General Research #18996 >>>/qresearch/15014770
https://t.me/realKarliBonne/53589
Please oh please be true
General Research #18996 >>>/qresearch/15014797
New York ethics board revokes approval of Cuomo book deal
In a 12-1 vote, the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics revoked its previous approval of Cuomo's book, requiring the disgraced former governor to reapply for the board's approval.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo may lose his $5.1 million book deal after a state ethics board on Tuesday revoked approval for him to publish the work.
In a 12-1 vote, the state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics revoked its previous approval of Cuomo's book, claiming that state government staffers and resources were improperly used in preparing it. Cuomo must now reapply for the board's approval.
According to The Hill, Cuomo published his book "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic," prior to his resignation amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Cuomo's spokesperson Rich Azzopardi responded to JCOPE's decision to rescind its approval in a statement to local news station WABC, saying the board doesn't have that kind of authority.
"These JCOPE members are acting outside the scope of their authority and are carrying the water of the politicians who appointed them," Azzopardi said after the vote. "It is the height of hypocrisy for [Gov. Kathy] Hochul and the legislature's appointees to take this position, given that these elected officials routinely use their own staff for political and personal assistance on their own time."
https://justthenews.com/nation/new-york-ethics-board-revokes-approval-cuomo-memoir
General Research #18996 >>>/qresearch/15015188
FDA approves ineffective Alzheimer’s therapy Aduhelm after advisory panel ALL but one vote NO
shame shame shame
"Ten of the 11 panelists found that there was not enough evidence to show it could slow cognitive decline."
“This was the first time that nobody voted for approval of this drug — nobody — and they [FDA] went against that.”
https://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=4288&mn=646219&pt=msg&mid=22086137
General Research #18996 >>>/qresearch/15015330
Aspen Disinformation Group Includes Twitter Exec Who Censored Hunter Biden Story
Commissioners spread Jussie Smollett hoax, censored unflattering RBG interview
The Twitter executive responsible for blocking stories about Hunter Biden's laptop is one of several advisers to the Aspen Institute's disinformation commission.
Yoel Rothis one of several questionable advisers to Aspen's Commission on Information Disorder, which on Monday released its much-anticipated report. Commission members include Katie Couric, who recently acknowledged that she edited comments on National Anthem protests out of a 2016 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to preserve the justice's reputation with liberals. Another commissioner, Rashad Robinson, helped fuel actor Jussie Smollett's hate crime hoax.
Commission members' censorship of legitimate news stories could undercut their lofty mission. The commission blamed "decreasing levels of public trust" in public institutions for the crisis, which it dubs a "whole-of-society problem that can have life-or-death consequences." Its report calls for Congress and the White House to take action to counteract disinformation.
Roth, the head of site integrity at Twitter, blocked access to an Oct. 14, 2020, New York Post article regarding emails from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop. Roth told the Federal Elections Commission he blocked the story in part because the intelligence community had briefed him that foreign governments might release hacked materials prior to the election. No evidence has emerged that Biden's laptop was stolen or hacked, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has since acknowledged that the company should not have blocked links to the story.
The Aspen Commission report criticizes Twitter and other social media companies for failures to rein in disinformation but does not cite Twitter's censorship of the Biden article.
The tech billionaire who funded the commission, Craig Newmark, has sponsored research that pushed disinformation about Biden's laptop. Newmark paid for a study from New York University that asserted that social media companies are not biased against conservatives. The report defended Twitter's decision to block the Hunter Biden laptop story and pushed the unsubstantiated claim that the news reports were based on "stolen" documents.
Undisclosed in either the Aspen Institute report or the New York University study is that Newmark donated more than $100,000 to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
Robinson, the president of the racial justice group Color of Change, repeatedly circulated the false claim that Smollett, who is black and gay, was attacked by two white Trump supporters who hurled bigoted slurs at him. Robinson pushed the hate crime allegation even after evidence emerged that Smollett staged the attack.
Another commission adviser, Renee DiResta, advised American Engagement Technologies, a tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama. The company, which was funded by progressive tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, created fake Russian bots to follow the Republican candidate. DiResta denied knowledge of the Alabama initiative and later joined another tech company, New Knowledge, that took part in the disinformation project.
https://freebeacon.com/media/aspen-disinformation-group-includes-twitter-exec-who-censored-hunter-biden-story/
Flood Damage Cuts All Rail Access to Port of Vancouver, Canada’s Largest Port
Reuters
November 16, 2021
By Artur Gajda and Rod Nickel
Barge pic: People take photos of a barge that came loose from its mooring and crashed against the sea wall after rainstorms lashed the western Canadian province of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada November 15, 2021. REUTERS/Jesse Winter
MERRITT, British Columbia, Nov 16 (Reuters) – The port of Vancouver, Canada’s largest, said on Tuesday that all rail access had been cut by floods and landslides further to the east, a development that could hit shipments of grain, coal and potash.
Two days of torrential rain in the Pacific province of British Columbia triggered major flooding and shut rail routes operated by Canadian Pacific Rail and Canadian National Railway, by far the country’s two biggest rail companies.
“All rail service coming to and from the Port of Vancouver is halted because of flooding in the British Columbia interior,” said port spokesperson Matti Polychronis.
The floods have also closed numerous highways, including all main routes to Vancouver, she said.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his Liberal government was very concerned about the flooding and would provide any help it could.
Vancouver’s port moves C$550 million ($440 million) worth of cargo each day, ranging from automobiles and containerized finished goods to essential commodities.
The floods temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters.
Del Dosdall, senior export manager at grain handler Parrish & Heimbecker, said he expected some rail service could be running by the weekend, although another industry source said he expected the shutdown to last weeks.
EVACUATIONS AND RESCUE MISSIONS
Directly to the south of British Columbia, in Washington state, heavy rains forced evacuations and cut off electricity for over 150,000 households on Monday. The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued a flash flood in Mount Vernon, Washington, “due to the potential for a levee failure.”
Some areas of British Columbia received 8 inches (200 mm) of rain on Sunday, the amount that usually falls in a month.
Authorities in Merritt, some 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Vancouver, ordered all 8,000 citizens to leave on Monday as river waters rose quickly, but some were still trapped in their homes on Tuesday, said city spokesman Greg Lowis.
Snow blanketed the town on Tuesday and some cars could be seen floating in the flood waters, which in some parts were still 4 feet high.
The towns of Chilliwack and Abbotsford on Tuesday ordered partial evacuations.
Rescuers equipped with diggers and dogs started dismantling large mounds of debris that have choked highways.
The landslides and floods come less than six months after a wildfires gutted an entire town, as temperatures in the province soared during a record-breaking heat dome.
Helicopters carried out multiple missions on Monday to rescue hundreds of people trapped in their vehicles when mudslides cut off a highway near the mountain town of Agassiz, about 120km (75 miles) east of Vancouver.
The storms forced the closure of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which takes crude oil from Alberta to the Pacific Coast. The line has a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. (Reporting by Artur Gajda in Merritt and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Nia Williams in Calgary, Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru and Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; editing by Ed Osmond, Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis)
Canada Significantly Out Investing U.S. for Port Infrastructure
Published Nov 15, 2021 8:04 PM by The Maritime Executive
The celebration of the signing of the U.S. infrastructure legislation into law today in Washington, D.C., is seen as a critical step but according to a research report from U.S. West Coast ports maybe be just catching up to foreign competition. The bill, which is being valued at $1.2 billion includes important elements for U.S. ports, although some of the projects for roads, bridges airports, and Wi-Fi are far more visible and gaining attention.
In announcing the results of the study commissioned by the ports of Washington state and California, the Northwest Seaport Alliance contends that current federal levels of investment in infrastructure are insufficient to build the freight system the U.S. needs today and in the coming decades. The report says investments in the ports and supporting infrastructure are critical to maintaining U.S. competitiveness.
"The important role seaports play in the nation's economy has never been more visible than it is today, during the global pandemic," said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero, one of the sponsors of the report. "The West Coast is the gateway to Asia and the country's most prominent trade partners. A more equitable distribution of federal funding would make all our operations faster and more efficient, with tremendous benefits up and down the supply chain."
Among the key findings of the report is that Canadian ports have received more than double the federal funding levels compared to U.S. West Coast ports. They highlight that ports in British Columbia have been successful in competing against Washington and California to attract container traffic. They believe that competition will continue to increase, especially in light of the publicity over the backlogs at U.S. ports.
They contend that the Canadian federal government is treating its West Coast ports as a national priority. The contributions coming from the Canadian federal government to support port projects in British Columbia are “substantially exceeding U.S. grants to Washington and California over the past five years.”
“The Canadian government has made their British Columbia ports a national priority and unfortunately U.S. west coast ports have seen market share slowly shift north to Canada,” stated NWSA Co-Chair and Port of Tacoma Commissioner President Dick Marzano. “More infrastructure funding from the U.S. federal government means that we can move more cargo and support more family-wage jobs across our region.”
According to the report, from 2016 to 2020, ports in British Columbia received $372 million in direct port project funding compared with just $45 million for Washington state ports and $179 million for California ports.
Beyond port-specific projects, the report also cites road and rail infrastructure that supports the efficient movement of goods throughout the supply chain saying that they are also receiving significantly fewer federal dollars than Canadian investments. The study reports that from 2005 to 2020 federal contributions to port-related projects total $1.332 billion in British Columbia compared to $457 million for Washington projects.
They concluded that the U.S. government needs to focus support critical infrastructure such as road, rail, highway, and bridge improvements to help the growth in U.S. commerce.
https://maritime-executive.com/article/canada-significantly-out-investing-u-s-for-port-infrastructure
China's "Maritime Powerhouse" Goals Include Expansion in Antarctica
Published Nov 14, 2021 1:53 PM by The Strategist
[By John Garrick]
The Antarctic Treaty System, which has governed affairs in Antarctica since 1961, is struggling under the weight of great-power competition. Through gaps in governance frameworks, states are exploiting the treaty and its subordinate protocols to pursue their national interests.
Antarctica offers great treasure in natural resources, scientific opportunity and national prestige. Antarctica’s ‘prizes’ include fishing stocks, bioprospecting opportunities, climate science analysis and hydrocarbons (with potential reserves of between 300 and 500 billion tonnes of natural gas on the continent and potentially 135 billion tonnes of oil in the Southern Ocean).
Article 1 of the Antarctic Treaty declares that use of Antarctica is for scientific observation and investigation—for peaceful purposes only. Despite the treaty suspending the claims of the seven original claimants (Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the UK), the US and Soviet Union (as additional, non-claimant, original signatories) exercised the right under the treaty to stake a claim at a later stage. In effect, the treaty froze the issue of territorial sovereignty.
Now, however, the great powers are refocusing their attention on achieving their strategic objectives by alternate means as the treaty’s protocols come up for renewal in 2048. What could change between now and then? As stakeholders with voting rights on continental governance, the consultative parties to the treaty might decide to keep its environmental protocol and continue to prohibit mining and militarization. But they might not.
China’s disregard of the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling on its South China Sea claims, coupled with its intense competition for resource access and assertive actions in international governance forums, suggests that a watch-and-wait approach in Antarctica is a high-risk one. Since the establishment of its first Antarctic research station, the Great Wall, in 1985, China has expanded its presence on the continent. Three of the country’s four research stations are based within the Australian Antarctic Territory, and a fifth is under construction on Inexpressible Island in the Ross Sea. China’s emergence as a polar power includes substantial investment in icebreakers and continental airstrips to provide year-round access.
The Chinese government’s strategic approach to Antarctica is at the level of national security policy. Official documentation incorporates Antarctica and the Southern Ocean into the state’s expanded conception of domains for influence and dominance, beyond the Indo-Pacific. Beijing recognizes no existing claims to the continent and pursues a strategy that maximizes its own national interests there.
China’s polar affairs are governed through the State Oceanic Administration, which sits directly under the Ministry of Natural Resources. The Polar Research Institute of China nominally administers scientific activity on behalf of the State Oceanic Administration, yet its reach covers "polar politics, economy, science and security." Since 2011, Antarctic priorities have been set at the national level through the Chinese Communist Party’s five-year plans, which explicitly characterize the polar regions as a "new strategic frontier."
The CCP seeks to affirm China’s international legitimacy on the continent on the one hand and maximize domestic support for Chinese Antarctic activities on the other. China thus has "two voices" targeting separate audiences. Externally, China portrays itself as conforming to the treaty system’s institutions with a primary interest in science. Beijing has accused Antarctic forums of being a "rich man’s club" dominated by the US, claiming that others are portrayed as "second-class citizens." This ignores the fact that China has equal voting rights as a consultative party. The CCP narrative is that China has been denied its rightful place in the international order.
Domestically, President Xi Jinping’s November 2014 speech, given aboard the Xuelong icebreaker then docked in Hobart, declared that China wanted "to become a polar great power." China then asserted its "right" to polar leadership in 2015 through its national security law, emphasizing the state’s interests in "new frontiers," including Antarctica and the Arctic, among others. By listing these domains in a security context, China laid a domestic legal foundation to protect its potential future rights in them.
More:
https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-maritime-powerhouse-goals-include-expansion-in-antarctica
not suspicious at all
General Research #18997 >>>/qresearch/15015950
Alison Julie Nathan (born June 18, 1972) is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who also served as Associate White House Counsel for Barack Obama.
In a New York Times obituary of Judge Deborah Batts, Nathan remembered Batts as an inspiration.
During the 2004 campaign season, she acted as John Kerry's Associate National Counsel for the Kerry-Edwards Democrat Campaign for President.
From 2009 until 2010, for about 18 months,[8] Nathan served as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and also as Associate White House Counsel.
On March 31, 2011, President Obama nominated Nathan to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to replace Judge Sidney H. Stein, who took senior status in 2010.[1][9] The United States Senate confirmed Nathan in a 48–44 vote on October 13, 2011.[10] She received her judicial commission on October 17, 2011.[2] Nathan is recorded as the second openly gay jurist on the federal bench, after Deborah Batts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Nathan