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Negative thinking

"What you say when you talk to yourself creates your attitude," says self-made millionaire Grant Cardone. "Your entire life is created by your thoughts â€" and then by your language."

Your choice of words can mean the difference between living a wealthy life and an average one. "Start using the language that highly successful people employ every day," he says. "Some examples of words to include in your new vocabulary: 'Great,' 'super,' 'wonderful,' 'incredible,' 'excellent.' If someone asks you, 'How was your weekend?' Respond: 'It was a blast.'"

Getting by without goals

"The number one reason most people don't get what they want is that they don't know what they want," writes self-made millionaire T. Harv Eker in his book, "Secrets of the Millionaire Mind."

If you want to build wealth, you have to have a clear goal, a specific plan and hard deadlines. And when you're setting goals, don't be afraid to think big. The rich set their expectations exceptionally high and are up for any challenge, Siebold says: "No one would ever strike it rich and live their dreams without huge expectations."


https://www.cnbc.com/

Staying safe

The average person wants to be comfortable. Rich people, on the other hand, are stimulated by uncertainty.

Stepping outside of your comfort zone means doing things like asking for what you want, waking up early, giving and accepting feedback and admitting mistakes.

Buying things you can't afford

Rather than spending everything they earn, the rich have multiple streams of income and put their money to work.

The sooner you start investing the better, says Michael Katchen, who manages hundreds of millions of dollars for millennials. So rather than living above your means, find ways to save more and then invest that money to take advantage of compound interest.

Kathleen Elkins   | @kathleen_elk  11:29 AM ET Thu, 13 July 2017


Like most things in life, wealth doesn't simply appear.

The good news is, "if you follow the beliefs, philosophies and strategies of the rich and take action, you have a legitimate shot at becoming a millionaire," says self-made millionaire Steve Siebold, who spent decades studying rich people for his book "How Rich People Think."

If you're ready to take action, start by giving up these five costly habits.

Saying 'yes' to everything

Even if you have good intentions, trying to accomplish a whole host of things at once can backfire. More often than not, you'll end up stretching yourself too thin.

As billionaire Warren Buffett says, "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say 'no' to almost everything."

The American government should also work to level the information playing field, increasing its investment in public broadcasters and demanding a hefty financial commitment from companies like Facebook and Twitter â€" the unwitting agents of Russia’s information war â€" to support the proliferation of local, citizen-focused journalism. If social networks are unwilling to be the arbiters of truth (despite 45 percent of American adults’ getting news from Facebook), they should at the very least provide grants to reporters who cover the local issues that most immediately affect people’s lives and donate advertising to small outlets that cannot compete with national media giants.

Finally, under no circumstances should the United States attempt to restrict freedom of the media. The United States might label RT or Sputnik a foreign agent, but it should never ban them. It also need not reinvent the wheel by creating an American version of RT. These would be grave mistakes that would erode America’s position as a beacon of free speech. They would contribute to the crisis of trust that makes Russian disinformation successful in the first place.

Russia has very deftly exploited America’s weaknesses â€" but these are weaknesses of our own making. Until policy makers start putting people at the heart of their fight against disinformation, they will continue to be easy targets for Russian lies.


Nina Jankowicz is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 25, 2017, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Win the Information War. Today's Paper

Readers compare this coverage with their dwindling bank balances and crumbling infrastructure and feel disconnected and disenfranchised, and latch onto something â€" anything â€" that speaks to them. That might be President Trump’s tweets. Or dubious “news” from an extreme right- or left-wing site might ring true. Or they might turn to Russian disinformation, which exploits this trust gap.

All is not lost. Disinformation can be defeated without the establishment of a shiny new initiative cased in the language of Cold War 2.0. Instead of “rapid information operations,” the United States should work to systematically rebuild analytical skills across the American population and invest in the media to ensure that it is driven by truth, not clicks.

The fight starts in people’s minds, and the molding of them. In K-12 curriculums, states should encourage a widespread refocusing on critical reading and analysis skills for the digital age. Introductory seminars at universities should include a crash course in sourcing and emotional manipulation in the media. Similar courses could be created as professional development for adults, beginning with state employees. Large corporations could be offered government incentives to participate, too.

Training like this has a proven track record. In Ukraine, IREX, a nongovernmental organization, trained 15,000 people in critical thinking, source evaluation and emotional manipulation. As a result, IREX measured a 29 percent increase in participants who double check the news they consume. Another neighbor of Russia, Finland, has been resistant to Russian influence in part because of its media education program, which begins in childhood.

Unfortunately, these views are shared by many people who work in the burgeoning anti-fake-news field. They discuss responding directly to Russia by restricting speech, flagging false information on public platforms and opening centers to counter disinformation. The creation of a Western media antidote to RT is floated regularly, even though the channel has only about eight million viewers in the United States each week. (While it has more viewers on YouTube, they are largely brought in by memes or disaster videos, not news.)

What no one seems to care to discuss is the people who are targets of Russian disinformation, why its narratives find fertile ground among them and what can be done to change that.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 20 percent of Americans trust their government. The same low percentage has “a lot” of trust in the national news media. It’s impossible to say definitively what causes this mistrust, but its growth has coincided with the rise of both the adrenaline-driven internet news cycle and the dying of local journalism over the past two decades. Without news that connects people to their town councils or county fair, or stories that analyze how federal policies affect local businesses, people are left with news about big banks in New York and dirty politics in Washington.

By NINA JANKOWICZSEPT. 25, 2017





WASHINGTON â€" Since the American presidential election, RT and Sputnik, Russia’s state-funded foreign media networks, have dominated the discussion about the United States’ response to Russian disinformation. This month, the American government debated whether those outlets should be categorized as foreign agents; a recent article in The New York Times Magazine labeled RT “the most effective propaganda operation of the 21st century so far.”

Many Americans seem increasingly to embrace the belief that snuffing out these networks and otherwise responding directly to Russian fakes will win the information war. It won’t. To win this fight, Americans need to think seriously about why RT, Sputnik and “fake news” resonate with so many people in the first place.

RT and Sputnik are bellwethers for the progressing American policy response to disinformation. On Sept. 14, Molly McKew, a writer and consultant who describes herself as an “information warfare expert,” testified before Congress that these “media outlets” and others “deep within the shadow space” have infected America. In response, Ms. McKew would have us “develop a rapid response capability for irregular information warfare” to “secure our information space.” She also recommended more regulation for social media.

Modi's record in job-creation is "disastrous" and the resultant economic insecurity is "being aggressively exploited by the right-wing", said Rahul.

"His administration is taking the anger of the youth and diverting it against minorities. That is what most right-wing leaders do - this bait-and-switch is not dissimilar from what the right-wing are doing all over the world," said Rahul.

The weapon being used is "hate", and it is being sued by the RSS and the BJP, said Rahul.

"They are creating massive fault lines by isolating millions of our people. Tribals, Dalits and Muslims are simply being told by the ruling party that they cannot be part of India's vision. Journalists are being shot dead," said Rahul.

Rahul Gandhi compares PM Modi to Philippines's Rodrigo Duterte: They both thrive on hate, disrespect institutions
TIMESOFINDIA.COM | Updated: Sep 29, 2017, 10:01 IST


NEW DELHI: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said PM Narendra Modi and the Philippines's Rodrigo Duterte are vey alike in that they both "thrive on hatred and disrespect institutions".

In an interview carried in The Huffington Post this week, Rahul also said socially and economically, Modi "is a status-quoist pretending to be a reformer". He added that the decision to demonetise was not just "a body blow to our economy", it is also a "superb example" of this disrespect for institutions, because it was "taken unilaterally" by PM Modi. Still, PM Modi came to power democratically, and for that to happen, Modi followed "the model of the Muslim Brotherhood [in Egypt]".

The Congress vice president said Modi and the government are exploiting the supposed anger over unemployment to use it "against minorities". That, combined with "institutional civil war", has led to a "crisis" for Indian democracy, said the Congress vice president.

"It is this combination of circumstances that has created the space for leaders like Modi and Duterte who thrive on hatred and disrespect institutions," said Rahul in his interview with Nicolas Berggruen, the chairman of a US think tank, Berggruen Institute.

Bwahaha!

The lamps are going out…

The broad sweep of US and North Korean policy make any non-military outcome to this crisis less and less likely. It is possible but not probable the Kim Dynasty will capitulate to US nuclear demands in the face of economic privation. It is possible the new sanctions will be so effective the North Korean state will collapse under the strain. But this is unlikely in the short term and the long term will not matter given the pace of North Korea’s ICBM development efforts. The roads to a negotiated settlement are being blocked by North Korean intransigence and American diplomatic unreliability. Alternatives to warâ€"such as UN sanctionsâ€"are being replaced by a unilateral American economic war. Both sides are focused exclusively on their optimal outcome and view alternatives as mortal threats. Any error or misstep in this highly unstable strategic environment could ignite a nuclear first strike. We are not yet at the point of war, but the gears of war are beginning to grind inexorably towards it. The lamps are going out in Asia.

A follow-up article will give the layman some food for thought about war: how it can be made less disastrous and what issues need to be thought through before it is too late.

[1]
This essay will not discuss possible technological “aces in the hole” that the US might have that might change the nature of US military calculations. That is for another time and column.

[2]
This does not mean every missile and every nuclear weapon would be eliminated (more on this is a separate article). But, by striking first the US could greatly simplify its missile defense problem, eliminate the risk of an attack on the continental US and reduce significantly if not eliminate the risk of a nuclear attack on Japan. It would certainly vastly reduce US military casualties and preserve its ability to prosecute successfully the war.

Iran

The Kim regime does not give a fig about the fate of other countries. But it does draw (false) lessons about US actions towards them. How can it not doubt at this point that the Trump administration can be trusted to keep any agreement if that agreement merely annoys the current President? If there is one thing that is consistent about the Trump administration’s diplomacy, it is its absolute passion for reneging on agreements. In less than a year the President has already withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Paris Climate Accord and he has practically had to be wrestled to the ground to keep him from doing the same on NAFTA and the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement. Trump’s blasting of the Iran nuclear agreement in his UNGA speech is one of many indicators that the President wishes to abrogate that agreement by hook or crook. True, Pyongyang made clear soon after the Iran agreement was announced that it had no interest in a Korean counterpart agreement. But it will certainly notice if the US abrogates an agreement with another member of President Bush’s famous “axis of evil” after that country downgraded its nuclear capabilities and despite the fact that all objective observers agree that it is complying with the agreement. It is hard to find a better way to convince your adversary not to reach an agreement with you than to say “We will break agreements at will. Oh, by the way, we also have plans to utterly destroy your country.”

The North Koreans seem to see things in just the opposite light. They believe the US plans to use its superior conventional military technology to achieve regime change. In their view, had Saddam Hussein or Col. Gaddafi possessed a viable nuclear deterrent, both dictators and their regimes would still be standing. It believes, mistakenly, that the survival of the Kim dynasty depends on North Korea’s ability to hold US cities at risk with nuclear weapons. They probably also believe once they have a viable ability to strike the continental US, they will be able to negotiate their way out of sanctions. Paradoxically, it is thus racing towards the one condition that would cause the US to shake off its six-decades old acceptance of mutual deterrence on the Korean peninsula. President Trump was not wrong in saying Kim Jong Un was on a suicide mission.

Thus, both sides have cast away the idea that they had already achieved the ability to deter the other and blinded themselves to many possible stopping points on this descent into war. History is replete with nuclear weapons states that have found means to stabilize peace and security even in the face of challenges from new entrants to the nuclear club. One need only look at the example of China. When it entered the nuclear club in 1964, Mao was at least as volatile and bloodthirsty a tyrant as Kim is today and China was a much greater threat to US interests than the DPRK is today. Both the US and USSR considered preventive war but other roads were chosen that have benefited all of us breathing non-radioactive air today.

Denuclearizing North Korea is a worthy goal. But it is not worthy of a nuclear war in East Asiaâ€"even one the US would win. There are less appealing but acceptable alternatives that would leave US alliances intact and allow the natural advantages of the US and its allies to erode North Korea’s hostility over time. The same logic should apply to Pyongyang. It has been remarkably successful at playing off its many neighbors and the United States. It has survived the worst of its economic maladies. The greatest threat to its survival is forcing the US into a war in which it believes its own people’s survival is at stake. The DPRK could easily return to its earlier deterrent strategy and survive for decades.

Mutual Blindness on End States

Both sides seem to have maneuvered themselves psychologically into the belief that war is inevitable unless the other side capitulates to its desired end state. For the DPRK this means that safety can only be achieved if it can target US cities. For the US it means war is inevitable if the DPRK achieves that goal. Senior US Administration officials have already made numerous comments about preventive war. They have begun the usual US psychological preparation for conflict by labeling the prospective opponent evil and mad. And they have given indications that they have agreed on military options that will be brought into play under certain publicly ill-defined circumstances. It is likely the inner councils of the Administration have already agreed on a set of military actions that will be put into play if Pyongyang is about to field a nuclear-armed missile capable of striking the continental United States before sanctions bring Pyongyang to its knees. This unspoken decision stems from the belief that the United States cannot live for a day under the threat of a single North Korean nuclear weapon capable of reaching major US cities.

It is unlikely that the Trump administration is so blind that it has let itself fall into a completely deterministic logic for the end of this crisis. Certainly they must hope their unilateral trade embargo could increase and speed up economic damage on North Korea to the point that it faces collapse before it can achieve its ICBM goal. Perhaps the Trump Administration believes that behind the scenes Pyongyang is bluffing and is prepared to walk back from the precipice. It would not be the first time Pyongyang changed course when it felt war was getting close. But all of these possibilities are more hopes than a coherent strategy to achieve an acceptable outcome.

Due to a fatal error in North Korean strategic calculation, this environment has been destabilized. Pyongyang has chosen to: 1) add millions of US hostages to its strategy by pressing forward with development of a thermonuclear-tipped ICBM; and 2) craft and test a nuclear war fighting strategy that targets nuclear weapons on key US military assets and facilities which are critical to US and ROK defense planning. Leaving aside whether having American civilians in North Korean nuclear cross-hairs would undercut the faith of our ROK and Japanese allies in US resolve, the US and ROK militaries simply cannot afford to have key air, sea or logistics bases and debarkation points for US ground reinforcements neutralized by a DPRK nuclear first strikeâ€"not to mention the military and civilian casualties that would result from absorbing the North’s first strike. However effective US and Japanese theater missile defense might be, it is vulnerable to a barrage of missiles and the DPRK has hundreds available for attacks on Japan and South Korea. Any prudent US commander would have strong incentives to preemptively attack North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities at the outset of a conflict in order to limit the damage to vital US military assets.[1]

The situation is even worse from the North Korean side. North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilitiesâ€"and even more so its early warning and command and control capabilities for nuclear warâ€"are hopelessly inferior to the US high technology conventional weapons or to its nuclear capabilities. It is unlikely a US conventional strike could totally eliminate North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and it almost certainly could not eliminate the threat to the “hostages” in Seoul. But a thorough and well-planned nuclear strike drawing on US strategic forces might well successfully disarm the DPRK and paralyze its command and control.[2] A prudent North Korean commander cannot exclude such a possibility and has to understand his vast numerical and technological disadvantage. His only hope for pursuing his nuclear war fighting strategy is to attack first while he has the assets and command and control capabilities to act. This is publicly stated North Korean nuclear doctrine.

What all this means is that if a mistake, miscalculation or incident sparks war, it is likely to go nuclear very fast.

The Environment and the Stakes

The strategic environment on the Korean peninsula has been for decades one of tense, but stable, mutual deterrence. The ROK and the US have sufficient forces to halt any attack by the DPRK and have all the long-term political, military and economic advantages that would permit them to mobilize a devastating conventional military counter-strike that would defeat the North’s forces and eliminate the Kim dynasty. Such a conflict might well be a bloody affair, but its outcome would be certain. For at least the last 25 years, no North Korean general could believe that victory would be achieved in an attack on South Korea and each of the heads of the Kim dynasty have known that the US had the capability and intention to make the end of a second Korean War a decisive and final victory for the US and ROK.

Despite the never-ending assertions in Washington that the North Korean regime cannot be deterred, the last 64 years of Korean history demonstrate the contrary. For its part, the DPRK had its own deterrent advantage: the civilian population and economic infrastructure of the greater Seoul metropolitan area. North Korean artillery, tactical rockets, and its SCUD missile force armed with high explosives, chemical and probably biological weapons held the 25 million civilians of the Seoul region hostage as well as the bulk of the economic infrastructure of a major player in the global economy.

Why the Alarm?

What could prompt the author to make such apocalyptic historical parallels from what, in the context of the never-ending stream of ill-considered words from this President, was a fairly average speech? First, it was uttered in an unstable, nuclear-armed strategic environment. Second, it confirmed in front of the entire global community that should conflict come, it would be total in nature with the survival of both the North Korean regime and its entire population at stake. Third, the US and North Korea are blind to alternative end states to the one they fear/desire. This is how leaders come to see war as the only choice. Finally, the speech undercut any possibility that North Korea would consider making any concession on its nuclear deterrent by underlining that the US will not keep its word even when it has negotiated an agreement with a hostile government.

Trump’s over-the-top attack on the Iran nuclear agreement in the UNâ€"a body that had fully endorsed that agreement with a unanimous UN Security Council Resolutionâ€"undermines his credibility as a negotiating partner for any nuclear agreement with North Korea. If the Iran agreement is trashed, Kim Jong Un would be a fool of the first order to negotiate any reduction in his deterrent with the United States. In other words, in a nuclearized environment in which both North Korea and the US have sound military reasons to want to attack first, Trump informed the North Koreans that he will not be bound by a diplomatic agreement and his military intent is the extinction of the DPRK. He has cornered a vicious animal and told it he intends to kill it and its young. His announcement last week of far-reaching secondary economic sanctions designed to unilaterally impose a complete trade and financial embargo on North Korea is likely to pour gasoline on the fire he set in New York.

Echoes of the Past

Major wars are not created with a single action. They flow from a series of decisions that drive participants towards a sense that no other action but war can extricate them from their predicament. For example, many historians now credit Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany’s July 2, 1914 telegram to the Austrian government, which gave his ally a so-called blank check to do whatever it wished in the crisis with Serbia, as the fatal step that set the machinery inexorably in motion for the catastrophe of World War I. Trump shares one common and dangerous trait with the Kaiser: both were amateur militarists given to public bluster and adopting an ultra-nationalist bully-boy style of diplomacy, in part to cover up vast weaknesses in their own characters and their lack of understanding of their countries’ true strengths. But neither of these individuals intended to unleash catastrophe. Certainly, the Kaiser would never have sent his blank check if he had known it would result in the fall of his own dynasty, the disappearance of centuries-old empires, the death of millions, and the emergence of Nazism in his country. No doubt, Trump sees himself as a heroic figure standing up to a mad tyrant using rhetoric, economic pressure and, if necessary, military force to break him. He does not see because he does not understand the vast risks he is running for his own citizens, or millions of residents of East Asia.

http://www.38north.org/
BY: JOSEPH DETHOMAS
SEPTEMBER 25, 2017


“The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
â€" Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, August 3, 1914


US President Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 19 may well come to be viewed as “historic,” but not in a good way. This article will leave for others the impact of Donald Trump’s and Kim Jong Un’s reality TV show rhetoric. But the substance of Trump’s speechâ€"including threats to both North Korea and the Iran dealâ€"may have closed any remaining doors to a diplomatic resolution to this crisis surrounding North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Moreover, Trump’s speech and the North Korean reaction seem to have set us on a path that could very well end in a major war in Asia. The escalating threats and the closing off of diplomatic options by both sides makes it now more likely than ever that President Trump will have to make good on his threat to “utterly destroy” a nation of 25 million people. The strategic consequences of carrying out this threat, even if successful, will be felt for the remainder of this century, largely to the detriment of the United States and the Western World.

Uson has repeatedly criticized journalists by calling them "presstitutes," or journalists paid to write biased and inaccurate news.

Uson has been caught posting wrong information online. In May, she posted a photo asking for prayers for the Philippine Army which turned out to be a photo of the Honduran police. Uson defended her post, calling it symbolism.

In August, she posted a story about a killed cop and used it to hit members of the opposition for supposedly using for propaganda the death of 17-year-old Kian Lloyd delos Santos in the hands of the police. It turned out that the story was published over a year ago.

Uson, together with other pro-administration groups and personalities, recently posted details of Senator Antonio Trillanes IV's alleged offshore bank accounts. Trillanes disproved owning 2 bank accounts in Singapore by personally going to that country.

President Duterte later on admitted that he just "invented" those bank account numbers as "bait." â€" Rappler.com

Andanar defended Uson and said she still enjoyed the support of the President despite the bashing. Case in point, he said, is Uson’s frequent travels with the President especially to “sensitive places” like Marawi City.

“Kahit na po maraming puna kaya Asec Mocha, literal binabash siya at meron ng mga #firemocha na lumalabas, she still continues to fly with the President wherever he goes, especially in sensitive places. So that goes to show Asec Mocha enjoys the trust and the confidence of the President,” Andanar said.

Senator Nancy Binay then directly told Andanar that PCOO's main problem in fighting fake news is Uson.

“Ang hirap i-separate ng Mocha private citizen and Mocha the Asec, lalong lalo na… I mean how can you, Secretary Andanar, fight fake news kung may instances na nanggagaling mismo sa isang Asec yung fake news? So I guess yun yung nagiging dilemma mo, how would you balance things,” Binay said. (It is hard to separate the Mocha as private citizen and Mocha the Asec. I mean how can you, Secretary Andanar, fight fake news if there are instances where the Asec is the one spreading fake news? So I guess that's your dilemma, how would you balance things.)

Andanar then thanked the senators for their "reminders."

Responding to issues against Uson, Andanar said she told him that her Facebook page is her own and does not reflect the views of the PCOO.

“With the issue kay Asec Mocha Uson, nagkaroon po kami ng agreement, actually siya mismo nagsabi na ang kanyang Facebook page ay sa kanya lamang at kung anong sasabihin niya ay kanyang sariling opinyon at di po ito reflective sa PCOO. She really insists ganoon po magiging sistema," Andanar told senators. (With the issue against Asec Mocha Uson, we had an agreement. Actually, she was the one who told me that her Facebook page is her own and whatever she says there is her own opinion and is not reflective of the PCOO. She really insists that the system should be like that.)

“But there’s also a debate, Mr Chair. If you're a political appointee, do you stop being political? We all know that Asec Mocha Uson is one of the staunch allies who would fight tooth and nail for the President,” he added.

Camille Elemia
@CamilleElemia
Published 3:29 PM, September 20, 2017
Updated 6:25 PM, September 20, 2017


'How can you fight fake news kung may instances na nanggagaling mismo sa isang Asec yung fake news?' Senator Nancy Binay asks Communications Secretary Martin Andanar


MANILA, Philippines â€" Senators raised this issue against Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson, with Senator Nancy Binay saying the battle against fake news is difficult because of the dancer turned government official.

The topic was discussed on Wednesday, September 20, during the Senate hearing on the proposed P1.35 billion of the Presidential Communications Operations Office for 2018.

“I would have wanted Secretary Uson to answer some questions,” Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito said.

Uson, a staunch supporter of President Rodrigo Duterte, has been repeatedly spreading fake information on her social media account.

Andanar said Uson is in New York with Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, who is attending the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Dog Chopin

Hmm, related ba kaha ni nga word with a recent Filipinism of sorts...

Hmm, impeccable grace under pressurre...

http://www.politifact.com/
By Angie Drobnic Holan
on Friday, September 22nd, 2017 at 1:02 p.m.


In one of the strangest war of words we’ve seen here at PolitiFact, President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un traded insults recently, culminating in the use of the insult "dotard."

Merriam-Webster noted that searches for the word spiked.

Older PolitiFact staffers informed our younger counterparts that a dotard is someone who has entered his or her dotage, and that dotage is "a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness," according to Merriam-Webster.

Kim Jong Un hurled the word at Trump in response to Trump’s recent speech at the United Nations, saying that Trump’s speech was "unprecedented rude nonsense one has never heard from any of his predecessors. A frightened dog barks louder. I’d like to advise Trump to exercise prudence in selecting words and to be considerate of whom he speaks to when making a speech in front of the world."

Later in the statement, Kim said, "Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation. I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire."

Trump responded on Twitter: "Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!"

Where this war of words will lead is anyone’s guess. PolitiFact recently reviewed the issues surrounding North Korea as a preview to Trump’s speech at the United Nations, and we fact-checked Trump’s speech as well.

Kiniy looy kay wa tawon kalihay...

“When chimps are competing for dominance, they do a lot of blustering, swaggering, and intimidation,” Goodall explained to Jezebel.

“The chimps who are smart, they use their brain and they get to the top by forming clever alliances, like with their brothers. So you don’t challenge the top guy without a lot of support. They last longer, the ones with the brain. The ones who do the swaggering don’t last as long.”

Just in case you’re wondering which camp she feels Trump falls into, the interviewer responded, “Here’s hoping.” Goodall agreed: “We’re all hoping.”

So, according to the famed primatologist, Trump is more like a “swaggering” chimpanzeeâ€"quick to show his brawn and mightâ€"but lacking the intellect to be strategic. Maybe that explains why he goaded Kim Jong Un by calling him “Rocket Man” in his U.N. address Tuesday.

Trump’s election campaign was littered with plenty of metaphorical stamping and rock-throwing, like the press conference with women who alleged sexual misconduct against his political rival Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton.

Trump’s outlandish publicity stunts, boisterous rally speeches and boastful promises to “make America great again,” as Goodall presciently foresaw, did help him rise to the highest office in the U.S.

Now that Trump is president, Goodall is doubling down on her comparison between the president and a chimpanzee, agreeing that he is like an aggressive chimp, and even referring to him as a “swaggering” one.

And if Goodall's observations in primate behavior are accurate, then, she says, it’s usually the “swaggering” chimps that fall from from their lofty treetops first.

Donald Trump Is Like an Aggressive Chimp and May Not Last Long as President, Says Famous Primatologist Jane Goodall
Newsweek  Tufayel Ahmed,Newsweek 2 hours 32 minutes ago


Primatologist Jane Goodall has made her name studying chimpanzees for over half a century. So, if anyone can deduce a distinct correlation between a brash chimp and the egoistic hubris of, say, the president of the United States, it’s Goodall.

Pre-election, last October, Goodall made a comparison between then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and the primates she has devoted her life to understanding.

“In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” she told the Atlantic.

“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: Stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

Quote from: islander on September 17, 2017, 10:08:35 PM
President Duterte and Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez rant and rave against the Commission on Human Rights, and then go ad hominem and vent their ire on its chair, Chito Gascon.

What do they say? It goes something like this, but the Reader is invited to go to YouTube and hear their rants and raves for herself: The CHR is showing its yellow color, it protects/defends only the criminals’ human rights and can’t care less about the criminals’ victims. And it is selective. Why hasn’t it gone after the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute group, which obviously have violated so many human rights? Why concentrate on the police and military?

And Alvarez adds his own spice: Don’t the CHR members get their salaries from the government? So why are they always criticizing it? And then Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, not to be left out, chimes in: The CHR was invalidly created, anyway.

Bwahaha!

Prof Harrison, who has been researching coral reproduction for 35 years, said his world-first breakthrough could restore marine environments around the world by helping coral have sex more effectively.

Experts warn coral bleaching may have killed up to half of all reef colonies on the Great Barrier Reef in the past two years, with former Australian Institute of Marine Science chief scientist Charlie Veron saying the impact was being felt in Gold Coast waters. Dr Veron fears fishing industries will fail worldwide as reefs die from the impact of global warming and ocean acidification.

Prof Harrison said coral spawns in clouds of eggs and sperm that float freely in the water currents, but many missed the reefs altogether. With $1.2 million from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and a team of local researchers, Prof Harrison said he had managed to capture coral eggs and sperm and breed them in artificial tanks.

The resulting larvae is then placed on the dead or damaged reef and protected by building tents made of organza, the material used in wedding veils and dresses, to protect them from rough seas and being eaten by fish.

Professor Peter Harrison, who has been researching coral reproduction for 35 years, said his world-first breakthrough could restore marine environments around the world by helping coral have sex more effectively.


Regrowing reef: corals say ‘I do’
NICK McELROY, NT News
September 16, 2017 6:30am


BRIDES love it and coral could too.

Material used to make wedding veils is the key to combating “the international reef crisis”, a northern NSW coral researcher says.

And it all revolves around coral getting their kicks more easily.

In the past few years, Southern Cross University Professor Peter Harrison said he had bred and nurtured 1mm-long larvae to breeding corals roughly the size of dinner plates on reefs damaged by dynamite fishing in the Philippines.

Delos Santos's death was followed by another outcry over the killing of former University of the Philippines student Arnaiz. Police said he was killed when he shot it out with police after robbing a taxi driver last month. A government forensic expert, however, said Arnaiz apparently was handcuffed, tortured and shot five times.

Arnaiz's parents say he went out with de Guzman to buy a snack on the night of Aug. 17 but never returned home. They found Arnaiz in a morgue 10 days later.

De Guzman's body was found floating in a creek in a city north of Manila last week. The boy's head was wrapped with packing tape and his body bore about 28 stab wounds.

The parents of two other teenagers â€" 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz and 14-year-old Reynaldo de Guzman â€" have also filed murder, torture and planting of evidence complaints against two Caloocan policemen.

Last week, security-camera video purportedly showed 13 policemen robbing a house during an alleged drug raid.

President Rodrigo Duterte's crackdown on drugs, which has left thousands of suspects dead, has come under renewed scrutiny since police gunned down delos Santos. Police described him as a drug dealer who fired at officers during a raid, but his family and witnesses said the student was shot as he pleaded for his life.

Witnesses pointed to evidence, including a village security video, which they said showed two police officers dragging delos Santos away shortly before shots rang out and he was found fatally shot in the head, holding a pistol with his left hand although his parent said he was right-handed. Police officers testified at a Senate hearing that delos Santos was not the man seen being dragged in the video, although several witnesses doubted the police statement.

BY TERESA CEROJANO
Associated Press
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 7:29 AM
MANILA, PHILIPPINES


A Philippine official on Friday ordered an entire city police force off the job in metropolitan Manila after some of its members were suspected in the gruesome killings of three teenagers and others were seen on surveillance cameras robbing a house.

The 1,200-strong Caloocan city police force will be relieved in batches and replaced, said metropolitan Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde. The officers will undergo 45 days of retraining, after which those facing no charges can be reassigned to other stations.

The Department of Justice has started an investigation based on a murder and torture complaint against four Caloocan policemen allegedly linked to the killing of 17-year-old student Kian delos Santos during an anti-drug raid last month.

Quote from: Koddi Prudente on September 24, 2009, 11:57:10 PM
Ang Eskaya nagsugod sa panahon sa pagbiya sa mga Espanyol. Mugna ra na ni Mariano "Anoy" Sumatra nga taga Loon. Miadto og Manila, naKatipunero. Miadtog Mindanao to recruit Katipuneros. Mibalik sa Bohol ug nagsugod og communal farm in Biabas, Guindulman. Gidapit ang mga paryente sa Loon aron mouban niya didto (This explains why there are family names of Loonanon origin in southeastern Bohol like Salamanca, Orcullo, etc.). Nahimong "Datahan" kay naghatag man og farm inputs ug adto niya magdatahan ang mga nakahulam niya. Nagpasiugda siya og kaugalingong mga pulong ug alphabet aron dili masakpan sa mga Amerikano nga Katipunero diay siya. Sumatra iyang apelyido pero dili siya taga Sumatra. 

Kini maoy saktong patin-aw sa Eskaya phenomenon. Kini si Manoy Anoy, I know the type. Indeed there's a sucker born every minute. (There are Mormons, for instance.)

This Eskaya alphabet, these semi-literate stories, I could write them all with my left foot on one drunken afternoon.   

He he, parehas og dating nimo, Bay Bugs! 

When she worked for the couple, Madam Gawidan was given two meals a day, largely made up of plain white bread, tap water when she asked for a drink, and instant noodles. Chong did not allow her to buy food or eat any other food at home.

The maid finally fled from the couple's eighth-storey apartment at The Boulevard Residence condominium in Cuscaden Walk on April 19, 2014.

In March last year, Lim, a freelance trader, pleaded guilty to failing to provide Madam Gawidan with adequate food. Chong pleaded guilty to abetting him.

The maximum punishment for the offence under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act is a jail term of up to a year and a fine of up to $10,000.

According to the Ministry of Manpower, the couple have been permanently barred from employing maids.

The Chief Justice said that while Chong was the one who restricted the maid's meals to slices of bread and instant noodles for 15 months, her husband, with full knowledge of what was going on, was equally culpable for allowing the cruelty to continue.

He gave some weight to the couple's compensation of $20,000 paid to the maid, though he noted it was done in part to avoid a harsher sentence.

They had initially offered $10,000 but the maid asked for $20,000, the court heard. Madam Gawidan, now 41, has since returned home.

Chief Justice Menon allowed the couple to stagger their sentences in the interest of making acceptable arrangements for their three children. Chong will begin serving her sentence first, and Lim will go to jail one week after she is released from prison.

Couple's jail terms raised to 10 months for starving maid who lost 20kg



Chong Sui Foon and her husband Lim Choon Hong failed to comply with work pass conditions and provide adequate food to Madam Gawidan (right) for 15 months, causing her weight to fall from 49kg to 29.4kg. WONG KWAI CHOW, ST FILE


PUBLISHED 3 HOURS AGO
FACEBOOK0TWITTEREMAIL
Selina LumLaw Correspondent


SINGAPORE - A couple who starved their maid for more than a year and caused her weight to plummet from 49kg to 29.4kg will have to serve longer jail terms, following an appeal by the prosecution.

On Friday (Sept 15), the jail sentence of housewife Chong Sui Foon, 48, was raised from three months to 10. Instead of his original sentence of three weeks' jail and a $10,000 fine, her husband Lim Choon Hong, 48, will now have to serve 10 months' jail.

The original sentences were "patently and manifestly inadequate", said Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon. He added that the couple subjected Filipina Thelma Oyasan Gawidan to "systematic cruelty and denial of her basic human dignity".

http://www.dogsofalona.org/

The study found that deaths from firearms, conflict and terrorism have increased globally, and that non-communicable, or chronic, diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes caused 72 percent of all deaths worldwide.

Heart disease was the leading cause of premature death in most regions and killed 9.48 million people globally in 2016.

Mental illness was found to have a heavy toll on individuals and societies, with 1.1 billion people living with psychological or psychiatric disorders and substance abuse problems in 2016.

Major depressive disorders ranked in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries worldwide.

The GBD is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global health charity and gives data estimates on some 330 diseases, causes of death and injuries in 195 countries and territories.


(Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
Source: Reuters
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/

He said a "triad of troubles" â€" obesity, conflict, and mental illness â€" is emerging as a "stubborn and persistent barrier to active and vigorous lifestyles".

The IHME-led study, involving more than 2,500 researchers in around 130 countries, found that in 2016, poor diet was associated with nearly one in five deaths worldwide. Tobacco smoking killed 7.1 million people.

Diets low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds, fish oils and high in salt were the most common risk factors, contributing to cases of obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and high cholesterol.

15 Sep 2017 06:35AM
(Updated: 15 Sep 2017 08:54AM)

 
LONDON: Heart disease and tobacco ranked with conflict and violence among the world's biggest killers in 2016, while poor diets and mental disorders caused people the greatest ill health, a large international study has found.

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, published on Friday (Sep 15) in The Lancet medical journal, found that while life expectancy is increasing, so too are the years people live in poor health. The proportion of life spent being ill is higher in poor countries than in wealthy ones.

"Death is a powerful motivator, both for individuals and for countries, to address diseases that have been killing us at high rates. But we've been much less motivated to address issues leading to illnesses," said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, which led the study.

2) Unsustainable debt

In principle, increasing debt should have been manageable so long as its growth didn’t exceed that of the economy in general, or exports (which earned dollars) in particular.

But Figure 2 shows that from 1972 to 1981 the growth rate of debt exceeded GDP growth by a factor of 3.4, and exceeded export growth by a factor of 2 (on average).



Figure 2. Sources: PSA, Dohner & Intal Jr. [1989].

Figure 1 shows the dramatic rise of the country’s external debt in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as manifested by various indicators. In just 5 years (1977 to 1982), the country’s debt grew by a whopping $16 billion.

Several factors led to this exponential increase in our external debt. First, Marcos needed funds to finance his huge infrastructure spending spree â€" a progenitor of “Build, Build, Build” â€" and pursue 11 major industrial projects that were meant to boost industrialization.

At the same time, international capital markets were awash with “petrodollars” we could borrow. Twin oil price shocks in the 1970s resulted in significant windfalls for oil producing countries, and they used their new funds to invest worldwide, including countries like the Philippines.

But a series of unfortunate events in the late 1970s and early 1980s â€" tighter money supply in the US that led to higher world interest rates; the Philippines’ greater reliance on loans with floating rates; successive current account deficits; and the peso’s depreciation against the dollar â€" led to an unprecedented growth of our foreign debts.

1) Too much debt, too fast



Figure 1. Sources: World Bank, BSP, Dohner & Intal Jr. [1989].

Marcos plundered to 'protect' the economy? Makes no economic sense

Let’s not sugarcoat it: what the Marcoses did was quite possibly the biggest presidential plunder in history

JC Punongbayan
Published 11:00 AM, September 11, 2017
Updated 11:47 AM, September 11, 2017
   

Two weeks before Ferdinand Marcos’ hundredth birth anniversary, President Rodrigo Duterte revived public discussions about the Marcoses’ wealth.

In a speech before new appointees, the President said that a “spokesman” of the Marcoses intimated they might soon “return” some of their wealth â€" including “a few gold bars” â€" to help the government tide over its larger budget deficit this year.

But what struck me the most was the claim that President Marcos “hid” the money to “protect the economy.” The President said he accepted this explanation by the spokesman.

This statement is wrong on two accounts: First, the Marcoses did not “hide” money; they plundered from the Filipino people. Second, plundering to “protect” the economy makes no economic sense at all.

In the early 1980s the country was gripped by a severe debt crisis where we direly needed funds to repay our oversized debts. Offshoring vast sums of money in these circumstances did not “protect” the economy. In fact, it exacerbated capital flight and helped bring about the country’s deepest postwar recession.

I’ve written about the Marcosian economy before (READ: Marcos years marked ‘golden age’ of the PH economy? Look at the data). But in this article I take a closer look at the country’s debt crisis, and why it matters in the revived talks about the Marcoses’ wealth.

Quote from: islander on September 08, 2017, 12:40:01 PM

Later on in this tuxedo kitten's life...

Attaboys!

What happened on Aug. 31 was that Trillanes stood up to Gordon. Having lost that particular skirmish, Gordon has now resorted to an institution-damaging remedy.

He himself showed that his ethics complaint was actually unethical when he trumpeted to reporters that he had “the support of more than 10, more than 12, more than 14 senators.”

This peculiar phrasing means that he does not in fact have more than 14 senators supporting his complaint. (And a senator supporting his right to file a complaint is different from a senator supporting the complaint itself.)

Worse, it also means that he misunderstands the nature of an ethical complaint. It is not numbers that define what is or is not ethical.

Now, after an exchange of heated words with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, in which he chastised the former coup plotter for plotting coups and Trillanes in turn mocked him for barricading himself in Subic Bay when the Estrada administration removed him from office, Gordon has decided to file an elaborate complaint against Trillanes with the Senate’s ethics committee.

In his complaint, which ran a remarkable 23 pages, Gordon accused Trillanes of engaging in “unparliamentary acts and uttered unparliamentary language and exhibited disorderly behavior” during the Aug. 31 hearing of the Blue Ribbon committee, misconduct which, in Gordon’s view, has caused “damage to the Senate and to the people and, therefore, is of primordial importance.”

This is nonsense. We’ve heard much more terrible insults exchanged in legislative debate before, and President Duterte is certainly no choir boy when it comes to the use of language that may be called unparliamentary. If anything, Gordon’s transparent lawyering for the President’s son and son-in-law was what damaged the Senate’s reputation. After all, it is supposed to be independent of the incumbent Malacañang occupant, is it not?

Last year, he had the temerity to accuse Sen. Leila de Lima of “material misrepresentation” when he had only forgotten the relevant testimony of confessed killer Edgar Matobato, made twice in two committee hearings. When De Lima demanded that he apologize, he made a gender-demeaning quip: “Don’t melt down, you’re melting down.”

As we had written then: “In his view, it was perfectly all right for him to perorate endlessly on his views on peace and order, and become emotional at the recollection of his father’s assassination, but it was unseemly of De Lima to express spluttering outrage at an unfair accusation.

This is sexism, in all its rawness. He reacted to the rise in De Lima’s voice, perfectly oblivious of the times that, in the two hearings he has himself chaired, his own voice becomes shrill when he becomes impassioned. This is sexism, in all its unthinking male privilege.”

But his skin is as thin as his pride is high. In his first term as senator, he once showed up at the Senate in his uniform as a newly promoted rear admiral of the (civilian) Coast Guard â€" and his colleagues ribbed him for it. He didn’t take it well, and speechified against what was certainly, obviously, an ordinary case of teasing.

Among his colleagues, in both his terms at the Senate, he is known for being a trigger-happy committee chair, always ready to cite a recalcitrant witness or resource person with contempt. Indeed, in his first term he was instrumental in convincing the Senate to draft new rules that allowed the more liberal use of the contempt power.

In his second turn, emboldened by his political alliance with President Duterte, he has taken to threatening even opposition senators with the self-same power.

Gordon’s unethical complaint
Philippine Daily Inquirer editorial/ 05:12 AM September 06, 2017


Senator Richard Gordon is a man of many accomplishments, and it is no secret that he has an outsized ego. Many politicians are just like him.

The ambition that propels a man or a woman to make politics a lifetime career is fueled not only by notions of public service or considerations of family or party or class interests but also by healthy, indeed robust, egos.

Gordon is no different. His self-image is that of a person of intelligence and importance; he wants the public to take him seriously; he craves appreciation for the hard work that he puts into his dual responsibilities as senator of the Republic and chairman of the Red Cross.