Some 300 Swiss banks had until the end of Monday to determine whether to give the United States records of Americans hiding assets there as Washington threatens institutions with legal action for assisting those avoiding US taxes.
The US and Switzerland have been at odds in recent years, with Washington alleging that Swiss banks have helped US citizens hide billions of dollars in assets from authorities.
Pursuant to a deal between the nations, Swiss banks can avoid US prosecution by volunteering account information on American clients, along with paying a fine.
The penalty equals between 20 and 50 percent of the value of the undeclared accounts, based on when they were conceived. If a bank opened an undeclared account before 2009 – when the Swiss banking giant UBS was fined US$780 million by the US for tax evasion – it would face a lower penalty.
Notoriously secretive Swiss banks that do not disclose account information will face stiffer penalties and prosecution in the US if Washington finds they have hidden Americans’ assets.
Egon Vorfeld, managing partner at the Forum Finance Group SA, suggested smaller banking entities will feel the brunt of the high fines even though they are less likely to hide US citizen assets.
“Most of the larger banks are already cooperating, and it’s fairly clear which direction they are going,” Vorfeld told RT in an interview. “They have run the numbers and know exactly what they are doing. Perhaps some of the smaller banks could be affected because the fines – the worst of them – could be very onerous on them.”
Negotiator of the deal Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf has encouraged banks to comply, but experts are split on whether bending to Washington and offering disclosure is a good idea.
“If the United States is threatening all the Swiss banks that it will block their access to the US market and to conducting operations in dollars, let it say so clearly, and let Switzerland take the country before…the World Trade Organization for abusing its dominant position,” wrote business lawyer Douglas Hornung in a recent opinion piece in the Le Temps daily.
“But please, don’t give in to inexcusable blackmail and let us remain the proud masters of our destiny, and of our past. We have a choice,” he added.
Vorfeld told RT the issue of why the US feels it should be able to tell Swiss banks what to do comes down to its large footprint in global banking operations.
“The US has an awful lot of clout and is able to throw its weight around, and feels justified to do so. But clearly a lot of other people feel there is injustice in this supposed justice system, that a lot of the smaller banks will be possibly victims,” Vorfeld said, suggesting those smaller institutions are also more likely to possibly evade the US demand. RT
Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark says the lowering of the American flag to half-staff should be reserved for Americans. / KEN OSBURN/Staff / Greenville News
The American flag that flies over the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office will be raised high tonight despite an order by President Barack Obama that flags across the country be lowered to half-staff to honor the death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Sheriff Rick Clark told The Greenville News that he has ordered the flag be raised at the end of today because he said the honor of lowering flags to half-staff should be reserved for Americans.
“The flag at half-staff is for Americans’ ultimate sacrifice for our country,” Clark said. “We should never stray away from that.”
The flag has flown at half-staff and will continue to during daylight hours today in honor of a Lowcountry law enforcement officer who was killed and in honor of Pearl Harbor Day, Clark said.
However, come tonight, the flag will be raised, he said.
On Thursday, Obama ordered that flags be flown at half-staff on public grounds until sunset Monday.
The federal flag code “does not prescribe any penalties for non-compliance nor does it include enforcement provisions” and “functions simply as a guide to be voluntarily followed by civilians and civilian groups,” according to a U.S. congressional report commissioned by the U.S. Senate.
In a proclamation issued Thursday ordering flags at half-staff, Obama said that Mandela “achieved more than could be expected of any man.”
“While we mourn his loss, we will forever honor Nelson Mandela’s memory,” the president said. “He left behind a South Africa that is free and at peace with itself — a close friend and partner of the United States. And his memory will be kept in the hearts of billions who have been lifted up by the power of his example.”
Mandela is regarded the world over for his leadership in bringing South Africa out of the racial discrimination known as apartheid. Mandela was imprisoned in 1964 for his revolutionary activities and wasn’t released until 27 years later.
In 1994, Mandela was elected president of South Africa and lived a philanthropic life until his death Thursday at the age of 95. – excerpted from greenvilleonline.com
“The median grade in Harvard College is indeed an A-,” the school’s dean of education said today, according to the student newspaper. Even more stunning: “The most frequently awarded grade in Harvard College is actually a straight A.”
That ought to dispel any notion that Harvard is tough on its students. Grade inflation may be a victimless crime, but what is the point of having a range of grades if half of them are A- or higher?
Accusations of grade inflation flare up frequently at Harvard and other college campuses. Harvard, in particular, has been accused of grading more softly than some of its rivals in the Ivy League.
Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, was highly critical of the practice while he was president of the university. After he stepped down, he told an interviewer: “Ninety percent of Harvard graduates graduated with honors when I started. The most unique honor you could graduate with was none.” – Quartz
For the first time in nearly 40 years, a majority of Americans believe the United States is less important around the world and that it should mind its own business, a stunning rejection of President Obama’s foreign policy just four years after he received the Nobel Prize.
A new Pew Research Center poll found that 53 percent of people believe that the U.S. is playing a less important role as a world leader than a decade ago, the highest figure since 1984.
Worse: 70 percent said that the U.S. is respected less than in the past, almost matching the high reached under former President George W. Bush, whose foreign policy Obama pledged to reverse.
Other key highlights from Pew’s release:
— By a 56 percent to 34 percent margin, more disapprove than approve of Obama’s handling of foreign policy. The public also disapproves of his handling of Syria, Iran, China and Afghanistan by wide margins.
— For the first time, 52 percent believe the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally.”
— Some 51 percent said the U.S. does too much in helping solve world problems.
— Most say the U.S. should engage internationally on economic issues. Fully 77 percent say that growing trade and business ties between the U.S. and other countries is good.
— Just 31 percent of the public say the war in Afghanistan has made the country safer from terrorism.
The capital city of the state of Louisiana in the USA, Baton Rouge, is in for a rough ride as its predominantly white southern suburbs want to secede from the northern inner-city areas. According to the latest American census 50,4% of Baton Rouge residents are Black or African American, 40,8% White, 0,5% Native American, 3.5% Asian, and 1.3% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos were 3,5% of the population.
Skyline of Baton Rouge with the Mississippi river
According to the Raw Story website, ‘The predominantly white and wealthy residents of the southern area of Baton Rouge have proposed seceding from the city proper and incorporating into a new one to be called ‘St. George’.
“The movement began as an effort to create a new school district, but after the state legislature repeatedly mothballed its proposals — claiming that they could not approve an independent school district that was unaffiliated with a city — organizers shifted their energies to the creation of ‘St. George’.”
The new city would be the fifth largest in the state, with over 107,000 residents, and would include two of the largest tax revenue bases in the state: Perkins Rowe and the Mall of Louisiana. A study by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber concluded that Baton Rouge residents “will be disproportionately paying taxes to the proposed municipality”, given city governance’s reliance on sales tax revenues.
If the succession were successful, the study claimed, it “could entail the dissolution of the present system of governance”.
The black mayor of Baton Rouge, Melvin L. “Kip” Holden, is opposed to the idea and claims that the problems in the school system have been addressed.
According to one expert, “the demographic shift the incorporation of ‘St. George’ would create is almost as troubling as the economic difficulties (caused by lost tax revenue from white residents). According to a recent study on the demographic impact of Hurricane Katrina, the city of Baton Rouge accepted over 200 000 displaced New Orleans residents, the majority of whom were black and settled in the northern, urban parts of the city.
The ‘St. George’ proposal would create a poor, black, and urban Baton Rouge and a wealthy, white, and suburban ‘St. George’.
A US animal rights group has filed what it said is the first lawsuit seeking to establish the “legal personhood” of chimpanzees.
The non-profit Nonhuman Rights Project asked a New York state court to declare a 26-year-old chimp named Tommy “a cognitively complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned.”
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that Tommy’s “detention” in a “small, dank, cement cage in a cavernous dark shed” in central New York is unlawful and demands his immediate release to a primate sanctuary.
Chimpanzees “possess complex cognitive abilities that are so strictly protected when they’re found in human beings,” Steven Wise, the president of Nonhuman Rights Project, told Reuters.
“There’s no reason why they should not be protected when they’re found in chimpanzees,” he added.
It is not certain that this new found right carries responsibility, and if this beast/person could be found liable for damages it may cause.
Its responsibilities in a civil society have not been laid out either.
She’s about to become one of the most influential financial leaders in the world, but a classmate who sat in front of Janet Yellen at Brooklyn’s Ft. Hamilton HS says he was “shocked” at her career path.
“I didn’t think she had a passion for economics,” recalled Ron Vincent, a former Wall Street guy who took the same economics class as the incoming Federal Reserve Bank chair and who now heads Hi Investors Capital.
“I was shocked. She was in the psychology club.” Now, he added in awe, “She’s going to be the world’s most powerful woman.”
Yellen’s yearbook entry shows she was editor of the school paper, The Pilot, as well as a member of the Arista honor society, the Boosters basketball program, the Minutemen history club and the psychology club.
As head of the Fed, Yellen will help guide US monetary policies, affecting the pocketbooks of Americans and consumers across the globe.
Yellen’s four-year term begins Feb. 1. President Obama nominated her to the post in October. She is currently the Fed’s vice chair. Source: NYP
Two American B-52 bombers flew over a disputed area of the East China Sea without informing Beijing, challenging China’s claims to an expanded air defense zone, officials said Tuesday.
The flight of the giant, long-range Stratofortress planes sent a clear warning that Washington would push back against what it considers an aggressive stance by Beijing in the region.
The move also signaled staunch US support for Japan, which has been locked in a mounting feud with Beijing over disputed islands in the East China Sea.
The unarmed bombers took off from Guam on Monday on a scheduled flight, as part of what defense officials insisted was a routine exercise dubbed “Coral Lightning Global Power Training Sortie.”
“Last night we conducted a training exercise that was long-planned. It involved two aircraft flying from Guam and returning to Guam,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters.
Although China has insisted it has a right to police the skies over the area, no flight plan was submitted beforehand to the Chinese and the mission went ahead “without incident,” Warren said.
The two aircraft spent “less than an hour” in China’s unilaterally-declared Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and did not encounter Chinese planes, he said.
A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AFP the two US planes were B-52 bombers.
The military flight carried important symbolism as it came a week before US Vice President Joe Biden’s scheduled trip to China, Japan and South Korea next month.
China announced the expanded air defense zone amid a sovereignty dispute with Japan over the island chain in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.
The area also includes waters claimed by Taiwan and South Korea, which also have both denounced Beijing’s move.
Without taking sides in the territorial argument, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called on China and Japan to negotiate an end to their dispute.
Ban on Tuesday said tensions should be handled “amicably through dialogue and negotiations.”
Under the rules declared by China, aircraft are expected to provide a flight plan, clearly mark their nationality and maintain two-way radio communication to allow them to respond to identification queries from Chinese authorities.
Pentagon officials said the United States views the area as international air space and American military aircraft would operate in the zone as before without submitting flight plans to China in advance.
Japan, the United States and several other governments promptly rejected China’s announced air defense zone after it was announced Saturday.
The US State Department renewed its criticism Tuesday, saying China’s action appeared to be an attempt to “unilaterally change the status quo in the East China Sea.”
The move “will raise regional tensions and increase the risk of miscalculation, confrontation and accidents,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Australia summoned Beijing’s ambassador to express its opposition and Japanese airlines said Wednesday they had stopped following China’s new rules.
The reversal came after pressure from the Japanese government, which insisted China’s announcement was invalid, and after governments around the world lined up alongside Tokyo.
France and Germany each expressed concern and urged restraint on all sides.
“We are committed to a peaceful resolution through dialogue to this dispute, in accordance with international law,” French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said.
The territorial dispute over the islands has simmered for decades but in September 2012, Japan nationalized three of the islands, in what it portrayed as an attempt to avoid a more inflammatory step by a nationalist politician.
Beijing, however, accuses Tokyo of disturbing the status quo, and has sent ships and planes to the islands in a show of force.
In response, Japan has mobilized vessels and aircraft, raising fears the tensions could trigger an accidental clash.
Beyond the East China Sea, Beijing has taken an assertive approach to a number of territorial disputes, particularly in the strategic South China Sea.
In response to China’s growing military might and influence, the United States has sought to shift its strategic focus to Asia, planning to expand America’s military presence across the Pacific.
But a spate of crises in the Middle East and budget woes have often hampered Washington’s attempt at a so-called “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. – AFP
A retired Army general is alarmed by the high number of senior officers in the U.S. military who have been fired under the Obama administration, and he is calling for the “forced resignations” of President Obama, other administration officials and the leadership of Congress for the direction they’re taking the nation.
The systematic political purge of hundreds of senior military officers in the U.S. military is now in full swing.
Vallely says the number of senior officers in the U.S. military who have been fired under the Obama administration, is now estimated at one officer per week. Indeed, Vallely has been very outspoken to what he calls a “purge” of the U.S. military by the Obama administration — with a stunning nine generals and flag officers relieved of duty this year alone.
“He [Obama] is intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”
J.D. Gordon, a retired Navy commander and a former Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, says the Obama administration is rushing to unload senior officers whom he believes have become “political pawns” dismissed for questionable reasons.
WND has been reporting on the surge of firings, suspensions and dismissals, for which Vallely has assigned a good portion of the blame to Obama’s close adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Rampant “political correctness” due to her influence, Vallely tells WND, is now permeating the military and negatively affecting everyone from top generals to the ranks of the enlisted.
According to Vallely, Obama is “intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing the U.S. as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”
Vallely equated the current treatment of U.S. senior military officers watching over what is said and done among mid-level officers and enlisted ranks to that of the “political commissars from the Communist era.”
He also told WND that the White House won’t investigate its own officials, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”
In his capacity as chairman of the organization Stand Up America, Vallely issued what he termed a “National Call to Action” to force the resignations of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Vallely, formerly the deputy commanding general of Pacific Command, said the current crop of leaders must be forced to resign by the “demand resignation” process, which he explained requires massive grass-roots protests and social networking. As an example, he cited the public and media pressure that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Impeachment, Vallely said, is not a viable option because of “partisan politics.”
“Our federal government continues down the path of destroying America,” he said. “Americans must now stand up and put America back on the right track.”
In issuing his national call to action, Vallely said the federal government has not subsided in “sucking the oxygen” out of America.
“And we call to action all branches of government to do your constitutional duties and not be led astray in the cultural and moral decay of America. We have witnessed far too many lies,” he said, as well as “deception and the corruption of the republic.”
Vallely reminds Americans that the Declaration of Independence itself states that whenever “any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem more likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”
Vallely said the nation he long defended is self-destructing “before our very eyes,” because of “our inept and incompetent leadership in Washington.”
“The battle is on,” he added, “and we shall not retreat.”
Vallely, who has also served as a Fox News military analyst, claimed the Obama administration and leadership of Congress have been leading the nation down a road of “progressive socialism.”
He said conditions today are approaching those of the time of the inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln, who said at the time that people have a “right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one.”
“Shake off,” said Vallely, “means replacing government leaders.” He argued America today bears “many similarities to the fall of Rome.” America, he added, is not immune to collapse or even revolution, which he notes “has happened many times in history. … External and internal threats could precipitate this as well as any financial collapse.”
Vallely added that “politics as usual will not be effective or sufficient enough to turn the country around.”
“We are in a war for America,” he told WND, adding that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Dr. Ben Carson, the noted brain surgeon and author of “America the Beautiful” and other bestselling books have made similar observations.
Americans have had enough, he said, and the Obama White House and identifiable members of Congress “must now depart from a progressive socialist and treasonous death march and bankrupting the country beyond expectations.”
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, who was a founding member of Delta Force and later deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush, tells WND it is worrying that four-star generals are being retired at the rate that has occurred under Obama.
“Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause,” Boykin said. “I believe there is a purging of the military. The problem is worse than we have ever seen.” – wealthydebates.com
The United States is calling for deeper international involvement to halt violence in Central African Republic, amid growing alarm that the impoverished nation is on the brink of a possible genocide.
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday unveiled $40 million in new funding to help the country, with the bulk of the aid going to support the African Union-led peacekeeping mission known as MISCA.
“It’s a very, very serious situation right now,” a top State Department official told AFP, asking not to be named.
“It will require extensive, continued and deepened international commitment working with the CAR government to address the humanitarian crisis, to strength MISCA so that it can carry out its security mission, civil protection mission and lay the ground work for” elections set to take place in February 2015, the official added.
In the latest in a long line of rebellions and coups, the Seleka rebel coalition ousted president Francois Bozize in March and put the CAR’s first Muslim leader, President Michel Djotodia, in power.
But the move has unleashed unprecedented sectarian bloodshed, with fighting between the mainly Muslim former rebels who seized power in March and militia groups set up to protect Christian communities, which make up about 80 percent of the population.
The unrest has displaced almost 400,000 of the country’s estimated 4.6 million people, left 2.3 million in need of assistance and some 1.1 million scrambling to find food, according to the latest UN figures.
France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday that the country was “on the verge of genocide,” while a Kerry deputy told US lawmakers this week that it was in a “pre-genocidal” phase.
“The needs are so extensive, it’s really hard to say one is greater than the others,” the US official said in an interview.
“One area there’s going to be a serious need in over the coming year is in food aid, and that’s because the population has been so terrorized and traumatized by what’s happening in the country, that it’s had a serious impact on the planting season and necessarily that’s going to cause greater food insecurity in the months ahead.”
The US is supporting moves at the United Nations to boost an AU-led force to some 3,652 troops made up of soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea with a contribution also expected from Burundi.
“The mandate is excessively broad given the very extensive challenge in front of them,” the official said, stressing that it was felt the AU force would be better placed to restore order and stability than a UN peacekeeping mission.
Apart from being quicker to set up and equip, “often the UN missions are more peacekeeping and this is not a peacekeeping situation, this is more enforcement,” he said.
The UN Security Council plans to vote in early December on a resolution to allow CAR’s neighbors, the African Union and France to intervene in the sprawling nation.
French President Francois Hollande said Paris was planning to “significantly increase” its contingent in the country, where it already has 400 soldiers in place to help protect the airport in Bangui and French nationals. – AFP
New figures from the Washington State Patrol show that more drivers have tested positive for marijuana since the state legalized the drug last year.
In the first six months of 2013, the patrol’s crime lab says, 745 people tested positive for marijuana. Typically there are about 1,000 positive pot tests on drivers in a full year.
Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins says it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s been a rash of people driving high. He says troopers are looking harder for drivers operating under the influence of pot, and they might be ordering more marijuana blood tests.
Of the 745 people who tested positive for marijuana in the first half of this year, the state patrol says a majority tested above the legal limit of 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood. The exact number was 420. – AP
Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen moved closer on Thursday to becoming the first woman to lead the U.S. central bank after a Senate committee approved her nomination and sent it to the full Senate for a final vote.
If confirmed, as is widely expected, Yellen would replace Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term expires on January 31 and become the most powerful woman in world finance.
The vote was 14-8. Three Republicans backed her appointment and one Democrat voted no.
A Democratic leadership aide said the aim was to hold a confirmation vote in the full Senate in December.
Nominated by President Barack Obama, Yellen is viewed as a monetary policy dove more concerned about the costs to society of high unemployment than about the risk aggressive actions to lower it will ignite future inflation or fuel asset bubbles.
She will preside over a central bank that has taken dramatic and unconventional steps to spur economic growth, and which is now wrestling with a decision on when to scale back a bond-buying program that has sought to drive down long-term market interest rates.
The Fed has held benchmark U.S. interest rates near zero since late 2008 and has quadrupled the size of its balance sheet to $3.9 trillion through three massive asset purchase campaigns. It is currently buying $85 billion in bonds a month.
Both Yellen and Bernanke have emphasized in recent days that the Fed will keep interest rates low for some time even after it winds down its asset purchases, remarks that have bolstered expectations of policy continuity at the central bank.
Friends and foes
Minutes of the Fed’s October meeting released on Wednesday showed policymakers were debating how best to enhance their forward guidance on when to expect rates to rise to help temper any economically disruptive moves in financial markets once the central bank starts tapering its bond buying.
The Fed has said it would not raise rates before the U.S. jobless rate falls to 6.5 percent, as long as inflation looked set to stay below 2.5 percent. Unemployment stood at 7.3 percent in October.
When Bernanke first broached the possibility of a near-term reduction in the asset purchases in May and June, he sparked a bout of global financial market turmoil that sent bond yields soaring and hit emerging markets hard.
The Fed’s aggressive actions have drawn fire from Republican lawmakers worried about the risk of inflation and asset bubbles. Many also complain the central bank has abetted big spending by the Obama administration by snapping up the bulk of new Treasury debt issuance.
“The long-term costs of these policies are unclear and frankly worrisome,” Senator Michael Crapo, the top Republican on the banking panel, said before voting ‘no.’
Despite those concerns, Yellen is expected to handily win confirmation when the full Senate considers her nomination.
Democrats control 55 of the 100 votes in the Senate, which means she would need the backing of only a handful of Republicans to secure the 60 votes necessary to clear any procedural hurdles that might be thrown in her path.
She looks well on the way to reaching that threshold.
Yellen received support from three Republicans on the committee: Bob Corker of Tennessee, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mark Kirk of Illinois.
In addition, Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have also indicated they are inclined to back her.
The Democrat who voted against her in committee was Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
(Reporting by Alister Bull and Margaret Chadbourn; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Andrea Ricci) – Reuters
Did you know that eating or even talking about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich could be considered racist?
That’s right.
Apparently, it’s because people in some cultures don’t eat sandwich bread. Verenice Gutierrez, principal of Harvey Scott K-8 School in Portland explained in and interview with the Portland Tribune:
“Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year,” the Tribune said.
“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” Gutierrez asked. “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”
…The Tribune noted that the school started the new year with “intensive staff trainings, frequent staff meetings, classroom observations and other initiatives,” to help educators understand their own “white privilege,” in order to “change their teaching practices to boost minority students’ performance.””Last Wednesday, the first day of the school year for staff, for example, the first item of business for teachers at Scott School was to have a Courageous Conversation — to examine a news article and discuss the ‘white privilege’ it conveys,” the Tribune added.
Gutierrez completed a week-long seminar called “Coaching for Educational Equity,” a program the Tribune says focuses “on race and how it affects life.” She also serves on an administrative committee that focuses on systematic racism.
“Our focus school and our Superintendent’s mandate that we improve education for students of color, particularly Black and Brown boys, will provide us with many opportunities to use the protocols of Courageous Conversations in data teams, team meetings, staff meetings, and conversations amongst one another,” she said in a letter to staff.
Next time you’re in the bread aisle at the grocery store, you may want to think twice. Sensitive liberal educators are now recommending the “torta” or the “pita” as a more culturally inclusive alternative.
Now that you’ve been made aware of the evil of PB&J, there’s only one question left to answer: Is white bread more racist than whole wheat? -thecollegefix.com
“Knockout” attacks have been reported in several states around the country and now investigators believe three people have been attacked in our area.
Police in Lower Merion are investigating two attacks in the area, and Philadelphia detectives are investigating an attack in Northeast Philadelphia.
It’s a violent crime that in other parts of the country has proven fatal.
Videos from cities around the country show people being punched and beaten at random.
The attackers are calling their crimes a game, the goal being to knock out the victim with one punch.
Mark Cumberland is a victim of a “Knockout” assault.
“Someone asked me for a cigarette and by the time I got my hands out my pocket I was getting hit by four kids.”
He says, “It was hard seeing and I’m still having trouble breathing and swallowing.”
Cumberland was walking out of a Fox Chase pizza shop on November 11th when he was attacked.
“There’s no reason at all. I mean, I didn’t get robbed, they didn’t take nothing from me. They just beat me up.”
Lower Merion Police say suspects Samuel Hayles and Markus January were arrested on October 29th, just moments after they allegedly ambushed and beat a 63-year-old man who was walking his dog.
Lt. Frank Higgins of the Lower Merion Police says, “He punched him right in the mouth and knocked him to the ground. The victim began to scream and yell for someone to call the police.”
A neighbor of the victim, Jeri Greenfield says, “I think it’s absolutely horrible. I think this is a beautiful neighborhood and I didn’t expect anything like that here.”
An elderly man was also attacked when he was mowing his lawn outside of his home.
The suspect in that attack is still on the loose.
Bruce Myer, a neighbor of the elderly victim says, “A kid came up to him and just punching him in the mouth. He ended up laying the street with his lawnmower.”
The only apparent motive in these attacks, as in all “Knockout” attacks, is to inflict injury on a random victim.
It’s very sad that before you used to walk on the street with no worries whatsoever,” neighbor Al Ciavijo said.
The elderly victim is now using a cane and a walker to get around. He has had to undergo multiple medical procedures.
That suspect is still on the loose, as are the suspects in the Northeast Philadelphia attack. – CBS
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Some 300 Swiss banks had until the end of Monday to determine whether to give the United States records of Americans hiding assets there as Washington threatens institutions with legal action for assisting those avoiding US taxes.
