnap and ransom that triggered his decision.

"It's all about the Korean. That it happened at all, it's really that (which) pissed him off," Lorenzana told Reuters.

PDEA Director General Isidro Lapena, who was also at the meeting, hadn't seen it coming either. He said in an interview that the president had lambasted the police force and told them that the "deactivation" and purge of its anti-drugs unit was now as important as the drugs war itself.

Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa told Reuters that Duterte had been "really mad" about the incident and, after the meeting, the president publicly denounced the police force as "corrupt to the core".

"SO OBVIOUS"

The president's legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, said the president, a former prosecutor, makes decisions strictly on the basis of the letter of the law. Activists' allegations of summary executions had no supporting evidence, he said, yet to Duterte, Jee's killing was irrefutable, audacious and embarrassing.

"The committing of that crime was so obvious," he said.

Worried that the incident would dent the Philippines' image in South Korea, Duterte sent Panelo to Seoul to apologize to acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn.

Seoul is Manila's biggest supplier of military hardware, donating or selling fighter jets, patrol boats, frigates and trucks.

About 1.4 million South Koreans visited the Philippines in the first 10 months of 2016 - a quarter of all tourists arrivals - lured by beaches, golf and the sex industry. Korean tourists spend an average $180-$200 daily, and their overall spending is triple that of U.S. visitors.

South Korea is the Philippines' fifth-largest source of development aid and in 2015 invested $520 million in areas like power, tourism and electronics manufacturing.

About 55,000 Filipinos work in South Korea and the Philippines attracts Koreans studying English, over 3,700 of them last year.

A South Korean diplomat in Manila said there were no threats or pressure on the Philippine government over the killing of the businessman, but Seoul wanted a guarantee of safety for its citizens and a secure investment climate.

Hoik Lee, president of the Korean Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines, said South Koreans felt increasingly unsafe in the country.

The chamber's membership has grown from 20 firms in 1995 to 500 companies now, including Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Hanjin and LG, but Lee estimated that the Korean community has shrunk by about a third to 100,000 people since 2013 despite the bright economic outlook in the Philippines.

"Police should protect us not kill us," Lee said. "That is why we are very upset and very shocked."

The number of Koreans murdered in the Philippines averages about 10 each year, accounting for a third of all Korean nationals killed overseas, according to Seouls foreign ministry.

However, South Koreans are perpetrators of crime as much as they are its victims in the Philippines, says the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, which has a Korean desk handling cases of kidnappings, murder, robbery, theft, extortion and fraud, mostly in Korean communities, where mafias operate.

For a Graphic on Tourism in the Philippines, click: here

For a Graphic on South Koreans in the Philippines, click: here

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in Seoul and Neil Jerome Morales and Manuel Mogato in Manila; Editing by John Chalmers and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

TAIPEI At least 32 people were killed when a tour bus crashed near Taipei on Monday night, with television footage showing the bus careening toward a road barrier before flipping on its side.

BERLIN Germany will move forward this week with plans to set up a joint fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp C-130J transport planes with France and join a Netherlands-led fleet of Airbus A330 tanker planes, defense ministry sources said on Monday.

WASHINGTON The U.S. government plans to designate Venezuelan Executive Vice President Tareck El Aissami for sanctions under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act for playing a significant role in narcotics trafficking, U.S. sources said on Monday.

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Death of a businessman: How the Philippines drugs war was slowed - Reuters

Unnecessary fighting south of the border: Mexico should ask Trump to pay for the drug war – Salon

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This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Attention deficit disorder isnt usually a welcome presidential attribute, but Mexicans can be thankful that Donald Trump has temporarily shifted his focus away from their country to pick fights instead with Iran, the European Union, China, California and the U.S. media.

The last time Trump addressed Mexico, right after the election, the peso fell 17 percent. Within days of his inauguration, Trump demanded that Mexico pay for a border wall, prompting cancellation of his planned summit meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto.

As former Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhanlamented, it took only one week of bilateral engagement between the new U.S. administration and Mexico to throw the relationship into a tailspin. That relationship would be better if Trump had stuck to theview he expressedin November 2015: I dont care about Mexico, honestly. I really dont care about Mexico.

Someday soon, however, Trump will rediscover his interest in Mexico, and relations will likely suffer again. But Mexico need not take his abuse lying down. As the buyer of more than aquartertrilliondollars in U.S. exports the second largest market in the world for U.S. goods Mexico has some leverage if Trump tries to play rough with tariffs and trade.

And if Trump persists in sending a bill to Mexico City for his wall, Pea should seriously consider sending a bill in return to Washington to pay for the U.S. drug war.

The high cost to Mexico of the U.S. drug war

For years now, Mexico has paid an extraordinarily high price in lives and social disruption for Washingtons insistence that North Americas drug problem be tackled south of the border, where the drugs are grown and transported, rather than primarily in clinics and halfway houses at home to treat the medical and psychological issues of users.

Successive administrations, starting with President Richard Nixon, have demanded tough border controls, aerial spraying programs and DEA-backed anti-cartel operations in Mexico. All their efforts and sacrifices have been for naught. U.S. residentscurrentlyexport up to $29 billion in cash to Mexican traffickers each year to buy marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin.

Forcing that trade underground has taken a terrible toll on Mexico in terms of violence, corruption and social upheaval. Since 2006, when President Felipe Caldern ordered his military to join the war on drug traffickers, Mexico has lost about200,000 livesand 30,000 more have disappeared,dwarfingthe civilian death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq over that period.

The majority of them were victims of criminal organizations, but human rights organizations also reportsoaring rates of human rights violations, including torture and killing, committed by security forces.

The2016 Global Peace Index, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace, estimates the total cost of violence in Mexico at $273 billion, or 14 percent of GDP, with no end in sight.Direct fiscal costsof fighting the war on crime were about $32 billion in 2015 alone. Yet the United States has contributed only about $2.5 billion since fiscal 2008 to Mexicos drug war, under the so-called Merida Initiative.

Mexicos pain shows no signs of easing. The New York Timesreportedin December that Mexico suffered more than 17,000 homicides in the first 10 months of last year, the highest total since 2012. The relapse in security has unnerved Mexico and led many to wonder whether the country is on the brink of a bloody, all-out war between criminal groups, it said.

Time for an alternative

In his last phone call with Mexican President Pea,Trump reportedly complained, You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out. According to one disputed account,Trump threatenedto send U.S. troops south of the border if Mexico doesnt do more to stop the drug problem.

Pea can continue to do Washingtons bidding,ensuring his political demise, or he can challenge Trump by asking why Mexico should fight North Americas drug war on its own soil and at its own expense. If he goes the latter route, hell have plenty of good company.

Former heads of state from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, along with other distinguished members of theGlobal Commission on Drug Policy, have called for normalization of drugs eliminating black markets and incentives for violence by legalizing individual possession and cultivation of drugs while instituting public health regulations. They note that such programs have succeeded admirably in Portugal and the Netherlands at reducing both the criminal and public health costs of drug abuse.

The harms created through implementing punitive drug laws cannot be overstated when it comes to both their severity and scope, they assert in their 2016 report, Advancing Drug Policy Reform. Thus, we need new approaches that uphold the principles of human dignity, the right to privacy and the rule of law, and recognize that people will always use drugs. In order to uphold these principles all penalties both criminal and civil must be abolished for the possession of drugs for personal use.

Support for decriminalization is growing in Mexico, where the supreme court in 2015approvedgrowing and smoking marijuana for personal use. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox nowadvocateslegalizing all drugs over a transition period of up to a decade.

Jorge Castaeda, a former Mexican foreign minister, recentlyopined, Mexico should take advantage of Californias decision to legalize recreational marijuana. Regardless of Mr. Trumps victory, the approval of the proposition in the United States most populous state makes Mexicos war on drugs ridiculous. What is the purpose of sending Mexican soldiers to burn fields, search trucks and look for narco-tunnels if, once our marijuana makes it into California, it can be sold at the local 7-Eleven?

Criticsrightly point out that what works in the Netherlands wont necessarily solve Mexicos problems. Its powerful drug gangs have diversified into a host of other violent criminal enterprises. They control territory, intimidate or corrupt law enforcement, and kill with impunity. Legalizing drug sales wont end their criminal ways, but it could erode their profits and let police focus on universally despised crimes with direct victims murder, kidnapping, extortion and the like.

As Mexican journalist Jos Luis Pardo Veirasremarkedlast year, Decriminalizing drug use will not fix a deeply rooted problem in this country, but it will allow Mexicans to differentiate between drugs and the war on drugs, between drug users and drug traffickers. This is the first step in acknowledging that a different approach is possible.

As for Trump, let him build his wall and see if that keeps out all the drugs. If not, maybe by then Mexico will be able to offer some useful advice on how to fight the drug problem not with guns, but with more enlightened policies.

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Unnecessary fighting south of the border: Mexico should ask Trump to pay for the drug war - Salon

Increasing opposition in Philippines to war on drugs: UN official – Reuters

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BANGKOK A United Nations human rights investigator says there are signs of mounting opposition within the Philippines to President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, with police operations on hold and the Church getting critical of the campaign.

Agnes Callamard, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, however said the thousands of killings in the campaign had given rise to a sense of impunity, which could lead to increased lawlessness and violence.

More than 7,600 people, mostly drug users and small-time dealers, have been killed since Duterte took office on June 30, about a third of them in police operations. Callamard said she knew of only four court cases seeking justice for the victims.

"The difference between the number of reported killings and the number of court cases is unbelievable," she told Reuters in Bangkok. "It's very unusual for that degree of impunity to remain restricted to one kind of crime or one type of community."

Spokesmen for Duterte could not immediately be reached for comment.

The war on drugs has been a signature policy of Duterte, who remains popular in opinion polls.

But Callamard, a human rights expert from France who took up the U.N. post in August, said opposition to the drug war was increasing and had reached a "tipping point."

"There is an increasing awareness on the part of the Filipino people that the war on drugs could hurt them," she said. "The surveys that are being done indicate support for the president...but critique the war on drugs."

One of the Philippines' top polling agencies, Social Weather Stations, said after a survey of 1,500 people in early December that most were satisfied with Duterte's rule. But 78 percent said they were worried that they or someone they knew would be a victim of an extra-judicial killing.

In a series of reports last year, Reuters showed that the police had a 97-percent kill rate in their drug operations, the strongest proof yet that police were summarily shooting drug suspects.

Both the government and police have strenuously denied that extra-judicial killings have taken place.

The Church in the Philippines, Asia's largest Catholic nation, had been a muted critic of the campaign but slammed it earlier this month for creating a "reign of terror" among the poor.

The bloodshed had also generated growing unease and criticism from Philippine civil society groups and media, Callamard said.

Her remarks come as Duterte and his police chief Ronald Dela Rosa face intense criticism for the October kidnap and killing of a South Korean businessmen by anti-narcotics officers inside national police headquarters.

He was arrested for drug offences that his wife said was an official cover for kidnap for ransom.

The case, which came to light in January, prompted dela Rosa to announce the suspension of anti-drug operations to purge the police force of what he termed "rogue cops." Duterte has however vowed to maintain his anti-drugs campaign until his term ends in 2022.

Callamard said real opposition to the drugs war would come from within the Philippines rather than international bodies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In October, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda warned the Hague-based tribunal could prosecute if the killings were "committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population."

Duterte has threatened to withdraw from the ICC, calling it "useless," and said in a November speech: "You scare me that you will jail me? International Criminal Court? Bullshit."

(Reporting by Andrew R.C. Marshall, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

TAIPEI At least 32 people were killed when a tour bus crashed near Taipei on Monday night, with television footage showing the bus careening toward a road barrier before flipping on its side.

BERLIN Germany will move forward this week with plans to set up a joint fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp C-130J transport planes with France and join a Netherlands-led fleet of Airbus A330 tanker planes, defense ministry sources said on Monday.

WASHINGTON The U.S. government plans to designate Venezuelan Executive Vice president Tareck El Aissami under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act for playing a significant role in narcotics trafficking, U.S. sources said on Monday.

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Increasing opposition in Philippines to war on drugs: UN official - Reuters

Bato: War on illegal gambling won’t be bloody – Philippine Star

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MANILA, Philippines - While the Philippine National Police has declared an all-out war against illegal gambling, it would not be as bloody as the war against illegal drugs, PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa assured the public yesterday.

The PNP would adopt the same double barrel approach, a term meaning that the upper barrel would be focused on gambling financiers or high-value targets and the lower against street-level operations.

This is an all-out war but it would not be as bloody (as the war against drugs) because gamblers are not as crazy as drug addicts who kill even if there is no threat. Gambling is just about money, theres no need to pay for it with life, Dela Rosa said in Filipino.

Under Executive Order 13, President Duterte directed the PNP, National Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies to intensify the campaign against illegal gambling in coordination with the departments of Justice, Interior and Local Government, and Information and Communications Technology.

It also directed the agencies to coordinate and act on requests of gambling regulatory authorities to investigate and stop illegal gambling activities in their respective jurisdictions.

If the stakeholders will cooperate, Dela Rosa said, the problem on illegal gambling will be addressed within six months, after noting that the entire country is affected by this problem.

Headlines ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1

Unlike illegal drugs, which infected 92 percent of Metro Manila barangays, Dela Rosa said illegal gambling operations could be traced even in far-flung and mountainous areas.

It has not been eradicated. Every barangay has it and its more widespread than drugs. There is cara y cruz, cards it is present. When we say massive, all forms of illegal gambling, even cockfighting, will be checked. Many barangay chairmen may get angry with us. But we will prioritize the illegal numbers game because it robs the PCSO (Philippine Charity Sweepstakes) of income, Dela Rosa said, referring to the forms of illegal gambling that use coins, cards, fighting cocks or lottery.

The PNP directorate for operations is also tasked to check on all illegal online gambling activities.

For those that would be caught, Dela Rosa promised strict enforcement of Presidential Decree 1602 and Republic Act 9287, which both set stiffer penalties against violators.

Duterte wanted to rid the country of all forms of illegal gambling activities that may mutate into other forms of organized crime including drug trafficking, illegal vices, money laundering and kidnapping.

Dela Rosa tasked the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group to lead the anti-gambling campaign as he also ordered all regional police directors to implement similar operations.

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Bato: War on illegal gambling won't be bloody - Philippine Star

Highway Patrol: Raid of Warren bar uncovers illegal gambling – WKBN.com

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WARREN, Ohio (WKBN) Two men from Warren are facing criminal charges after a raid of a Warren bar.

The Ohio Investigative Unit raided Kracker Jacks on Youngstown Road SE after complaints of illegal gambling.

Administrative charges were issued against the liquor permit for four counts each of acquire, possess, control or operate a gambling device; electronic video gambling device; game of chance for profit or scheme of chance; operating a gambling house; and recklessly permitting public gaming.

In addition, giving away alcohol as a prize and illegal raffle violations were issued.

During the search, 60-year-old Don Flaminio, of Warren, was charged with five countsgambling, operating a Gambling House and possession of criminal tools.

Daniel Goddard, 42, of Warren, received summonses for two counts of gambling.

Flaminio and Goddard will appear in the Warren Municipal Court on February 22.

Ohio State Highway Patrol said administrative charges will be presented to the Ohio Liquor Control Commission at a later date. Possible administrative penalties include fines, suspensions or revocation of the liquor permit.

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Highway Patrol: Raid of Warren bar uncovers illegal gambling - WKBN.com

Scary graph shows how Australians are the biggest losers – NEWS.com.au

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Australians are losing big on pokies. Picture: Marc McCormack

WERE supposed to be the lucky country, but a scary graph proves Australia is a nation of losers.

Gambling has become so prevalent in the Great Southern Land that weve taken out the dubious gong of the nation with the highest losses per capita, dwarfing the casino hub of Singapore.

An analysis by The Economist reveals that Australians lose more per person than any other country in 2016, an average $1292 ($US990) thats averaged out across the population, not just gamblers.

Australia, you are the biggest loser. Picture: Economist.comSource:Supplied

By comparison, the United States home to the glittering punters paradise of Las Vegas lost less than half that amount.

To the general public, Australia hardly leaps to mind as a gambling hotbed, yet industry insiders know it is far and away their most lucrative market, the Economist reported.

Its analysis is based on data from H2 Gambling Capital (H2G), a consultancy, which found that Australias betting losses per resident adult were about double the average in other Western countries.

And the reason? Pokie machines.

The losses from the ubiquitous gaming machines found in pubs and clubs across the nation are bigger than the total per capita gambling losses of nearly every other country represented largely because of Australias permissive bet limit rules, which allow punters to lose up to $1498 ($US1150) an hour.

dana.mccauley@news.com.au

Sometimes the wheel of fortune doesn't spin in your favor, especially when you're new to gambling. WSJ visits the Big Deal Casino in New York City to learn how to play roulette. Photo/Video: Carly Marsh/The Wall Street Journal

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Scary graph shows how Australians are the biggest losers - NEWS.com.au

Celeb Gambling Ring Members Fear They’ve Been CAUGHT On Wiretaps Making Illegal Bets, Source Claims – Radar Online

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The take down of a mafia run gambling ring in New York City threatens to trap a gaggle of high-profile celebrities who a source claims may have been caught on wiretaps making illegal bets, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.

Thirteen members and associates of the Genovese Organized Crime Family were nabbed in the Dec. 15 bust, which included Vincent Vinny Taliercio, a long-time Brooklyn bookie who collected wagers from a Whos Who of Hollywood elite, a well-placed source told Radar.

The list of New York City born celebs may include: The Godfather star James Caan; Taxi actor Tony Danza and Paul Sorvino, who played a mafia boss in the wise guy drama Goodfellas, the source told Radar.

James Caan is a big gambler he bets on anything. Hell even bet on which elevator doors open first, the insider claimed.

PHOTOS: Banged Up! Charlie CAUGHT With Mysterious Bandages On His Wrist & Knee

Some of the other high profile gamblers may include: Bronx born TV talker Regis Philbin; Two and Half Men star Charlie Sheen; the late Law & Order star Jerry Orbach; Seinfeld co-creator Larry David; the late Wise Guy actor Ray Sharkey and famed producer James L. Brooks, an Oscar winning director, and Ed Weinberger, who both created Taxi and numerous other television classics.

They probably caught some of these celebrities on the wiretaps, the source said, adding the gamblers would usually place their bets with Vinny by telephone if they werent in New York.

Vinnie is not just a bookie everybody who is anybody in the gambling world would call him up because hes the best handicapper in the world, the source told Radar. He has dealt with all the big celebrities.

Everybody went to Vinny for advice even the members of all five crime families. Anything you needed to know about sports that guy Vinny knew about it he was like a walking encyclopedia an almanac!

PHOTOS: Broke Or BS? Charlie Sheen Drops $1Million On Mexican Estate

Vinny was arrested during the gambling and loansharking investigation dubbed Operation Shark Bait by the New York Attorney Generals Offices Organized Crime Task Force and the NYPDs Criminal Enterprise Investigations Section, who used wiretaps to secure the indictments.

The ringleader Salvatore Sallie DeMeo, 76, and the others are accused of running the gambling site 4Spades.orgbased in Costa Rica along with a lucrative loansharking and illegal cigarette smuggling business that raked in millions, according to a 56-page indictment obtained by Radar.

Vinny, who operated his family owned grocery store, the Smith Union Market in Brooklyn, served as the money collector/distributor of illegal gambling proceeds, according to the indictment.

PHOTOS: The House That Sheen Built: Check Out Where Charlies Ex & Kids Are Living

In one chat tape recorded on Feb. 14, 2015, Vinny is heard giving the spread to college games: Michigan States two-and-a-half, 37-and-a-half, Clemson is nine, no total. Xavier is eight and 48.

The celebs relied on Vinny for gambling advice and enjoyed betting on college basketball and football games because they enjoyed the spread, the inside source told Radar.

According to the source, they also gambled on professional sports, boxing and horse races a favorite of the Brooklyn born Sorvino, who also starred on the television series Law & Order.

Some sports superstars who placed bets with Vinny include: Yankee great Mickey Mantle, disgraced hitting champ Pete Rose and famed L.A. Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

Vinny plead not guilty in Brooklyn Criminal Court and was released on a $20,000. He scheduled back in court on February 15th.

We pay for juicy info! Do you have a story for RadarOnline.com? Email us at tips@radaronline.com, or call us at (866) ON-RADAR (667-2327) any time, day or night.

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Celeb Gambling Ring Members Fear They've Been CAUGHT On Wiretaps Making Illegal Bets, Source Claims - Radar Online

AFL’s gambling ads concern for Cats star – Wide World of Sports

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Geelong veteran Harry Taylor has concerns over the effect of the AFL's gambling ads on young fans. (AAP)

Geelong veteran Harry Taylor says the saturation of betting advertisements during AFL games is concerning for young fans.

Taylor has thrown his support behind Western Bulldogs premiership captain Easton Wood, whose public stand against gambling commercials has placed the issue firmly on the AFL agenda.

The two-time Geelong premiership star says he shares Wood's concern that the advertisements are normalising gambling for children.

"I've got three kids at home, and when my eldest can name a lot of the ads on TV, that is a bit of a worry," Taylor said.

"It's certainly something that we need to keep talking about and educating people about.

"It's not as simple as just cutting them out of the AFL, I can certainly understand that, but more education about gambling in general is a really, really important part of what our society and AFL players need."

Wood, who led the Bulldogs to a drought-breaking premiership last year in the absence of injured captain Bob Murphy, raised the issue after attending the AFL's annual player education sessions on Friday.

He said he "couldn't stomach" the AFL educating players on the dangers of gambling while also allowing an influx of betting commercials during games.

"Every year we are told it is a sinister and dangerous activity because of the associated risks that come with gambling, all of which have proven very real," Wood posted on Twitter.

"What I can't understand is that if this is such an issue that we need an annual education session, why - as an industry - do we support the onslaught of gambling advertising you are now faced with when watching an AFL game.

"The obvious issue here is the effect this advertising has on children every time they watch us pull on our boots."

With the exception of Geelong, all of the Victorian-based AFL teams have signed a charter pledging not to sign partnerships with sports betting companies.

However most continue to profit from gambling, with North Melbourne the only club which does not generate revenue from poker machines.

AAP2017

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AFL's gambling ads concern for Cats star - Wide World of Sports

States are gambling with law enforcement safety – The Hill (blog)

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On Thursday, President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpFocused engagement: A realistic way forward in Afghanistan Overnight Tech: GOP split on net neutrality strategy | Trump's phone worries Dems | Bill in the works on self-driving cars Trump's Africa policy finally gets going, and there's reason for hope MORE signed an Executive Order directing the Department of Justice to implement a plan to stop crime and crimes of violence against law enforcement officers.

The order instructs the department to pursue appropriate legislation...that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement officers. That recommended legislation could include defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence.

The order also directs a thorough evaluation of all grant funding programs currently administered by the Justice Department. About the order, President Trump said Its a shame whats been happening to our great -- truly great -- law enforcement officers, the president said at the signing. Thats going to stop as of today.

While all law enforcement line-of-duty deaths are tragedies requiring swift legal response, Floyds death draws attention to a dangerous discrepancy that directly conflicts with the White Houses efforts to protect those who protect us.

The dangers of working in law enforcement, both in policing as well as corrections, have been nationally recognized and codified with the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act of 2004, a federal law enacted by President George W. Bush that allows "qualified law enforcement/corrections officers" and "qualified retired law enforcement/corrections officers" to carry a concealed firearm in any jurisdiction in the United States, regardless of state or local laws, with certain exceptions.

Some states, however, choose to get around this law by classifying the members of corrections and certain law enforcement agencies outside the scope of the act. This creates a discrepancy as to what a corrections officer, peace officer, or law enforcement officer is from one jurisdiction to another; which puts officers and those they serve at significant risk.

For example, both state and municipal Corrections Officers in New York and New Jersey are classified as peace officers (law enforcement) in their respective state codes, and have standardized training necessary to comply with LEOSA. Meanwhile, right across the borders of Pennsylvania and Delaware, Corrections Officers are still considered guards in the eyes of state law; as they are in many southern states.

Not only does this hinder the professionalism and retention of corrections officers, but restricts men and women who have exactly the same jobs as their counterparts across the Delaware River from the same protections afforded to them under LEOSA, potentially endangering their lives. LEOSA states that any sworn law enforcement officer (with the authority to make arrests) in active service, and any retired officer serving a total of ten years service as sworn law enforcement has the right to interstate firearms carry.

Instead of embracing this law, numerous agencies have created elaborate ways to circumvent it. For example, a myriad of agencies refuse to issue retired identification cards to members who leave after the ten year requirement, giving those members no way to prove they are LEOSA eligible.

Even more of an outrage is that numerous police and corrections agencies will not arm or train their officers with respect to their titles. In New York, numerous police agencies within the city are unarmed despite their state authority as peace officers to make arrests. This includes the NYC Hospital Police, who polices a city hospital system in where violent crime victims are taken, drug-seeking behavior is manifested; City University Public Safety and NYPD School Safety officers; among many others. Surely, the murder of Hospital Police Officer James Low in 1999, the presence of gangs in schools and threat of active shooter incidents demonstrate the need for uniformed, sworn law enforcement officers to be armed and operated professionally.

Unfortunately many local political leaders ignore best practices in public safety. This extends beyond New York, where even the Philadelphia School Police; in one of the most violent public school systems in America, are unarmed and have no arrest authority.

Local powers that be continually reject request from officers unions to train and equip them properly. For some jurisdictions, this is merely a budget issue, where agencies dont want to increase the salaries, training and equipment funding to make these officers safe. Some, especially in educational environments, however highlight a disturbing politicization in where leaders have expressed that arming school police results in a ludicrous pathway to corrections because the mere presence of firearms on campus, even on the hip of a uniformed law enforcement officer, creates the feeling that kids are in jail. Meanwhile, officers and kids are at risk from armed criminals because they are not equipped to intervene in an attack.

If states would simply invest in professionalism and training; they can move toward standardization. In 1994, six years before being appointed Police Commissioner, NYPD Detective Bernard Kerik was appointed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani to the New York City Department of Correction as the director of Investigations and by 1998 he was appointed as the Commissioner of the department.

As Corrections Commissioner, Kerik was responsible for the creation of the Total Efficiency Accountability Management System, the development of a nationally-recognized gang intelligence unit and database, and a reduction of inmate violence by a whopping 93 percent from 1995 to 1999.

Similarly, overtime spending decreased 45 percent from 1995 to 1999 and the uniform sick rate dropped for the same period by 25 percent; all during a period in NYC history when the inmate population rose by 25 percent. What Kerik showed the national corrections and law enforcement communities was that when you train, equip and manage corrections officers like professional law enforcement officers; facilities will operate accordingly saving both the lives of officers and inmates alike.

For an off-duty Pennsylvania Corrections Officer to be arrested in front of his family for carrying a weapon across the bridge in New Jersey because Pennsylvania classifies corrections officers differently than New Jersey does is legally unfair and puts officers at risk. For a school police officer in Philadelphia, PA to be completely unequipped and without authority while school police officers in rural Clarksdale, Mississippi are sworn and armed makes no sense; as the value of our childrens lives is no more valuable in Mississippi as it is in Pennsylvania or New York.

While our President and federal lawmakers have been diligent in their efforts to protect law enforcement; they need to legislate a standard for the authority and use of force capabilities of what a law enforcement officer is. If states like Delaware were to follow the best practices of New York and professionalize their corrections department; then they can honor the life of Sgt. Floyd by protecting the safety of their officers and preventing future loss of life.

A. Benjamin Mannes is a national subject matter expert in public safety and regular contributor to The Hill. He serves as a member of the Pierce College Criminal Justice Studies Advisory Board in Philadelphia and is a governor on the executive board of InfraGard, the FBI-coordinated public-private partnership for critical infrastructure protection. His writing has appeared in the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @PublicSafetySME

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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States are gambling with law enforcement safety - The Hill (blog)

Football’s gambling problem: You better, you better, you bet – Football365.com

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Date published: Monday 13th February 2017 1:50

Ave a bang on that.

Sky Bet used to have It matters more when theres money on it for their advertising tag line, as though football couldnt satisfy you in itself, and you needed some sort of additional fix to make it matter, to make it enjoyable, to briefly thaw out your frozen soul. It always seemed a pernicious statement, speaking of dull, pointless lives, needing the adrenalin of the threat of money loss or, less likely, the glory of money won.

Who wants to buy into that? As it turns out, a lot of people. Why? Because we live in desperate times, and desperate times lead to desperate lives.

Ave a bang on that.

Although I dont gamble, I do know how addictive gambling is. Eight years ago this month, me and my missus rented a house in Las Vegas for five weeks. We were doing quite well at the time, or at least, we had access to a giant f*ck-tonne of credit. Back then, we were dedicated boozers, and we soon worked out that you got free drinks in most casinos if you sat at a poker machine and pushed enough money into it. Like so many before us, we thought we could balance gambling losses out against free drink. But of course, no matter how much we drank, we couldnt quite manage it.

Like Jonny Wong, we knew we could never win, we were just trying to lose a little more slowly. We could no more hold on to our money than grab mercury. And it went on like this for 36 days. We just couldnt stop. As we drank more and more free liquor, we lost more and more money, but kept pumping more and more in to try and stem the losses. A few big wins deluded you into feeling you were getting close to even. You werent.

So we dug ourselves a 35,000 hole and jumped into it, drunk and screaming wildly into the infinite black velvet desert night sky. Climbing out would take years.

Now looking back, it feels like it was one long period of psychosis (and not just because Winty and the boy Tyers, formerly of this parish, were also there). We shouldve realised that being fully paid-up members of the If A Thing Is Worth Doing Its Worth Over Doing Club, gambling would get its hooks into us and would only let us go once it had cleaned us out, stripped us naked, and left us on our knees in the desert, with only a loaded pistol as a way to solve our problems.

Losing money whilst pished on free tequila and gin feels perversely like a win, especially when youre from a poor background, when in reality, youre just a big fat loser. Yet it was so compulsive.

And because I felt its lure so strongly, I worry about gambling being so pervasive in our football lives. Games arepreceded and followed by TV ads for betting companies. Ten Premier League clubs are sponsored by international gambling firms. The second, third and fourth tiers of English league football are all sponsored by Sky Bet. Listen to talkSPORT and theyre giving you in-game and half-time odds, telling you how much you could win if x,y, and z happens. The same goes for TV: up pops Ray Winstone with pre-match and half-time suggestions for bets to place and encouragement to feel that you are master of your domain; a betting overlord, traversing the globe in search of profit.

Ave a bang on that.

At every single football ad break, the first ad is always for gambling. Betfred, BetVictor, Bet365, William Hill, Paddy Power, Unibet, which is now pitching for the educated middle-class male market (its always aimed at men, it seems) or Coral, with the fat bloke and the blonde woman and that is just a small selection. Theres all those heinous, Ladbrokes Life ads where they try to establish different characters, such as Generous John and The Professor, who just look like idiots that have a horrible existence, their pain only numbed by lager and gambling.

Lad Broke, indeed. Ave a bang on that.

Gambling is a terrible addiction which can ruin lives every bit as comprehensively as any drug you can mainline. And like a confection designed to melt at just the right temperature in your mouth, to make it so deliciously compulsive that you will overindulge, the betting industry knows just how to press our psychological buttons, even offering up ready-made excuses for your losses. The Ladbrokes Life caption, for example: When you win, its skill, when you lose its bad luck.

Wheres the fun in form?, says one of the characters from the Ladbrokes Life adverts. When you know, you know you knowyou know?

This is what we really know: you will lose. Now or tomorrow or later. You will lose. You are, or you will be, a loser.

Ave a bang on that.

Anywhere from 0.5% 3% of the population of Europe has a gambling problem and an addicts most favoured sort of betting is spreadbetting, the exact sort of betting pushed most at us football viewers.

This isnt a harmless bit of fun, even if Kammy does look good dressed as a woman. In fact, its so not a harmless bit of fun, that the industry has had to pretend to care about its punters welfare with vacuous advice such as When the fun stops, stop. Well, frankly, if the fun has stopped, that advice is already too late. Youve already got a problem.

Please bet responsibly, says Ray, which is just as pointless as please drink responsibly on a bottle of vodka. People without a problem dont need telling; people with a problem cant take the advice.

Its just PR. Its faux caring from a vampiric industry.

Ave a bang on that.

Betting used to be something you had to enter a bookies to do. You had to brave the smoke-filled, gadgee crowds to put your money down. Now, its intentionally been made so easy to lose your money that you hardly notice its even happened.

At least in Vegas you know youre on a Fear and Loathing, Electric Kool Aid Acid Test in a Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. You know its not normal life and that this is one big freak out which will end. Yet football betting has deliberately become unremarkable through its persistent omnipresence, the encouragement to gratuitously lose your money made standard, as though its just a natural part of life.

Ave a bang on that.

What is this doing to the quality of all our lives, whether we do or dont gamble? Do the grubby, downmarket values not cheapen all of us? Can we not raise our eyes to the sky and stop staring at the soul-sapping smartphone odds? Are we not about better things than winning or losing money? Surely there are plenty more fulfilling intellectual and emotional stimuli available, without pretending that pointlessly throwing money away is fun.

At least in Vegas we were being social it involved attractive waitresses in skimpy clothing. We laughed, we had the time of our lives, we rocked. By contrast, football betting on a phone seems a desperate, solitary, sad little habit carried out in a Wetherspoons with the piercing screams of a hen party from Seal Sands as a soundtrack.

Compulsive gambling, like compulsive drinking, is clever. It sneaks up on you, tells you youre having a good time, tells you anyone who says you arent is part of the bleeding heart, PC, bedwetter, hand-wringing, do-gooder nanny state. You havent got a problem, or at least not a problem that one more big bet or one more bottle wont fix.

Ave a bang on that.

Thats why footballs addiction to betting is so dangerous. It has put gambling front and centre, has encouraged and completely normalised extreme behaviour, marketing it away as just a bit of fun and banter, as all the while it drums up huge profits by preying on the vulnerable and the poor. This will have actively provoked and fed many thousands of peoples addictions, making their lives worse and worse. And that isnt just pain the gambler alone endures.

When the fun stops, stop? Well, the fun has stopped, but there seems no stopping the takeover of football by the gambling industry, and thats to the benefit of no-one except those who feast on the profits it carves out of its low rent, shallow, debased culture, and still, more importantly, carves mercilessly out of human misery.

Get yer mobile out.

Time to cash out.

Lets all ave a bang on that.

John Nicholson

If gambling is a problem in your life, Gamcare can help you.

This week Johnny goes all Butch. Oooh, get him. No, not like that. My word, it's Ray, young man.

John Terry thinks the 'best' footballers should not have to take full coaching courses. Oh dear...

This week Johnny goes all Oirish, so he does, and wonders if Richard Dunne is the victim of a nuclear explosion.

Club managers 'rest' players because they don't really care if theyre knocked out. It's as simple as that.

This week Johnny goes dahn sarf to the Romford manah, my son. Its only that fackin Ray Parlour, geezer.

Not for his poorer, later albums. Our Johnny is in philosophical mood after Wayne Rooney's record...

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Football's gambling problem: You better, you better, you bet - Football365.com

Could laser therapy help dog owners avoid euthanasia? – 12news.com

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Rich Prange, KPNX 3:48 PM. MST February 13, 2017

(Photo: Rich Prange/12 News)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - When John and Susan Davenport were traveling from California to their winter home in Buckeye, they noticed something was wrong with Rosie, their 11-year-old longhair dachshund.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to find she couldnt move at all," said John. "Rosie was pretty much paralyzed in her back legs.

Rosie had suffered a slippeddisc, a devastating condition her owners had seen before. Rosie's mother had been put down a few years ago for a similar back issue.

It was a choked up feeling," John said. "We kind of didn't want to think what the outcome would be.

The outlook was grim: Rosie would need back surgery which would've cost thousands of dollars with a 50/50 chance of success.

The Davenports decided to try cold laser therapy. Their veterinarian in California had used it before when Rosie had an issue with one of her hind legs.

Watching her mom suffer just wasnt something we wanted to do. It was something we wanted to try, said John.

Cold laser therapy is a less invasive procedure than surgery. Fitted with a pair of sunglasses to shade her eyes, all Rosie has to do is lay on the table and relax as the technician massages her back with laser that looks similar to a ultrasound.

This session lasted about 10 minutes.

It helps to reduce swelling and inflammation and pain, said Benjamin Savard, a veterinarian at Raintree Pet Resort & Medical Center.

Savard says hes been using the new laser therapy for about three years. He says the laser feels warm and can also increase the blood flow to the injured area and speed up the recovery.

The Davenports say Rosie was able to walk again after a few sessions and is now back to normal. The laser therapy worked and was more affordable than surgery.

We did a series of six treatments, about $250," Savard said. "We're doing the individual ongoing treatments, which works out to $40 apiece."

Oftentimes when a pet parent has to choose between paying an expensive procedure for their pet or euthanasia, sadly, they choose the latter.

Dr. Savard estimates hes has been able to save more than a dozen dogs from being put down because of the success and affordability of the laser. He also says the laser therapy is not the cure-all for all pets; it's just another tool in treating man's best friend.

It's another way we can bring some relief to many of our patients, often without having to use drugs that have lots of side effects because it's a perfectly safe treatment, said Savard.

The cold laser therapy can also be used to treat a number of other issues your pet may face like arthritis and gum disease.

For more information, visit theRaintree Pet Resort & Medical Center's website.

( 2017 KPNX)

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Could laser therapy help dog owners avoid euthanasia? - 12news.com

MP’s personal story behind euthanasia support – Clarence Valley Daily Examiner

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GEOFF Provest tries to remember only the good parts but there's a small piece of him that can't forget the way it ended.

The Tweed MP, like many in favour of voluntary euthanasia, has been forced to sit by and watch someone he loved - in his case his father, Sidney Keith Provest - very slowly and very painfully leave this world.

It's a story the Bowraville-born man finds difficult to tell and because of this is one not many have heard.

But with a draft Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill in planning and debate due in the NSW Parliament's spring session, the MP has opened up - not to sway people one way or the other but to share with his electorate why he supports the controversial option.

The MP's father was a teacher and a principal.

An ordered man, he wore a suit and tie and was part of what is now considered the 'old brigade'.

He was a man who valued his intellect and, somewhat ironically, in the end a mental illness led to his death.

The Provest family watched as across several years their leading man was robbed of everything important to him: his mind, the order that underpinned his life, and even himself, before he was eventually moved and spent his final 10months in hospital.

"His quality of life wasn't there," the Tweed MP said.

"It affected my mother and had an impact on her. He just suffered a great deal. It really was heartbreaking.

"In the end the doctors came to us and said, 'We're just going to keep upping the morphine here, but you've got to bear in mind eventually the organs shut down.'"

It took three months but they eventually did. In that time, Mr Provest and his two brothers worried about their mother, who was in her 70s.

They talked about how if there'd been an option to end his pain and take away their mother's burden, they would have taken it.

"My father didn't want to be here," he said.

"He was in and out of consciousness, he was soiling himself in the bed, he had catheters in - it was dreadful, there was no quality of life."

It's the quality of life part the MP will focus on when deciding to support the bill - not only of the patients but those who must watch on.

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MP's personal story behind euthanasia support - Clarence Valley Daily Examiner

3 juveniles sentenced for starting fire at MCDI in Springfield – wwlp.com

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SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) Three juveniles have been sentenced for setting a fire last June at the former Massachusetts Career Development Institute building; a fire that injured five Springfield firefighters.

All three suspects pleaded guilty to charges of breaking and entering and setting the fire. Two of them are serving sentences in juvenile detention, while the third suspect was convicted as an adult, and will serve 2 years in jail. Their names have not been released because they are juveniles.

According to Jennifer Mieth, spokesperson for the state Department of Fire Services, the fire was set in a pile of carpet samples and other debris on the second floor of the Wilbraham Avenue building. The fire is believed to have been smoldering for a while before the structure became engulfed in flames.

Five firefighters were injured in the effort to put out the fire, which lasted for about a days time. Springfield Fire Commissioner Joseph Conant says that one of the injured firefighters remains out of work at this time.

Arson fires are never victimless crimes. Tax revenues, business opportunities, and the entire sense of community are damaged, State Fire Marshal Peter Ostroskey said in a news release sent to 22News. As this case indicates, vacant building fires are one of the most dangerous types of fires for firefighters.

According to the Massachusetts Fire Incident Reporting System, a firefighter is hurt in one out of every seven fires in vacant buildings, compared to one out of every 44 structure fires in general.

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3 juveniles sentenced for starting fire at MCDI in Springfield - wwlp.com

The Ayn Rand in Donald Trump: The Virtue of America First | The … – American Spectator

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More than a half century ago the establishment (is there any other kind?) liberal Bennett Cerf (a panelist on the Whats My Line? television game show that ran 17 years), a founder of the venerable Random House, decided that Ayn Rand was provocative. Cerf urged Rand, the founder of Objectivism, to publish a collection of essays by her and her (then, but later excommunicated) protg, philosophical heir, and sub rosa lover Nathaniel Branden. I never met Rand but in the late-1970s came to know Branden (who died two years ago) and more recently others who were close to Rand, part of her in-group Collective that included Alan Greenspan before he went rogue and eventually became Federal Reserve chairman.

The book was titled The Virtue of Selfishness. Sharon Presley, one of the pioneering women in libertarianism in the 1960s, confronted the Left back then, at Free Speech (now suppressed speech) UC Berkeley, with her bold rejection of collectivism. To her fellow libertarians, Presley said Rands use of the word selfishness was perversely idiosyncratic. Generally, one does not think of selfishness as a virtue or as virtuous behavior. But Rand rejected the association of selfishness with undesirable conduct and said instead that selfishness is concern with ones own interest, and that is a good thing.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a theme of America First, a slogan associated pejoratively with Charles Lindbergh and Pat Buchanan. Oddly, it has its roots with Woodrow Wilson. Perhaps America First may seem like a nationalist extrapolation of selfishness. But implausible as it may seem, Rand was no isolationist. Indeed, she was a believer in what has come to be known as American Exceptionalism. A refugee from Czarist and Communist Russia who came here in 1925, Rand viewed this imperfect nation as closest to her ideal of a society that championed the individual.

In recent weeks President Trump has, some would say, repudiated others would say, amplified his campaign planks on foreign policy. He and his surrogates especially cabinet members such as the Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley have enunciated Administration policy. For example, President Trump is strongly committed to NATO and against Russian imperialism. Also, he will resist Chinas appropriation of the South China Sea, stand with Japan against North Korea, against which he has established an unsaid red line. And watch out, Iran, variations of sanctions are on the horizon.

The evolving foreign policy of Donald Trump is an unintended reincarnation of Ayn Rand. When he says America First, he is effectively saying that the United States should act in what Rand would call its rational self-interest. Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) was founded forty-one years before the 9/11 attack on America, that is, on September 11, 1960 at the Buckley estate, Great Elm. Its founding document ended: That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States? Not the United Nations or the Third World, but only the U.S. and, where interests meet, our allies.

Trump remains a critic of using American boots on the ground to build nations or to spread democracy. And he is unlikely to give foreign aid to socialist idiots. The aforementioned is all do-gooder stuff that he rejects.

And Trump has a peculiar approach to immigration reminiscent of a century ago. We want immigrants, he says, who want to be part of America and share its values of pluralism and liberty. In other words, people who come to this country will become Americans, not simply foreigners living in America. Before multiculturalism, Trumps view was not considered weird. Those were the days when immigrants learned English and civics.

President Trump asserts that he will not show his cards and let the enemy know what we will or will not do, or when we will act. He will not publicize our rules of engagement, and those rules will not (Obama-like) unduly burden our generals. Necessarily, he must reconcile keep them guessing with dont mess with us. In other words, the enemies must know our response will be momentous, but nothing more.

And instead of killing bad guys via drones, we might occasionally capture some for spirited interrogation. What a concept.

But what about NATO, England, Japan, and other allies and alliances?

President Trump is unknowingly applying two axioms of Ayn Rand. First, as noted, he is calculating that certain alliances are in the self-interest of the U.S. They are not altruistic but something we do for us. And second, President Trump is reviving the paradox of Rands equation on altruism. If there is such a thing as American exceptionalism, because we are what Ronald Reagan called that shining city on the hill, and altruism is part of that exceptionalism and what we want to do, then being altruistic is selfish.

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The Ayn Rand in Donald Trump: The Virtue of America First | The ... - American Spectator

Atlas Shrugged Audiobook | Ayn Rand | Audible.com

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There's very few things I can add to all that have been said about "Atlas Shrugged" that haven't been said before. Ayn Rand wrote a timeless masterpiece who put her name across the most influential writers of the english language. The story by itself is an Ode to the Human Mind and the best within us. This book change the lives of those who enter in contact with it and, most of the time, for the better.

The production of this audiobook is perfect. There's no background noise and the sound is as crisp as it could be. Only on the technical standpoint, the recording is as perfect as the state of the technology allows it to be.

So, why I gave it only 3 stars? Because of the casting of Mr. Brick. I have no quarrel with him. He's a talented artist who, I am sure, would give an outstanding reading of "Pride and Prejudice". He's, sadly, a poor choice for "Atlas Shrugged". His voice is unable to carry the certainty of John Galt, Dagny Taggart seems to be a moment away to sobbing, Francisco d'Anconia got a mundane voice while Jim Taggart sounds perfectly sane(!). This mostly ruined my enjoyment of this recording. "Atlas Shrugged" is a righteous book and his voice is too mellow to sound right.

In summary, may I suggest to those who really want to enjoy this story that they acquire the Christopher Hurt's rendition of it? The quality is less than stellar but the reading is perfect. In fact, I listened to the later right after I listened Mr. Brick's recording, just to forget the poor experience I lived.

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Atlas Shrugged Audiobook | Ayn Rand | Audible.com

Why Ayn Rand Would Have Opposed Donald Trump – PanAm Post – PanAm Post

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After Donald Trump announced a number of cabinet picks who happen to be fans of Ayn Rand, a flurry of articles appeared claiming that Trump intended to create an Objectivist cabal within his administration.

Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow Objectivists, proclaimed one article. Would that it were so. The novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was a passionate champion of individual freedom and laissez-faire capitalism and a fierce opponent of authoritarianism. For her, government exists solely to protect our rights, not to meddle in the economy or to direct our private lives.

A president who truly understood Rands philosophy would not be cozying up to Putin, bullying companies to keep manufacturing plants in the United States, or promising insurance for everybody among many other things Trump has said and done.

And while its certainly welcome news that several of Trumps cabinet picks admire Rand, its not surprising. Her novel Atlas Shrugged depicts a world in decline as it slowly strangles its most productive members. The novel celebrates the intelligent and creative individuals who produce wealth, many of whom are businessmen. So it makes sense that businessmen like Rex Tillerson and Andy Puzder would be among the novels millions of fans.

But a handful of fans in the administration hardly signals that Trumps would be an Ayn Rand administration. The claims about Rands influence in the administration are vastly overblown.

Even so, there is at least one parallel we can draw between a Trump administration and Rands novels, although its not favorable to Trump. As a businessman and a politician, Trump epitomizes a phenomenon that Rand harshly criticized throughout her career, especially in Atlas Shrugged. Rand called it pull peddling. The popular term today is cronyism. But the phenomenon is the same: attempting to succeed, not through production and trade, but by trading influence and favors with politicians and bureaucrats.

Cronyism has been a big issue in recent years among many thinkers and politicians on the Right, who have criticized big government because it often favors some groups and individuals over others or picks winners and losers.

Commentators on the Left, too, often complain about influence peddling, money in politics, and special interests, all of which are offered as hallmarks of corruption in government. And by all indications, Trump was elected in part because he was somehow seen as a political outsider who will drain the swamp.

But as the vague phrase drain the swamp shows, theres a lot more concern over cronyism, corruption, and related issues than there is clarity about what the problem actually is and how to solve it.

Ayn Rand had unique and clarifying views on the subject. With Trump in office, the problem she identified is going to get worse. Rands birthday is a good time to review her unique explanation of, and cure for, the problem.

The first question we need to be clear about is: What, exactly, is the problem were trying to solve? Drain the swamp, throw the bums out, clean up Washington, outsiders vs. insiders these are all platitudes that can mean almost anything to anyone.

Are lobbyists the problem? Trump and his advisers seem to think so. Theyve vowed to keep lobbyists out of the administration, and Trump has signed an order forbidding all members of his administration from lobbying for 5 years.

Its not clear whether these plans will succeed, but why should we care? Lobbyists are individuals hired to represent others with business before government. We might lament the existence of this profession, but blaming lobbyists for lobbying is like blaming lawyers for lawsuits. Everyone seems to complain about them right up until the moment that they want one.

The same goes for complaints about the clients of lobbyists the hated special interests. Presidents since at least Teddy Roosevelt have vowed to run them out of Washington yet, today, interest groups abound. Some lobby for higher taxes, some for lower taxes. Some lobby for more entitlements, some for fewer or for more fiscal responsibility in entitlement programs. Some lobby for business, some for labor, some for more regulations on both. Some lobby for freer trade, some for trade restrictions. The list goes on and on. Are they all bad?

The question we should ask is, Why do people organize into interest groups and lobby government in the first place?

The popular answer among free-market advocates is that government has too much to offer, which creates an incentive for people to tap their cronies in government to ensure that government offers it to them. Shrink government, the argument goes, and we will solve the problem.

Veronique de Rugy, senior fellow at the Mercatus Center, describes cronyism in these terms:

This is how cronyism works: A company wants a special privilege from the government in exchange for political support in future elections. If the company is wealthy enough or is backed by powerful-enough interest groups, the company will get its way and politicians will get another private-sector ally. The few cronies win at the expense of everyone else.

(Another term for this is rent seeking, and many other people define it roughly the same way.)

Theres a lot of truth to this view. Our bloated government has vast power over our lives and trillions of dollars worth of favors to dole out, and a seemingly endless stream of people and groups clamor to win those favors. As a lawyer who opposes campaign finance laws, Ive often said that the problem is not that money controls politics, its that politics controls money and property, and business, and much of our private lives as well.

Still, we need to be more precise. Favors, benefits, and privileges are too vague a way to describe what government has to offer. Among other things, these terms just raise another question: Which benefits, favors, or privileges should government offer? Indeed, many people have asked that question of cronyisms critics. Heres how the Los Angeles Times put it in an editorial responding to the effort by some Republicans to shut down the Export-Import Bank:

Governments regularly intervene in markets in the name of public safety, economic growth or consumer protection, drawing squawks of protest whenever one interest is advanced at the expense of others. But a policy thats outrageous to one faction for example, the government subsidies for wind, solar and battery power that have drawn fire on the right may in fact be a welcome effort to achieve an important societal objective.

Its a valid point. Without a way to tell what government should and should not do, whose interests it should or should not serve, complaints about cronyism look like little more than partisan politics. When government favors the groups or policies you like, thats good government in action. When it doesnt, thats cronyism.

In Rands view, there is a serious problem to criticize, but few free-market advocates are clear about exactly what it is. Simply put, the problem is the misuse of the power that government possesses, which is force. Government is the institution that possesses a legal monopoly on the use of force.

The question we need to grapple with is, how should it use that power?

Using terms like favors, privileges, and benefits to describe what government is doing when cronyism occurs is not just too vague, its far too benign. These terms obscure the fact that what people are competing for when they engage in cronyism is the privilege of legally using force to take what others have earned or to prevent them from contracting or associating with others. When groups lobby for entitlements whether its more social security or Medicare or subsidies for businesses they are essentially asking government to take that money by force from taxpayers who earned it and to give it to someone else. Call it what you want, but it ultimately amounts to stealing.

When individuals in a given profession lobby for occupational licensing laws, they are asking government to grant a select group of people a kind of monopoly status that prevents others who dont meet their standards from competing with them that is, from contracting with willing customers to do business.

These are just two examples of how government takes money and property or prevents individuals from voluntarily dealing with one another. There are many, many more. Both Democrats and Republicans favor these sorts of laws and willingly participate in a system in which trading on this power has become commonplace.

Rent seeking doesnt capture what is really going on. Neither, really, does cronyism. Theyre both too tame.

A far better term is the one used by nineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat: legal plunder. Rand uses the term political pull to describe those who succeed by convincing friends in government to use the law to plunder others or to prevent them from competing.

And she uses the phrase the Aristocracy of Pull, which is the title of a whole chapter in Atlas Shrugged, to describe a society in which political pull, rather than production and trade, has become the rule. Its a society that resembles feudalism, in which people compete to gain the favor of government officials in much the same way that people in feudal times competed for the favor of the king so they could use that power to rule over one another and plunder as they pleased.

The cause, for Rand, is not the size of government, but what we allow it to do. When we allow government to use the force it possesses to go beyond protecting our rights, we arm individuals to plunder one another and turn what would otherwise be limited instances of corruption or criminality into a systemic problem.

For example, when politicians promise to increase social security or to make education free, they are promising to take more of the incomes of taxpayers to pay for these welfare programs. When they promise to favor unions with more labor laws or to increase the minimum wage, they are promising to restrict businesses right to contract freely with willing workers. When they promise to keep jobs in America, they are promising to impose tariffs on companies that import foreign goods. The rule in such a system becomes: plunder or be plundered. What choice does anyone have but to organize themselves into pressure groups, hire lobbyists, and join the fray?

Rand memorably describes this process in the famous money speech in Atlas Shrugged:

But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims then money becomes its creators avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once theyve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Observe what kind of people thrive in such a society and who their victims are. Theres a big difference between the two, and Rand never failed to make a moral distinction between them.

In the early 1990s, Atlantic City resident Vera Coking found herself in the sights of a developer who wanted to turn the property on which she lived into a casino parking lot. The developer made what he thought was a good offer, but she refused. The developer became incensed, and instead of further trying to convince Coking to sell or finding other land, he did what a certain kind of businessman has increasingly been able to do in modern times. He pursued a political solution. He convinced a city redevelopment agency to use the power of eminent domain to force Coking to sell.

The developer was Donald Trump. His ensuing legal battle with Coking, which he lost, was the first of a number of controversies in recent decades over the use of eminent domain to take property from one private party and give it to another.

Most people can see that theres a profound moral distinction between the Trumps and their cronies in government on the one hand and people like Vera Coking on the other. One side is using law to force the other to give up what is rightfully theirs. To be blunt, one side is stealing from the other.

But the victims of the use of eminent domain often lobby government officials to save their property just as vigorously as others do to take it. Should we refer to all of them as special interests and damn them for seeking government favors? The answer should be obvious.

But if thats true, why do we fail to make that distinction when the two sides are businesses as many do when they criticize Wall Street, or the financial industry as a whole, or when they complain about crony capitalism as though capitalism as such is the problem? Not all businesses engage in pull-peddling, and many have no choice but to deal with government or to lobby in self-defense.

John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T bank (and a former board member of the Ayn Rand Institute, where I work), refused to finance transactions that involved the use of eminent domain after the Supreme Court issued its now-infamous decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which upheld the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private party to another. Later, Allison lobbied against the TARP fund program after the financial crisis, only to be pressured by government regulators into accepting the funds. In an industry as heavily regulated as banking, theres little a particular bank can do to avoid a situation like that.

Another example came to light in 2015, when a number of news articles ran stories on United Airliness so-called Chairmans Flight. This was a flight from Newark to Columbia, South Carolina, that United continued to run long after it became clear it was a money-loser. Why do that? It turns out the chairman of the Port Authority, which controls access to all the ports in New York and New Jersey, had a vacation home near Columbia. During negotiations over airport fees, he made it clear that he wanted United to keep the flight, so United decided not to cancel it. Most of the news stories blamed United for influence-peddling. Only Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal called it what it was: extortion by the Port Authority chairman.

The point is, theres a profound moral difference between trying to use government to plunder others and engaging with it essentially in self-defense. Its the same difference between a mobster running a protection racket and his victims. And theres an equally profound moral difference between people who survive through production and trade, and those who survive by political pull.

Rand spells out this latter difference in an essay called The Money Making Personality:

The Money-Maker is the discoverer who translates his discovery into material goods. In an industrial society with a complex division of labor, it may be one man or a partnership of two: the scientist who discovers new knowledge and the entrepreneur the businessman who discovers how to use that knowledge, how to organize material resources and human labor into an enterprise producing marketable goods.

The Money-Appropriator is an entirely different type of man. He is essentially noncreative and his basic goal is to acquire an unearned share of the wealth created by others. He seeks to get rich, not by conquering nature, but by manipulating men, not by intellectual effort, but by social maneuvering. He does not produce, he redistributes: he merely switches the wealth already in existence from the pockets of its owners to his own.

The Money-Appropriator may become a politician or a businessman who cuts corners or that destructive product of a mixed economy: the businessman who grows rich by means of government favors, such as special privileges, subsidies, franchises; that is, grows rich by means of legalized force.

In Atlas Shrugged, Rand shows these two types in action through characters like steel magnate Hank Rearden and railroad executive Dagny Taggart, two brilliant and productive business people who carry a crumbling world on their shoulders. On the opposite end of the spectrum are Orren Boyle, a competitor of Reardens, and Jim Taggart, Dagnys brother and CEO of the railroad where she works. Both constantly scheme to win special franchises and government contracts from their friends in Washington and to heap regulations on productive businesses like Reardens. Rearden is forced to hire a lobbyist in Washington to try to keep the bureaucrats off of his back.Government does not create wealth. It can use force to protect property and freedom or it can use that force to plunder.

When we damn special interests or businesses in general for cronyism, we end up grouping the Reardens in with the Orren Boyles, which only excuses the behavior of the latter and damns the former. This attitude treats the thug and his victim as morally equivalent. Indeed, this attitude makes it seem like success in business is as much a function of whom you know in Washington as it is how intelligent or productive you are.

It is unfortunately true that many businesses use political pull, and many are a mixture of money-makers and money-appropriators. So it can seem like success is a matter of government connections. But its not true in a fundamental sense. The wealth that makes our modern world amazing the iPhones, computers, cars, medical advances and much more can only be created through intelligence, ingenuity, creativity and hard work.

Government does not create wealth. It can use the force it possesses to protect the property and freedom of those who create wealth and who deal with each other civilly, through trade and persuasion; or it can use that force to plunder the innocent and productive, which is not sustainable over the long run. What principle defines the distinction between these two types of government?

As I noted earlier, the common view about cronyism is that it is a function of big government and that the solution is to shrink or limit government. But that just leads to the question: whats the limiting principle?

True, a government that does less has less opportunity to plunder the innocent and productive, but a small government can be as unjust to individuals as a large one. And we ought to consider how we got to the point that government is so large. If we dont limit governments power in principle, pressure group warfare will inevitably cause it to grow, as individuals and groups, seeing government use the force of law to redistribute wealth and restrict competition, ask it to do the same for them.

The common response is that government should act for the good of the public rather than for the narrow interests of private parties. The Los Angeles Times editorial quoted above expresses this view. Whats truly crony capitalism, says the Times, is when the government confuses private interests with public ones.

Most people who criticize cronyism today from across the political spectrum hold the same view. The idea that governments job is to serve the public interest has been embedded in political thought for well over a century.

Rand rejects the whole idea of the public interest as vague, at best, and destructive, at worst. As she says in an essay called The Pull Peddlers:

So long as a concept such as the public interest is regarded as a valid principle to guide legislation lobbies and pressure groups will necessarily continue to exist. Since there is no such entity as the public, since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that the public interest supersedes private interests and rights, can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals takes precedence over the interests and rights of others.

If so, then all men and all private groups have to fight to the death for the privilege of being regarded as the public. The governments policy has to swing like an erratic pendulum from group to group, hitting some and favoring others, at the whim of any given moment and so grotesque a profession as lobbying (selling influence) becomes a full-time job. If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy [a mixture of freedom and economic controls] would bring them into existence.

Its tempting to blame politicians for pull-peddling, and certainly there are many who willingly participate and advocate laws that plunder others. But, as Rand argues, politicians as such are not to blame, as even the most honest of government officials could not follow a standard like the public interest:

The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but that it cannot be used honestly. The wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity cannot find a criterion for the just, equitable, rational application of an unjust, inequitable, irrational principle. The best that an honest official can do is to accept no material bribe for his arbitrary decision; but this does not make his decision and its consequences more just or less calamitous.

To make the point more concrete: which is in the public interest, the jobs and products produced by, say, logging and mining companies or preserving the land they use for public parks? For that matter, why are public parks supposedly in the public interest? As Peter Schwartz points out in his book In Defense of Selfishness, more people attend private amusement parks like Disneyland each year than national parks. Should government subsidize Disney?

To pick another example: why is raising the minimum wage in the public interest but not cheap goods or the rights of business owners and their employees to negotiate their wages freely? It seems easy to argue that a casino parking lot in Atlantic City is not in the public interest, but would most citizens of Atlantic City agree, especially when more casinos likely mean more jobs and economic growth in the city?

There are no rational answers to any of these questions, because the public interest is an inherently irrational standard to guide government action. The only approach when a standard like that governs is to put the question to the political process, which naturally leads people to pump millions into political campaigns and lobbying to ensure that their interests prevail.

Rands answer is to limit government strictly to protecting rights and nothing more. The principle of rights, for Rand, keeps government connected to its purpose of protecting our ability to live by protecting our freedom to think and produce, cooperate and trade with others, and pursue our own happiness. As Rand put it in Atlas Shrugged (through the words of protagonist John Galt):

Rights are conditions of existence required by mans nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate mans rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

A government that uses the force it possesses to do anything more than protect rights necessarily ends up violating them. The reason is that force is only effective at stopping people from functioning or taking what they have produced or own. Force can therefore be used either to stop criminals or to act like them.

The principle, then, is that only those who initiate force against others in short, those who act as criminals violate rights and are subject to retaliation by government. So long as individuals respect each others rights by refraining from initiating force against one another so long as they deal with each other on the basis of reason, persuasion, voluntary association, and trade government should have no authority to interfere in their affairs.

When it violates this principle of rights, cronyism, corruption, pressure group warfare and mutual plunder are the results.

Theres much more to say about Rands view of rights and government. Readers can find more in essays such as Mans Rights, The Nature of Government, and What Is Capitalism? and in Atlas Shrugged.

In 1962, Rand wrote the following in an essay called The Cold Civil War:

A man who is tied cannot run a race against men who are free: he must either demand that his bonds be removed or that the other contestants be tied as well. If men choose the second, the economic race slows down to a walk, then to a stagger, then to a crawl and then they all collapse at the goal posts of a Very Old Frontier: the totalitarian state. No one is the winner but the government.

The phrase Very Old Frontier was a play on the Kennedy administrations New Frontier, a program of economic subsidies, entitlements and other regulations that Rand saw as statist and which, like many other political programs and trends, she believed was leading America toward totalitarianism. Throughout Rands career, many people saw her warnings as overblown.

We have now inaugurated as 45th president of the United States a man who regularly threatens businesses with regulation and confiscatory taxation if they dont follow his preferred policies or run their businesses as he sees fit. A recent headline in USA Today captured the reaction among many businesses: Companies pile on job announcements to avoid Trumps wrath.

Are Rands warnings that our government increasingly resembles an authoritarian regime one that issues dictates and commands to individuals and businesses, who then have to pay homage to the government like courtiers in a kings court really overblown? Read Atlas Shrugged and her other writings and decide for yourself.

Steve Simpson is the director of Legal Studies at the Ayn Rand Institute where he writes and speaks on a wide variety of legal and philosophical issues. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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Why Ayn Rand Would Have Opposed Donald Trump - PanAm Post - PanAm Post

The Narrative Gap – Huffington Post

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As I am writing these words, I am experiencing, like many of you, stress, fatigue, and dismay. It's a reaction to the deluge of lies, deceit and purposeful, vindictive chaosas Jon Stewart called itthat is being thrown our way. Its exhausting and quite disheartening to view the sad state of American democracy at this point.

Weve medicated ourselves with excessive media, narratives, and fake news, to the point that we can no longer tell truth from fiction. The vile, Fascist-Authoritarian mono-myth has reared its ugly head, spewing hatred and not caring about anyone but itself. It relies on peoples cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. Its breaking families apart, creating deliberate chaos which is, in actuality, hurting people.

Throughout this wave, I sit and ask myself, what good can come out of this?

Through my pain and sadness, I begin to think forward and ask: How do we start to build a more just and caring world?

My solace in the past few months is the groundswell and the Rise of the #Resistance, and the #Stand people are taking. Not only against the Authoritarian regime, but as a stand for a kind humanity, a real democracy, and a flourishing planet.

People are mobilizing, organizing, coming together, and bringing in their unique genius to power this movement of solidarity. People are finding their calling, meaning, and power in activism. We are all called to be activists and bring our unique voice to the rising of the people.

It feels like we are starting to bridge the Narrative Gap of the progressive and liberal movements.

I see the idea of the Narrative Gap as part of the predicament of all times - but especially of our age.

We have no shared reality with our fellow humans. We are disembodied, immature people, finally waking up for the first time. We are looking for a new human narrative and coming to the Collective Journey as a new evolutionary moment of our human story.I have written extensively about the Collective Journey - you can read more here! But, in essence:

Integral thought refers to a range of philosophies and teachings that seek a synthesis of science and spiritual ideas to attain insight into the nature of the universe. Luminaries of the Integral Thought Movement offer an excellent framework for the spiritual-psychological-societal evolution a human can have with their model of:

Wake Up > Grow Up > Clean up > Show Up.

The process goes something like this: the experience of a person's waking up moment is a lot like Neo waking up from the Matrix. Usually, this is a messy experience, similar to the sewers where Morpheus picks up Neo. As we get our bearings in our new woke experience, we start growing up as a well-rounded, mature human being. Cleaning Up is what we do when we clean up our act by practicing respect and accountability. We begin to take responsibility for our actions and practice respect to ourselves, our fellow human and the planet as a whole. As we move through this spiral of growing, we get to show up as our highest selves. We work in service to the Collective and ourselves. This is the idea of being in a superpositioned state, which I introduced in the Collective Journey Part 1: The idea of operating from the individual perspective while being part of a collective, and the seamless behavior we are starting to experience as we lead lives online and offlinealmost at the same time.

The Collective Journey comes into being when: Mature, woke, empowered humans start coming together. They bring their unique voices and are acknowledged by others.

I see a huge difference between an actual Collective Journey and Collectivism.

One can find the Collective Journey in geopolitical and social movements. Some examples are: Standing Rock, Our Revolution, environmental groups and the Cleantech industry, social justice and social entrepreneurship.These groups and others like them aim to support everyones quality of life. They look at what makes a world work for all people.

The other groups that are showing up en masse represent that dark side of Collectivism. They possess a StarTrek Borg-like mentality of unification. These are the alt-right narratives that are forming globally, the anti-intellectualism and climate-deniers. All weaving false and hateful stories under a singular idea.

This myopic approach is the antithesis of the multi-thread, multi-POV, and complex system approach of the Collective Journey. This concept of collectivism has brought us totalitarian regimes. It's fuelled by the selfishness of Neo-liberalism, toting Ayn Randian-beliefs of glorified self-interest. These are morally bankrupt humans who seek to unify ideas and race with hate.

It is interesting to me how the light and dark sides of these ideas can form. The NeoLiberal philosophy holds two tenets of Ayn Rand's Objectivism as its highest ideals. Self-Interest and Capitalism-promoting individualism. It forgoes the two other tenants of Reason and Reality. It embraces the Mono-Myth of Nationalism as a totalitarian concept. It also uses the new and old archetypes for minorities and race. To that it adds a newly adopted concept of the snowflake, as a derogatory term for liberals and progressives:

Calling someone a snowflake combines every single thing a college freshman loves: trolling people on the Internet, a self-satisfied sense of the superiority of ones own impeccable powers of reasoning, and Fight Club. Nineteen-year-olds around the nation read Atlas Shrugged and then watch Brad Pitt wax poetic about how real masculinity means getting to punch Jared Leto in the face, and now feel enlightened. - GQ - DANA SCHWARTZ - Why Trump Supporters Love Calling People "Snowflakes

The interesting thing is the origin of this term, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary: In Missouri in the early 1860s, a 'snowflake' was a person who was opposed to the abolition of slaverythe implication of the name being that such people valued white people over black people. This use seems not to have endured. In affect, its use today is the opposite of its origins.

Derogatory names are a telling indicator of being immature. The tenets of the Collective Journey look at woke and mature human beings, coming together from a stance of empowerment. This empowerment does not come from belittling others, it comes from individuals doing their own personal growth work. When they show up as part of the collective, they come to support and collaboratenot compete and fight.

How do we move from a linear point of view to the emergent complex system? How do we evolve from the authoritarian Mono-myth into the collective journey?

Bigger, complex, diverse, and pluralistic narratives, are becoming part of the global narrative. It has its roots in many movements of the past. You can find its origins in the Summer of Love, the Civil Rights Movement, the Womens Liberation and all the way back to the Abolitionist Movement. In recent years this narrative showed up in Occupy Wall Street, Our Revolution, Standing Rock and now the Womens March on Washington. It's appearing in the breathtaking plethora of #Resistance movements that are happening globally. They are all using every digital and physical platform to bring forth their stories. From social media, video, to marching and rallying in the streets, the narratives that are being created are multiplatform and have diverse perspectives.

How do we use the Collective Journey as a blueprint to build a strong future?

The architect and futurist, Buckminster Fuller, patented and coined the term "Geodesic Domes. These were a lattice of intersecting icosahedrons and were extremely strong for their weight.

"I did not set out to design a geodesic dome," Fuller once said, "I set out to discover the principles operative in Universe. For all I knew, this could have led to a pair of flying slippers." Fuller believed that by observing nature, we can tap into its exquisite design.

The Buckminsterfullerene molecule was discovered at Rice University by Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, James R. Heath, Richard Smalley and Sean OBrien in 1985. It is a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure (truncated icosahedron) which resembles a football (soccer ball), made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, with a carbon atom at each vertex of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. Wikipedia. The scientists who discovered it named it in honor of Buckminster Fuller and his vision.

I would like to introduce a metaphor that will evolve my original model for the Collective Journey. My initial design is in the diagram below.

This model is likened to a cross section you get of a tree when you want to examine its circles. You know the tree is a far more complex system - but from that vantage point, the tree appears to be two dimensional. So is the Collective Journey suggested model above. It is but a glimpse into a complex, emergent and ever-evolving system. The Collective Journey in its three-dimensional form might resemble the Buckminsterfullerene molecule.

Below are a few anecdotes about the Buckminsterfullerene molecule. These can be of use in making it a great metaphorical candidate for the evolved model of the Collective Journey:

Fuller looked at complex systems of nature and how everything in nature collaborates . He mused that this structure, which symbolizes complexity and strength would appear in nature. He was proven when the molecule was discovered in 1985.

Each node on the molecule is critical to its strength and structure - so is every voice coming into the collective. Each node is unique and vitalTogether weaving a powerful structure.

The narrative that is created is networked, porous, multi-platformed, diverse and emergent. The archetypes that show up are multifaceted and ever-evolving. Like Fuller, if we observe our narratives as being part of nature, we will view them from the complex systems perspective.

For our species to survive and evolve beyond these troubled times, we need to take a longer view of evolution. We need to start looking at our Collective Journey as the next phase of our planetary society. We need to gain the Cosmic Perspective. The perspective that views our place in the universe as the speck of dust we are. We need to cultivate the awe of the grandeur of the universe.

NASA

Carl Sagan, one of my favorite thinkers and scientists, gave us one of the first vistas into our place in the universe, by suggesting the crew that was piloting the distant satellite, Voyager 1, rotate and take an image of our solar system, as it exited in 1990.

His reflections of this picture were immortalized in Pale Blue Dot. At times like these, I hold on to these words almost as scripture. I practice looking at the longer perspective of our species and our planet. I actually hope we finally show up as the evolved species we have the potential to become:

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

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The Narrative Gap - Huffington Post

Trenton man reminded of Golden Rule in wake of Quebec attack – Northumberland News

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To the editor:

Today, I apologized to my friend, Hanifah for the act of one Canadian in Quebec, who does not share the tolerant view, of millions of other Canadians.

I went on to say I think the media is partially to blame as well. They have to validate their worth to their sponsors. Repeating the bad news over and over again with slight variations day after day makes it seem like the world is a terrible place. That is one of the goals of ISIS.

Fear is an emotion that makes some people use their emotional minds to make decisions ... instead of their logical minds. It polarizes citizens into different camps and destabilizes countries.

US President Donald Trump did the same thing to get votes.

The reality of it is, that the world is much more peaceful since the Second World War, where every major country was using all of its might, to destroy others. We actually have been in a long period of peace, thanks to the United Nations using negotiation and sanctions rather than bombs to enforce things.

Over the thousands of years of human evolution ... fight or flight mechanisms have been hard wired right into us. They are not going to disappear. We are always going to need police forces and the military as a deterrent ... not as a solution.

Education is our only hope. The Golden Rule, tolerance and co-operation always work more smoothly than confrontation and violence. Religions have tried to do this with some success, but unfortunately there are always some religious people who believe that their church owns God. Owning God leaves few choices convert the others, ignore the others or kill the others.

One man said, I trust God ... Its his helpers I dont trust.

The Golden Rule of doing onto others as you would be done by is central to all religions. Thank goodness Canadians model this. Tolerance is paramount.

John Allin,

Trenton

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Trenton man reminded of Golden Rule in wake of Quebec attack - Northumberland News