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kayssweetdreams · 1 year

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Prim and Proper Problems Ch 20

The group looked in awe at the sheer number of kids outside of the school. With Ren and Miguel holding up a flag with both schools crests on it. However, the most shocking of all, was that standing proudly in the center of the army of kids...was Yuri and Kaylo, acting as the leaders of them all.

Madame Prim was horrified at the return of the girls, especially because they had been returned to normal...and they didn't look happy with her..."Now Girls. Everything you're doing is improper! Have you forgotten Everything I have taught you?!" She screeched. "NO PRIM!! WE SNAPPED OUT OF YOUR STUPID 'PURIFICATION' AND NOW WE'RE GONNA LIBERATE THE REST OF THE GIRLS HERE!!" Kaylo yelled.

Madame Prim paled, not only did two of her former 'students' snap out of it, but now they brought a whole army of improper delinquent to tear apart the school. "Oh. And we didn't come alone." Yuri said through a Megaphone. That made everyone confused, until the angry shouting of the Brand and Bruno families were heard with a very loud

"WHERE IS SHE?!"

The headmistress paled at the voices. She had never had to deal with the angry parents who were furious about their children's perfection brainwashing...until now. "Now here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna let our friends go, and call off this whole operation. Or We're gonna storm the school." Yuri said through the Megaphone. Madame Prim however, wasn't going to back down so easily

"Security!! Get all of those delinquents ready to Re-educated." She yelled out. Kaylo narrowed her eyes. "You heard the lady! CHARGE!!!" She shouted. The crowds of rowdy, sugar high kids rushed to the doors. The guards struggled to hold them back as the kids burst in. "Miguel. Our Battle anthem please?" Kaylo asked. The teen smirked as he plugged his guitar into at least 40 different amps and speakers, and let out a power chord towards the school, making the windows shatter and burst.

The inhabitants trapped in the chamber ducked their heads as the glass that surrounded the chamber burst. When the glass hit the ground, Clem and Bianca had burst into the chamber, both of which were holding wire cutters, lock picks, and a blowtorch. "We're here to rescue you!" Bianca said, already getting to work on freeing her father.

"Thank goodness! But...how did you darlings find us?" Lucy asked, as Clem released her from her cuff "Yuri and Kaylo told us. They had said that they needed help with something and that you were involved in it somehow. They just told us to get every student in our schools, and bring them here for a revolution! Which I guess now makes sense." He explained.

Once The adults were freed, Purrla and Grim had gotten to work freeing the kids, and Misère from the metal chairs. Purrla used her claws to pick the locks, while Grim had resorted to freezing and breaking them. Once they were free, Fortsepher bust open the remains of what once the chamber, and the group burst out and got to work destroying the machines. "Grab the jars! They hold the other girls personalities! They'll override the brainwashing!" Fortie said as he began to grab the various jars of multicolored liquid personalities

Inside of the school itself, Madame Prim watched in horror as the the various students from the other schools laid waste to her "perfect" institution. She watched as Ren began drawing on the walls while Phil and Lila Bia began smashing the many antiques that lined the school halls. A loud chime caught her attention as Flint Glover and Annie Hudson rode downstairs on a tall grandfather clock

"You little brats!! That was an antique!!" She screamed before another paint bomb was lobbed in her direction. "GUARDS!! WHY AREN'T YOU DOING ANYTHING?!" She shrieked into a nearby walkie talkie "THERE'S TOO MANY OF THEM!! WE'RE OUTNUMBERED!!" A guard cried in response. Madame Prim narrowed her eyes "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! THEY'RE CHILDREN!!" She asked, "THE GIRLS!! THEY'RE JOINING IN! DELANCY JUST GRABBED A CLEAVER FROM THE KITCHEN AND IS CHASING DOWN MY SQUADRON!!" He screamed in reply.

Madame Prim paled. They had all found the jars. "PRIM!! WHERE ARE YOU!! I'LL TEACH YOU WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMEONE MESSES WITH A BRUNO!!" Thea yelled out. The room shook from the force of her yell. Scurrying away, Madame Prim took refuge in her office, but even that wasn't safe, as one of the Graden's Rose Bushes were lit on fire, and tossed into her office.

Dolly however, was cowering underneath the table to drown out the madness "Dolly Dear! Pack your bags! We're gonna go somewhere for a while." Madame Prim said with whatever grace and dignity she had left. Dolly nodded as she opened a small hidden passage in the bookshelf, but her face was exposed to a golden mist before she passed out.

Madame Prim panicked as she saw the inhabitants, Negabosses and Wonder Stars enter through the passage...and they were MAD. "It's OVER Prim. This little operation of yours is finished." Mei said. The older woman glared at her "NO! I will never give up on perfecting the imperfect generation! Even if that means I have to start from scratch. I'll rebuild from the ground up. THE WORLD WILL BE PERFECT." She screeched.

The kids glared at her before a voice cut the tension...

"MOM?! WHAT THE HECK?!"

Mei, Bianca, Clem, Annie, Flint, Phil, Lila and the Brand family belong to @sundove88

Rebecca belongs to @thehypercutstudios/@thehyperrequiem

Trisha Jane belongs to @lovelyteng

#Balan Wonderworld #Balan #Lance #Leo Craig #Emma Cole #Jose Gallard #Fiona Demetria #Yuri Brand #Haoyu Chang #Sana Hudson #Cass Milligan #Cal Suresh #Iben Bia #Attilio Caccini #Lucy Wong #Eis Glover #Bruce Stone

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phandomphightclub · 5 years

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Lexovorus vs. Dannyphandump: Prelude

Vic was exhausted. First Tali had had her reprogram the security system, then she had to round up the security team and debrief them on how to handle the Lexx imposters. As if that wasn’t enough, she was also overseeing the newest phight. Because Tali couldn’t stop challenging ghosts for five minutes. How did she have the energy for all this? You’d think she had the power of duplication herself, but as far as Vic knew that wasn’t the case.

She floated through the kitchen, making sure no one was in danger of exploding anything. Dots was busy looking for clues while the Lexxes were here, so at least there weren’t any macaron “experiments” going on. Artsy seemed to have his mayo-cheesecake under control, and Ectopusses was flipping some blueberry pancakes. Realnutbusters was slapping a turkey so hard that it was cooked with the power of his bare hands. Kim (Katphantom69) wandered around taking bites from the cooks’ different dishes, and she hadn’t keeled over (more) dead yet, so everything was probably fine.

Well, the kitchen was probably fine. The rest of the Denny’s was a different story.

“Get down from there!” Trash-aged-like-fine-wine shouted, using a butter-filled sock to beat one of the Lexxes down from the Diddles Piddles light fixture. Vic pinched the bridge of her nose. Was she supposed to chide the security guards for fighting in the Denny’s? Or was that their job? All fights were supposed to take place out back, but the Lexxes certainly weren’t going to play by the rules.

Except Vorus. Lexovours. The Lexx of the hour. Vic had helped Tali pull some strings to get them both in the ring today, but she wasn’t looking forward to moderating that match. Something was bound to go wrong – probably multiple things.

Vic eventually decided to just leave Trash-aged-like-fine-wine to their work. Besides, they weren’t the only one dealing with a Lexx, and the phight was due to start soon. The chaos should calm down once it was channeled into the ring.

“Vic! There you are!” A familiar voice called from over by the betting booth. Dots. The speckled ghost had been hanging around the Denny’s ever since Anri had rescued her from the Nightmare Valley and brought her back here. That had to have been a nasty experience, but she’d come back with the identities of some of the Lexxes at least, so it hadn’t been all in vain.

“Yeah, Dots? I’m kind of busy,” Vic said evasively. If she had to listen to another spiel on the most recent Lexovorus suspects, she might lose it.

“Oh yeah I know, just a quick question for you.”

Vic raised her eyebrow at Dots’ wide, nervous grin.

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to be quick?”

“It is!” Dots protested. “I just uhhh, kindabroughtafriendfromthehumanworldbutit’sokayhe’sbeenherebeforeandhe’llbegoodipromise.”

“You… what?” Vic rubbed her temples, trying to process the word dump. “You’re saying there’s a human here right now?”

Nervously Dots stepped aside, revealing Wes standing behind her, looking bored

“I told you Dots, I’ve been here already. It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, but with Vic cracking down on security…”

“He’s fine.” Vic waved a hand. Inwardly she was relieved; if Dots had brought any other human to this phight, she’d be worried about things getting out of control. But she’d never really cared for Wes, so if he got hurt, well, that was on them. “Just don’t do anything stupid like try to reveal Vorus while she’s in the ring, alright? We’re keeping this phight clean.”

Dots saluted. “You got it, boss!”

Vic quickly flew away before Wes or Dots could go off about any other conspiracy, then exited through the back doors into the stadium. The bleachers were filling up, not quite as much as they had for January’s phight, but still more ghosts than Vic had been expecting. News of this phight must have traveled faster than she’d thought.

There was no sign of Tali though – hopefully she was getting ready in the phighters’ space below the arena. She’d better put up a good fight; the Denny’s had a reputation to uphold.

Vic floated up to the VIP box, expecting to have a few minutes to rest before the phight – but no such luck.

“Yo,” Lexx waved, lounging back in the chair that was usually reserved for Tali.

“Danny Phantom he was just fourteen,” Vic replied back automatically before shaking her head. “Wait, what are you doing here? And are you actually the real Lexosaurus?”

Lexx put a hand to her chest, scoffing. “What? You think an imposter could do this?” She pulled out her Danno on a stick and balanced it on her nose. “Huh? Could they?”

“...Probably, but I’m going to take your word on this one.” If only because no one else would have a thought to prove themselves like that.

“Yeet,” she said with a grin. “And I’m just here to see what my successors are up to. If Tali gets her butt kicked I gotta watch Livin’ Large sober, so I gotta cheer her on up close, y’know?”

“Wow. Well I hope for your sake that she wins.”

“Who did you bet on?” Lexx asked, taking a loud sip from her ectoplasm smoothie.

“I’m moderating. It would be improper to place bets as well,” she said evasively.

“Aww, you’re no fun. I thought for sure you would’ve bet on Tali too.” Lexx shrugged.

“Well Vorus is a newcomer. We have no idea how their phighting skills will stack up; it’s anyone’s match. Now shh, I think I see them coming.”

Vic didn’t actually see anything, but she really hoped they would hurry up. She didn’t have Tali’s kazoo to signal the start and end of the phight with, so she’d just have to summon them with the megaphone if it took too long. If she was honest, she wasn’t just eager to get the match over, she was honestly nervous about the results of the phight. No matter who won, it was certainly going to be… interesting.

But Tali must have already made some arrangements without telling her, because the sound system suddenly started blasting “Face My Fears” by Utada and Skrillex. Vic glanced up and saw Snappy make an ok sign. Tali and her Kingdom Hearts music…

“Ooh, I love Skrillex,” Lexx grinned. So maybe part of the music had to do with the Lexxpocalypse too. Whatever the reason behind the music choice, at least something was happening. Vic stood and raised the megaphone.

“Alright, phriends and enemies! Lexxes and Non-Lexxes! We’re coming to you live from the one and only Phandom Phight Club, where our own Mod Tali is about to take on the ghost zone’s latest menace: Lexovorus!”

A mixture of cheers and boos echoed across the stadium. It was impossible to tell which phighter they were cheering for and which they were booing.

“Can Tali take down Vorus once and for all? Or will Vorus try to wrench control of the Denny’s?”

The two ghosts in question floated out into the ring. Tali gripped her usual kazoo tightly in her fist; her long coat billowed behind her in an ethereal wind. Lexovorus held a set of fidget spinners between her fingers like throwing stars, and her form flickered with the same glitch effect that the original Lexx commanded.

“YOOO, TALI! BEAT THAT POSER FOR ME!” Lexosaurus shouted over the blaring music, much to close to Vic’s ears. She winced.

“Yeah… anyway – PHIGHT!”

#mod tali #yes i'm writing my own phight yeet #special thanks to vic for letting me write from her pov #writeup #bonus round #dannyphandump vs lexovorus

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maaaryaaann-blog · 4 years

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BE AWARE, BE ALERT, BE PREPARE

Let’s explore the disaster risk management of Barangay San Jose with Mr. Darcy Cruz — the head BDRRM Officer.

HAZARD IDENTIFICATION

The barangay has experienced typhoon and considered as the most frequent calamities happened in the barangay. For the last 3 years, the community experience 2 strong typhoons but not directly causes floods in the community. Typhoons and floods could be predicted with the weather forecast from the PAG-ASA and by monitoring how strong it will affect the community. The community also talks about the most dangerous calamities for the barangay and it was the earthquake because no one can predict when it will happen, and the impact is serious. There are other hazards exist in the community and make the floods severe in a situation. Improper waste disposal is the contributor of the severe floods in the community.

VULNERABILITY, ELEMENTS AND PEOPLE AT RISK ASSESSMENT

Typhoons and floods destroyed vulnerable home and establishments in the community. Lower places and those homes near the river are the most affected by the said calamities, for they’re location is in disadvantage. Poor people or those who cannot afford safe homes because of overpopulated situation in the community and other circumstances also affected by the calamities. Typhoons affects the life of the people by destroyed homes and jobs which affected by the calamities. During the occurrence of typhoon and floods, the safe place for the evacuees was school and court as their evacuation center, while the danger place needed to avoid during typhoons was the places near the river and, weak home and establishments. Sustainability of relief goods was one of the problems when the calamities happened, but it is solved when it is reported on the higher officials.

CAPACITY AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT ASSESSMENT

The barangay conduct a seminar and flood drill as a preparation for the occurrence of the calamities. The Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction Management (BDRRM) Plan contains the map of the community and the Faultline if ever the earthquake may happen, also the inventory of equipment for emergencies, number of population and other information that may help the barangay to prepare and solve the problem during the calamities. The barangay informed the community and monitor them using the truck and a megaphone for the precaution information. The officials of the BDRRM is the one who facilitate the preparedness and safety of the people in the community.

COMMUNITY WALK

Hazardous Places

Garbage blocked the drainage and results to a flood during strong typhoon. Throwing garbage in the river makes the river a hazardous place because it is rapidly increasing during typhoon.

Safe Spaces

Safe spaces in the community during the calamities were school and court that is used as evacuation center.

Best Practices

Flood drill and Earthquake drill is the best practices. Conducting a seminar once a month is also a best practice.

REFLECTION

After identifying the hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities of my community, I’ve noticed that the barangay do their duty well to prepared the community but as I’ve noticed no one cares and appreciate their effort and I also admit that I sometimes ignore their precaution and result to a critical situation in the calamities. As for the improper waste disposal, I think it happened because of the lack of discipline in the people of community. To solve this problem, I think the barangay officials should have a firm consequence if they were caught not disposing properly, same goes with the problem in the country. I’ve realized many things and I think as a student and as a Filipino we should first develop strongly our discipline and respect for the nature and for those people who make their effort just for the safety of the majority. When we have this attitude, I think we can have the willingness to perform our duty as a Filipino citizen such as simply disposing our waste properly and be aware of the things happened in the community or even in a country, we may participate in activities for the development of our community. It always starts with us and we can help other people and our country to be safer in the future.

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yeyeyebone-blog · 4 years

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BDRRM KWENTUHAN: BRGY 471

Preparedness is the only way we can combat disaster“ -John Quinlan

Let’s assess…

1. Hazard Identification

In Metro Manila, there are a lot of places that are very prone to flood, the barangay is one of those areas. Everybody already knows that in Sampaloc, particularly in Espana, flooding is very usual. That’s why even with just prolonged rains, authorities are to suspend classes due to the possible flooding. Floods, whether high or low, create huge damage to properties and endangers the health of those who are exposed. It also hassles the people, especially those who are drivers and commuters. Another hazard that was identified was fire. Fire is also very prominent in the barangay. Lastly, typhoons and earthquakes were the natural hazards that were identified.

2. Vulnerability, Elements, and People at Risk Assessment

Vulnerabilities and risk include poverty, construction of building, lack of information and awareness and improper waste management. Poverty is a huge constraint in resisting hazards, as well as coping with disaster. In the barangay, there are a lot of people who belong in the marginalized sector. Many of them don’t even have a permanent home. And for some, they only live in squatter areas where their houses were poorly built in a small congested area. You can also see the construction of buildings, roads, etc everywhere. These ongoing constructions, as well as poorly constructed buildings, are some of the risks that were identified that would cause great harm if not handled properly. Lack of information and awareness is also identified as a vulnerability because if people are not informed about the emergency plans, they won’t know what to do if a disaster happens and hence, their lives could be more at risk. Concerning the very frequent flood that occurs in the Barangay, the climate is not the only reason why this happens. Improper waste management that leads to clogging of the drainage system is also an attribute to this phenomenon.

3. Capacity and Disaster Management Assessment

The Barangay has a risk reduction management plan wherein they have allotted funds for different hazards present in the community and also proposed activities to lessen vulnerabilities. Disaster situations that were addressed are super typhoon, floods, fire and Earthquake and the evacuation centers for these disasters were Barangay Hall and RAHA Fire Volunteer Station. They also had an inventory of available equipment that can be used during disasters such as fire extinguishers, first aid kit, BP apparatus, etc. They also have an early warning system equipment such as megaphones and two-way radios. Included also in the plan are the weekly clean-up drives and the de-clogging of drainage system. Together with the disaster risk management plan, they also have a procurement plan wherein 70% for the calamity funds and 30% for the quick response fund. Under the 30% of funds are for the need of the victims during and after the calamity, these are relief goods such as rice and canned goods.

In the barangay’s disaster preparedness information, they have identified the location of high risk-areas for different disasters. They also had assigned evacuation centers, transportation and communication means, and equipment. Special task forces were also distributed among the Barangay Councilor as the action officers and the Barangay Chairman as the over-all chairman. The Special Task Force includes warning system service, rescue and evacuation service, disaster relief and supply service and such.

4. Practices and Lifestyle of the Community

The Barangay participates in nationwide and regional earthquake drills which happen quarterly. These drills aim to train the Barangay and to test the different elements of the response plan for evaluation and revision. In their report, barangay officials first announced the upcoming earthquake drill and how the drill will be conducted. They also instructed people about the alarm system so that people will be familiar with the sound and they could respond to it. After that, a roll call will be done to determine who are present and who are not. After which, everyone will be assessed for injuries or need of medical assistance. In the drill proper of “alarm phase,” people were informed about the drill advisory by public announcement, cellphone emergency alert sent by MMDA and barangay public address system. In the “response phase,” people performed duck, cover and hold. And lastly, in the “evacuation phase,” the people evacuated their respective places after the second set of ringing (which signifies that the earthquake has stopped). People then evacuate by pre-determined safe routes and stayed away from buildings, walls and other things that could pose harm. People then assembled in an open area (UST field ground) and were grouped for Roll Call. After the roll call, an evaluation is done by the institution. These are the components of the Barangay’s earthquake drill which, as said earlier, are conducted quarterly.

Let’s look closer into it…

Anthropogenic factors of flood, improper waste management, and all the other issues that the community is facing are all under poverty. As mentioned above, many of the population of the barangay belongs in the marginalized sector. And we cannot deny that poverty is a huge vulnerability in a community because people don’t have the money to buy facilities and equipment that are less hazardous. Some of them don’t even have a safe place to stay, they don’t have a proper place to perform their basic lifestyle. And so, when disaster comes, they don’t have a safe place to stay and their lives are at greater risk. Another reason also is the discipline of the people. As I have seen in a report, only a few people are participating in the drill. This is one of the problems I have seen in the community, the people are not participative in the drills of the barangay. In one of the copies of their attendance, only 12 people were there. This makes me think that the quarterly earthquake drills that are conducted will only be of little help if only a few people are participating. And if you’ll think of it, one must really know the drills because you will never know what could happen and it can save your life. And then if something bad happens, the people would blame all to the government for the numerous casualties. Well, it doesn’t work like that, the government and the people should work together to reduce risks and casualties. However, you cannot expect everyone to be disciplined, unless you, yourself has discipline.

Then, what now?

If you want something to change, make the first step. It means change will always start within you. If you want to see other people be discipline, you first have to be disciplined. You need to be the model of those people around you.

But, why?

Because we were given the dominion to rule and control these things, we must be stewards to it. God gave each of us the power to control and have dominion to all other creatures, and that comes with the responsibility of taking care of it as well. We don’t own anything, and hence, we must properly manage everything, which includes the small trash people throw along the roads. As they say, “great power comes with great responsibility.”

So, what could I do?

As a member of the community and this nation, we can do something to reduce the vulnerabilities and risks and increase the capacity of the community. One way is to participate. Participate in the projects of the barangay because it will be for our own good. Let us not add ourselves to the possible casualties in a disaster. Participate in clean-up drives and also in training for first aid like basic life support. Another thing that can be done is to identify vulnerabilities in your place and inform the person-in-charge of the possible risk that it could create. In that way, solutions for vulnerabilities are being taken into action.

Documentations

References:

NSTP- Module 4

The Varsitarian (for the photo of UST)

Brgy. 471 documents

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royalfame0314 · 3 years

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About Hamzy

If the pickles belong to Korea, the noodles belong to Korea, the barbecue belongs to Korea, then the Koreans belong to China!

It totally scared me to see such a Korean girl swallowing like a pig, that spoiled my appetite! I have no interest in her “forage”! I love the Chinese delicious food!

The Korean food is the most monotonous of the world, so they try to steal the Chinese culture, the Japanese culture, and the European culture, to combine together to form their “culture”! But can you inherit so much culture with such a short history? The Koreans have to think twice before act.

Every time I see her swallowing, I could feel her pain! For her, to eat is not to enjoy, but a way to earn money to live on, that’s really a pity! I can feel that she is making herself sick!

I don’t know why so many fans are watching her videos, she always takes the same food in her video, even the color of the food is the same, that’s really boring! look, her black dog is looking at her!

Why does this Korean pig have such a big mouth??? It can put the whole spoon in its mouth! That’s impolite in the Chinese custom. Why does it put a megaphone under the table? I hate that sound! In China, we won’t make any sound while having dinner!

Don’t forgive her! Paocai(Chinese pickles) belongs to China, it’s part of the most important culture in China, especially in Sichuan, let’s protect our intangible cultural heritage!

Don’t forgive this two-faced woman, the apologies are made by her company and group, what she said at youtube is totoally opposite! She has earned enough money in China, she has her own shop at Taobao, she is famous in many Chinese platforms, now she goes into reverse and attacks Chinese friends online. It’s time for us to call on to boycott her and her goods online, to stop her action of stealing!

The Koreans are always notorious in the international society, they are good at stealing culture, they are completely impolite, uncultured, uneducated and foolish! Why does this pig have so many followers?

China has a long and brillant history, that’s why the Chinese food competes in terms of reliability and variety! Only in northeast China, we have hundreds of kinds of food! People from the south prefer something spicy and hot, so the Sichuan Paocai was born in such a culture! Maybe the Korean pickles are a bit similar, but Sichuan Paocai is more famous for its excellence in color, aroma and taste.

We can’t give in at the problems of principle. If this Korean woman goes on to make improper speech, the whole China would be of Korea in the near future! We must unite together to boycott this woman by protecting and promoting Chinese culture.

To those foreigners who want to earn money in China, you have to pay attention to your behavior and respect China! Don’t be a two-faced man, that makes us sick!

We don’t accept the so-called “apology”, that’s more like an excuse! The reason why I think so is that she makes different speech at ins and youtube, I believe that’s what she thinks deeply in her heart!

I want to say something to the interpreter, do you think that none of the Chinese people speaks Korean? What we want is not the explanation of that word, that’s nothing about cultural difference, there’s no need to do so.

I won’t be your follower any more, just go out of China! Hamzy! Have a look at what you have said at the Korean social platform, a two-faced bitch!

Hamzy, you’ve really made me sick! Don’t forget that the pickles are the Chinese traditional food, and the Koreans have always been the slaves of the Chinese people! Korea has been a dependency of China for a longtime, since the Tang dynasty.

Is the interpreter a fool? The standard phrase of the Koreans to humiliate Chinese nation is중국놈, don’t forget that there’s a Chinese ethnic minority called Chaoxian!

Maybe that’s the Korean’s nature! Don’t forget the event of THAAD and Lotte Mart! There’s no place in China for the two-faced Koreans!

All the Chinese people, please remember this name Hamzy, a Korean woman who earns our money while insulting us! This two-faced woman replied to her followers at youtube saying “As the Chinese have spoken dirty words first, my company made me to make an apology, the pickles are of Korea of course!”

It’s really great to see Hamzy is loosing so many fans! I wonder if she regrets and feels the strong force from the Chinese nation! Korea is such a humble nation that they think the whole space belongs to them!

Paocai has originated in China. In ancient China, we called it zu（葅）， a kind of Chinese medicine. It was introduced to North Korea from China during the Three Kingdoms Period. South Korea did not exist at that time~

The South Korea was divided from the North Korea, but they have nothing in common! The most notable character is “self-confidence”, they are so confident in their culture that they believe they possess all.

OMG Korea is a nation with a history of only 73 years! It’s even younger than our Communist Party~ no wonder they are good at stealing, because they have nothing!

The Koreans have stolen all the things created by the Chinese people, then what do the Chinese people create? The answer: South Korea! Byebye Hamzy, hope you’ll be lucky in your own country.

Who is she? A nobody from a small country? I don’t think her food is delicious~ just like something dirty, we call it rubbish in China! Can I say something to her at ins? Go out of China!

It’s a waste of time and food! Don’t make yourself a pig! After looking at her videos, I’m suffering from lack of appetite! There are so many kinds of delicious food in China, there’s no need to follow such a Korean pig!

Hamzy, you do your business in China, then you have to pay attention to your behavior, it’s right to transfer your traditional culture, but wrong by stealing and insulting us. China is no more the China of the past, you love your country, we protect ours, we are stronger than before!

Sometimes I feel that the Koreans are frog in the well, they have not seen the world, and think the world is theirs, they don’t have the ability to create, but the ability to steal, they are the laughingstock of the world!

It’s unwise to offend the Chinese people in the age of “Internet”! Those who invade China will be punished even though they are far away! Rest in peace, miss Hamzy!

The Korean who humiliates China, it’s time to go away! Do I need to buy a ticket for you, to send you to your own “stealing country”? Korean devil~ I hope you could learn more about history before you earn money! Don’t make a spectacle of yourself here any more!

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krystoffmallillin-blog · 4 years

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Module 3: DISASTER RISK REDUCTION AND MANAGEMENT

The University of Santo Tomas is located in España Boulevard, Sampaloc, Manila. According to psa.gov.ph, Sampaloc, Manila is composed of 243 barangays as of September 30, 2019 with a population of 375,119 from the 2015 Census. Moreover, it is also referred to as the “University Belt” because there are a lot of colleges and universities found within it. And because of this, there could be a huge number of casualties that will happen when a disaster happens in the district. We need to be ready for any hazards and calamities that can affect our community for us to lessen the number of casualties and the impact of disasters on vulnerable groups and there should be an effective and operative disaster risk reduction management to lessen the number of vulnerabilities and maximize the capacity of the community. And to design a coordinated plan with the community that decreases the waste of time and resources. Specifically, I was able to do my “kwentuhan” and community walk with a barangay official in Barangay 471, Zone 46, District IV. The community is a flood-prone area and there are a lot of recorded fire incidents, car accidents, and cases of robbery and snatch theft. As I walked around the community I also noticed the uneven sidewalks and a huge hole in the walkway.

The improper waste disposal can cause the drainage system and canal to get clogged. That is why there is a flash flood after and during typhoons or storms. . I learned in Chapter 4: Disaster Risk Reduction and Management that Philippines, our country, lies in the path of typhoons and being an archipelagic country increases our location to storm surges, tsunamis and sea level changes. Furthermore, Philippines belong to the Pacific Ring of Fire, where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes happen. The most common causes of fire incident are the misuse of appliances and combustible materials, and unattended lighted candle. Philippines is located near the equator that leads to warmer temperature which makes it prone to forest fires even though there are low cases of forest wildfires in Philippines and most of it are all human-caused. While reckless driving is the main cause of car accident, such as driving under the influence of alcohol, over-speeding and not following the traffic light. And for the cases of robbery and snatch theft, criminals find people that they can easily victimize and they do it in dark and uncrowded places.

The barangay official that I was able to interview said that they have a document for barangay risk reduction management plan. Manila City conducts seminars and skills enhancement programs which the barangays actively participates in. There are also available equipment and supplies in cases of emergencies and disaster such as first aid kit, flash lights, whistle, megaphone, two-way radio, generator and many more. The barangay is always ready and aware to the emergencies that might happen in the community. They have projects like weekly clean-up drive and de-clogging to address the issue with floods during and after typhoons. There are also available fire trucks and fire extinguishers ready around the vicinity in case of reported fire incidents. Also, Barangay officials always check if the traffic lights and light posts are working properly for better visibility at night and to regulate traffic. There are also pedestrian lanes and protective boundaries in sidewalks for the safety of the pedestrians. There also signage posted in accident prone areas to warn the drivers to slow down and be careful in how they drive. In addition, there are police station near the area and CCTVs in every corner of the street to monitor the situation and activities happening in that area. The barangay tanods are doing their patrol duties and are always visible within the vicinity to assist for any problem and emergencies, it is done to address the issue with robbery and snatch theft cases. There are also warning signage that tells us to avoid using cellphone while walking and curfew for minors in accordance to the Ordinance No. 8547 of the City of Manila. In part of their preparation for an earthquake, they also coordinate with NDRRMC in conducting earthquake drills in schools and business facilities. I realized that our barangay officials are really doing their best to maintain the peace and order in the community. They also help in preparing our community to disaster and increasing the capacities of our community.

As a Thomasian and a digital native, I can help in spreading awareness about disaster preparedness to others, especially to the vulnerable ones, using the social media as a medium. Posting clear and concise information about disaster risk reduction and management can get the attention of adults and even children to read through it. Infographics are very helpful because it is attractive to the eyes, especially to the children which can be one of the vulnerable groups and it is easy to remember through the use of visual learning strategies. But it is not only limited in posting it in social media, I can give a copy to the barangay officials, for them to print it and spread the hard copy to others maybe in the form of poster or tarpaulin. Moreover, I can be the one who will coordinate the suggestions of the normal citizen to the officials to have a well-coordinated plan within the community.

Before, During, and After Interview:

Hazardous Places:

Safest Spaces and Best Practices:

#UST #NSTP #DRRM #hazards #disaster #vulnerable #capacity #awareness

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sighmic-blog · 4 years

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DRMM 101: A Guide to Pleasant Hills’ Safety

We are living in the age of climate change.

I was a newly crowned teen when this phenomenon really came to life. Glaciers melting, species going extinct, and irritably scorching weather suddenly becoming freezing cold. I did mind when it was first announced but I feel like I, along with the whole world, mind it more than before. Climate change is now more extreme than it ever was. Typhoons, landslide, earthquakes, and it didn’t help that humanity exacerbates this problem by improper waste management and mistreatment of the natural resources. That’s why, in these times, disaster risk management became a necessary step to protect people from problems that arise during climate change’s manifestation.

I conducted an interview with my local barangay regarding their disaster risk management plan, of course, concerning the disaster when it strikes but before that, we first identified the hazards that strike/struck the local community. I was informed that typhoons are often experienced than fire and earthquake. There was also a mention of drug problems in the community. They mostly get notified by the news about impending disasters in the area, as well as, the command center (municipal) that notifies them when a disaster is happening. All these disasters rarely happen in the community as per the barangay official apart from rain since it often happens. Since Typhoon Ondoy, there hasn’t really been much of a flood. Our community experience flood rarely, as well as, fire and earthquake. And if it does the poor people are likely to suffer because it’s going to bring more problems than solutions. Poor people wouldn’t have the resources to rebuild their houses if damaged, which is likely to happen since their houses are made up of light materials, and if it is damaged, they will have less to pay for food. The community declares Jaime Cardinal Sin Street and the Evangelista Sports Complex to be the safest place in the area that people can go to in times of disaster. The street is the highest land on the area and the complex serves as the evacuation center in times of need. The dangerous place, however, is of those in the low areas (although it rarely floods) and those who live in narrow streets because when a fire starts it will be most likely easy to spread. People in the community are very close, that’s why when a disaster strikes, they are quick to respond and cooperate with the barangay; they pull each other and the community upwards.

The local barangay deals with the safety of the people seriously. When an imminent disaster is near, the officials blast out the megaphones with warnings about the incoming calamity. The fire trucks and ambulance are also ready in case of un/foreshadowed event happens. If a disaster strikes, the barangay is sure to give resources to those who were victims such as clothes, groceries, blankets, and jackets in the complex where the evacuees are staying. They also give compensation to those who lost their jobs whilst the calamity. These are all planned and contemplated by the barangay officials, the captain, staff, Bantay Bayan, command center, police, and the community itself.

HAZARDOUS PLACES

Narrow streets

Traffic jams

Improper thrash waste

Dangling wires

SAFE SPACES

Evangelista Sports Complex

Jaime Cardinal Sin Street

BEST PRACTICES

Zumba and Celebration of Children’s Month

As discussed above, my local community isn’t very susceptible to any kind of hazards except typhoons which happens occasionally. People of the lower class will suffer more than the middle class due to a lack of resources establishing their needs and materials for their needs, but the barangay helps as much as they can to alleviate the burden of the poor by giving out help in forms of different necessities. The community possesses a high-level street that can accommodate people in times of flood, as well as, a sports complex that serves as an evacuation center for those who were victimized during the calamity. The neighborhood, however, also possesses hazardous areas that suspend the natural level. There are dangling wires, improper waste disposal, a traffic jam which is caused by PUVs taking shortcuts in their route. The community also practices lifestyle that encourages people to be closer such as Zumba, sports league, and events specifically made for local children’s talents and development.

Other issues concerning the community are with regards in drugs and traffic. This is to assume; drug problems happen due to the lack of opportunities in life. Being in the lower class living in an elitist world, it is hard to find opportunities even if you work hard, or in another case, you work hard yet are exploited. These experiences tend to create adversaries leading to drug intake and addiction. The local government addresses this by sending drug addicts to rehab somewhere in Bicutan, Pasig, Nueva Ecija, and Pampanga. After rehabilitation, the local government offers them a job at the barangay so that they can start fresh and give them something to use their time effectively. Another issue that concerns the community is the traffic jams that occur near dusk every weekday. This is caused by PUVs and private vehicles taking shortcuts and avoiding traffic that happens regularly at Shaw Boulevard. The barangay put up signs of “PUVs No Entry” and traffic enforcers to help manage these jams.

What happens in our local community most likely happens also outside our community. Being an archipelagic country, it is normal for us to experience rain but due to climate change, we experience it way more than usual. Mass transportation is also one of the biggest concerns that the Filipinos are facing today. Our situation locally is just an effect of other existing traffic jams outside the community. Drug addiction is also a big concern, especially with the controversial way of handling it by our president.

While doing this project, I realized that I never realized how safe this neighbourhood was. It has its imperfections, yes, but there are solutions that aim to resolve it. When I was walking the sidewalks, there was minimal thrash because there is a place where people would throw it, a place where the garbage collector will collect it. It is a very close community, there will be a little fight here and there but ultimately, we bring each other up.

There is a huge need to address the issues of disasters in our country. To address it means to protect the citizens, to address it means that lives are secured and given importance to, to address it means that there is a drive to alleviate and solve the problems, to address it means that we are aware of the impending disasters that can destroy us. We can address these kinds of stuff by providing disaster risk management plan and integrating with our local community and government to identify hazards and safety plans that are going to be demise and security of the community.

As a member of this community and this nation, I can scrutinize and proactively integrate with the community so that I can be able to identify possible hazards for the barangay to plan something for it. I can also take personal actions such as proper waste disposal and advocate for the safety of the people. Being cooperative with the barangay can really help a lot and I will do so, to show that we don’t have to be in a government position to do something good for our community.

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overdrivels · 7 years

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Capoeira vem, capoeira vai

Satya, on multiple occasions, has warned him—scolded, more like—about the improper use of Vishkar technology. Lúcio always brushes her off, convinced she says that because she has too much pride in Vishkar’s work, and not because she can see what the Sound Amplifier really does to him. Not that he would ever admit it to her or anyone else.

Not even if the image of his fractured arm on the holoscreen stares him in the face.

“C’mon Mercy, s’no big deal,” Lúcio laughs through clenched teeth even though it only intensifies the pain addling his mind. He doesn’t see Mercy frowning, too busy trying to focus on staying upright on his seat.

“No big dea—” Mercy takes a breath, incredulous. “Most blood vessels in your arms has exploded, your shoulder is dislocated, and your arm’s bones are broken.”

“S’not broken. Jus’ fractured.”

“Fractured is broken.”

He nods weakly, eyes squeezed shut because he really can’t get his brain to work out the semantics of medical correctness, and because he really wants to throw up. He holds the edge of his chair, and tries hard not to focus on the fact that the room feels like it’s doing the samba.

“Mercy. ‘m sorry, bu’could you jus’give me a break? I don’feel so hot.”

There is a moment of terse silence and for a moment, Lúcio thought his self-control would run out and he’d be face-first in a pool of his own vomit. Then he swears he hears Mercy sigh before the familiar feeling of warmth fills his entire being, the sickening feeling and pain finally ebbing away. His fingers slacken--"Nein, nein!!"--and he does end up face-first on the floor, too exhausted from the mission and the fight to stay dignified on his chair.

He isn’t quite sure when he passed out—if he passed out. The feeling of being lifted, the sight of dark fur, and hearing lots of garbled noise sticks out—but when he is finally able to string a coherent thought together (‘Yeah, fractured bones are totally broken bones.’), he finds himself alone in a bed with his right arm bandaged from fingers to shoulder in a sling.

'That's overkill,' he thinks hazily to himself.

An experimental flex of his finger yields unspectacular results. The digits can twitch, but not much else. The pain is surprisingly absent, and Lúcio thinks it must be because of Mercy. She never did like seeing people suffering. Alive, but certainly not suffering, if the arguments she has with Ana are any indication.

He takes a lazy inventory of his surroundings. Bare, with simple furnishings, hardly anything excess. A table by his side with his tablet on it. A lamp. No window. A chair with an empty jar, the red lid and peanut logo oddly familiar.

The implications finally click in his mind, his stomach clenches and the nausea returns, and he has to take deep breaths to fight the wild urge to run after the several hundred pound gorilla. No doubt Mercy has already informed Winston in explicit detail on his condition and the effects of the Sound Amplifier while he was unconscious. The tell-tale absence of his glorified megaphone is enough to confirm that.

Instinctively, his hand jerkily forms the sign of a cross across his front. He prays that the specifics never reaches Satya’s ears. She would probably gloat that she was right, that Vishkar’s technology was not meant to be in the hands of a ruffian like himself. He knows the condescendence was not intentional, but it burns to hear it and even more so to know that it could be true.

It is a dirty secret; the Sound Amplifier is incomplete (not just the blueprints, but too few resources and backyard creativity probably didn’t help). The feedback from using ‘Sound Barrier’ has been slowly tearing his body apart, it was destroying him just a touch more than it heals him. After every mission, his shoulder is left sore and his teeth tingling from the vibrations that gets his nerves more hopped up than his fans after one of his world tours. But, he wears his smile because that's what he has to do.

And no one was supposed to find out.

Lúcio immediately reaches for his tablet and thumbs through it, searching for tunes that could squelch the jitters that found a home in his stomach. There is little use dwelling on it now. If the architect wasn't at the foot of his bed with a list of improvements (or complaints), then he'll count that as a blessing, and stay put in recovery. But however much he trusts Mercy to keep her professionalism about her, the anxiety still drives him to select a hidden playlist that he needs a password for. The songs are all listed as “Untitled”, but he does not need to know the names, having heard them so many times in his moments of despair and loneliness.

A few quick taps, and the first sound of twanging instruments demands his attention, the beat of a tambourine—pandeiro—replaces his heartbeat.

“Iê!” A woman shouts, demands the attention of his fear. “Eu ja vivo enjoado, de viver aqui na terra..."

The words ghost his lips, his eyes slip closed under the spell of the woman’s song, a story of poetic death and morality. Every word tugs at his heart, the nostalgic voice gives them strength and makes him weak. He wishes that she did not speak of leaving—“Amanha eu vou pra lua, falei com minha mulher”—but knows he could not stop her. Nothing could.

Nothing did.

She left for the moon, and left her community behind to take up the fight. But it was okay, because she gave them weapons to fight with. Weapons to use on themselves, to better themselves, to better their surroundings. The music he has in his hands is proof of that.

Satya could insult him, but she cannot insult his community. Nothing could ever change the fact that, no matter how imperfect, it’s his home. If change must come, it must come from within. Not imposed by some outside force with no understanding of their lives.

“O senhor amigo meu, veja bem o meu cantar. Quem é dono não se ciúma, quem não é quer ciumar," the song insists in a rising crescendo, so self-assured that it must be true: those have not are jealous, and those who have, need not be jealous.

The woman calls ("Camará!") and he responds, “Iê, viva meu Deus camará!”

“—I see you’re doing just fine, kid.”

The tablet nearly flips out of his hands at the gravelly voice. His spine instinctively straightens.

“S-soldier! Hey, nice of you to drop by,” Lúcio says over the singing, trying to mute it with a clumsy hand. “How’s everyone else?”

Soldier: 76 closes the door behind him.

“The Shimadas are being taken care of. Genji needed some repairs to his legs; Hanzo is unconscious—Ana’s Nano-Boost almost killed him; and McCree-” Lúcio could almost swear Solider muttered, ‘Damned punk’ under his breath. “-is mostly fine. Injuries were light because of you. Good work out there.”

“Me? Nah, just…doing what I gotta do, is all.”

"You give yourself too little credit. Not everyone would run back their team after securing the payload."

"...thanks."

The volume buttons barely respond, the woman continues onto a different song, unperturbed by her new audience. Soldier: 76 nods at the tablet in his hands.

“She sings well.”

Lúcio flushes. “Uh, yeah. She’s great."

His fumbling fingers finally manages to cut the music off.

"Someone you knew?"

"How did you--?"

Soldier shrugged. "Ana." The confusion must've shown on his face. "She used to sing to her daughter."

It doesn't answer the question, not completely, but Lúcio thinks he understands and he furrows his brow at the silent tablet. Is that what it sounds like to someone who does not know the words? A song from mother to child? Is that the type of message the music conveys? The words and their meaning are obvious to him, having heard it hundreds of times, have been taught about the origins of the song (a man dying and worries little of his wife’s faithfulness because she loves him). But to someone else who knows nothing of ladainhas and the woman behind the voice, is that the image she conjures?

“You need to talk about it?”

"Talk?" There isn't anything to talk about. With the workaholic vigilante? Nothing except the mission, but...

"The song, the woman singing."

"She's not that--" Interesting? Important? Lúcio falters, and can't give voice to those lies. He takes a shuddering breath, and his vision flickers upward at something unseen. He bites his lower lip. It’s not a story worth listening to, but Soldier tosses the peanut butter jar into the trash can with a dissatisfied grunt, and claims the chair for himself. It seems like he intends to stay regardless if he speaks or not.

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“I have time.” Solder: 76 emphasizes this and stretches his legs in front of him, settling deep into the chair.

Lúcio laughs weakly at the unexpected development, and fiddles with his tablet for a moment. He scoots up his bed, and leans back against the wall. This is an old story that he has never mentioned to the press or to anyone outside his community—they already know. They were there.

“Where do I even start?”

The room falls quiet. Lúcio closes his eyes.

"...she was my mestranda."

#Lúcio Correia dos Santos #Soldier: 76 #The ladainha is my mestre's rendition of 'Eu já vivo enjoado'#I've always wanted an excuse to write about capoeira #my writing

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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'Scrutiny and double standards': Katie Hill's downfall splits Democrats

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/scrutiny-and-double-standards-katie-hills-downfall-splits-democrats/

'Scrutiny and double standards': Katie Hill's downfall splits Democrats

Rep. Katie Hill will give her final floor speech Thursday. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

Rep. Katie Hill’s colleagues were uniformly shocked and saddened by the collapse of the freshman star’s political career. But that’s where their agreement ends.

A stark generational divide among Democrats has emerged over what, if any, responsibility Hill should assume for the firestorm that led to her resignation this week, as well as whether the same standards would be applied to a male lawmaker. Some Democrats are also worried about the potential chilling effect on efforts to recruit younger candidates, particularly millennial women.

“This doesn’t happen to male members in the same way — revenge porn in this respect. It’s horrific,” said freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), adding that “of course” it will deter some younger women from running for office. “I don’t think we’re really talking about how targeted and serious this is. We’re talking about a major crime… being committed against her.”

Hill’s situation is complicated.

The California Democrat vehemently denied an improper relationship with a congressional aide, allegations that prompted a House Ethics Committee investigation. But Hill acknowledged an “inappropriate” relationship with a separate campaign staffer. And she faced a barrage of nude photos published on conservative websites — allegedly at the hands of an “abusive husband” — and the threat of hundreds more to come.

Some senior Democrats, who came of age long before the proliferation of cellphone cameras, have privately suggested that Hill should have been more careful. Others have refused to comment on the issue, with some visibly uncomfortable when asked about Hill’s private life.

Democratic leaders have not directly addressed the circumstances of Hill’s resignation or the smear campaign against her to the full caucus since Hill made her resignation announcement. Her departure did come up at a weekly gathering of senior Democrats, which Hill used to attend as the freshman leadership representative.

In the closed-door leadership meeting Monday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi reflected on what happened as she told senior Democrats that it was Hill’s decision to resign.

“Our darling Katie. It’s so sad,” Pelosi said, according to two Democratic sources with knowledge of the meeting. “It goes to show you, we should say to young candidates, and to kids in kindergarten really, be careful when transmitting photos.”

Several other older Democrats, most of whom refused to be quoted, suggested the same advice when asked by POLITICO.

But it’s a starkly different response from many of Hill’s younger colleagues, who are rallying to the defense of one of Congress’ first openly bisexual women as she deals with a vengeful husband who appears to have found a megaphone on conservative blogs.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the few lawmakers publicly declaring support for the embattled freshman, said it stems from the “baby boomer era of judgment” looming over Capitol Hill.

“Frankly, I think it’s a generational issue,” Gaetz said in an interview. “A lot of these baby boomers I serve with don’t understand that millennials, by virtue of having smartphones, have shared stupid moments and regrettable moments for a substantial portion of their lives.”

“We cannot adopt an ethic that some bad thing or embarrassing thing that you’ve done, released through the inflamed passions of an ex, somehow impairs your public service or fitness as a candidate,” said Gaetz, a conservative bomb-thrower who rarely aligns with Democrats.

Hill, who has so far missed votes this week, will give her final floor speech Thursday after the House votes to affirm its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Hill’s resignation will take effect Nov. 1, her office announced Wednesday night.

Rank-and-file Democrats have universally mourned the loss of the fast-rising freshman, who was not shy about her aspirations to climb higher in leadership and initially vowed to remain in Congress and cooperate with the Ethics Committee investigation.

But the details of the scandal — leaked text messages about being in a “throuple” and intimate photos where Hill also appeared to hold a bong — were taboo in a body where the average age of lawmakers is 57.6 years and the caucus’ top three leaders are all near 80 years old.

The lack of public support for Hill has frustrated some of her younger colleagues, who argue that other lawmakers have been too quick to cast judgment because of the existence of the private photos and other details of her life, like being in a relationship with a man and a woman simultaneously. Some believe Hill should not have resigned at all.

“I’ve only been here for 10 months, but it’s unbelievable, the kind of scrutiny and double standards that I’ve seen,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), said in an interview, adding that it is particularly difficult for a woman or a person of color.

“This place can be extremely defeating. You’re coming as your unapologetic self. You’re coming as a real person,” Tlaib added. “They’re not ready for people like Katie and I, for people who are different… We needed Katie here and I hope she changes her mind.”

Hill herself warned that younger women may now rethink the possibility of pursuing elected office in an emotional video announcing her resignation this week, as she vowed to “take up a new fight” against the kind of revenge porn-driven attacks she faced.

“There is one thing that I know for sure. I will not allow my experience to scare off other young women or girls from running for office. For the sake of all of us, we cannot let that happen,” Hill said in the video, which has been viewed nearly 200,000 times.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm, however, is not worried about such a chilling effect. “I don’t have any concerns over it,” the Illinois Democrat said.

Some Democrats say they simply don’t know what to think about the circumstances that drove Hill to resign or whether Hill actually violated congressional ethics rules.

“You know what, I’m not going to talk about that. It’s too personal,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said when asked about Hill’s decision to leave Congress.

Her colleagues might have been more eager to defend Hill against her husband’s smear campaign, if not for accusations that she had a relationship with an aide in her congressional office — a blatant violation of the rules that Democrats passed this year in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

And some have privately questioned why Hill would resign just days after the Ethics panel announced it was launching its investigation, arguing that she could have kept her seat if she did not fear what the committee would uncover.

Hill maintains she did not violate House rules outlawing relationships with subordinates and instead said she chose to resign due to the fear “of what would come next” from this “unprecedented brand of cruelty” at the hands of her husband and the conservative news outlets that published the intimate photos.

This isn’t the first time Congress has dealt with a nude photo scandal. Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) had nude photos of her and her husband stolen and published by two former aides, both of whom were later indicted. And Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) decided to retire after nude photos he sent to women became public.

But this is the first time lawmakers have had to juggle a nude photo scandal of this magnitude: potentially hundreds of photos that could be disseminated at lightning speed via conservative outlets and spread on social media.

While Hill’s circumstances may be extreme, it is the kind of situation that could become more commonplace as more lawmakers arrive in Washington with an extensive digital footprint, lawmakers and aides say.

Some Democrats also pointed out the contrast between Hill and her fellow Californian, Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, who has refused to resign after he was indicted for using campaign funds to help fund at least five extramarital affairs, including allegedly with congressional aides.

“I would hope that people such as Duncan Hunter, as an example, might follow, and do the right thing in resigning as well,” freshman Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.) said of Hill’s decision to leave.

Rouda, like most Democrats, declined to say specifically whether he thought there is a double standard for female and male lawmakers in terms of their private life affecting their political career.

“I’m not sure I would call it a double standard,” he said. “I would call it two standards: The Democratic high standard and there’s a Republican low standard.”

Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

#downfall #Foreign #Politics #splits

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/us/politics/trump-mass-shootings.html#click=https://t.co/0rraYzMJ1o

Trump is a sociopathic psychopath who is endangering the lives of the American citizens and encouraging his followers to do harm to people who look different from them. That's the definition of racism and white supremacy.

At a Florida rally in May, the president asked the crowd for ideas to block migrants from crossing the border.

“How do you stop these people?” he asked.

“Shoot them!” one man shouted.

The crowd laughed and Mr. Trump smiled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he said. “Only in the Panhandle.”

El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language

By Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear | Published Aug. 4, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 5, 2019 |

At campaign rallies before last year’s midterm elections, President Trump repeatedly warned that America was under attack by immigrants heading for the border. “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” he declared at one rally. “That is an invasion!”

Nine months later, a 21-year-old white man is accused of opening fire in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 20 peopleand injuring dozens more after writing a manifesto railing against immigration and announcing that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The suspect wrote that his views “predate Trump,” as if anticipating the political debate that would follow the blood bath. But if Mr. Trump did not originally inspire the gunman, he has brought into the mainstream polarizing ideas and people once consigned to the fringes of American society.

While other leaders have expressed concern about border security and the costs of illegal immigration, Mr. Trump has filled his public speeches and Twitter feed with sometimes false, fear-stoking language even as he welcomed to the White House a corps of hard-liners, demonizers and conspiracy theorists shunned by past presidents of both parties. Because of this, Mr. Trump is ill equipped to provide the kind of unifying, healing force that other presidents projected in times of national tragedy.

In televised remarks on Sunday afternoon before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington from his New Jersey home, Mr. Trump praised the performance of law enforcement officers and offered condolences to the victims and their families in El Paso as well as in Dayton, Ohio, where an unrelated mass shooting occurredearly Sunday morning.

“Hate has no place in our country, and we’re going to take care of it,” the president said, declining to elaborate but promising to speak more on Monday morning. He made no mention of white supremacy or the El Paso manifesto, but instead focused on what he called “a mental illness problem.”

On Monday morning, he used Twitter to call for Republicans and Democratsto work together to strengthen background checks for prospective gun buyers and pass new immigration laws

Democratic presidential candidates wasted little time on Sunday pointing the finger at Mr. Trump, arguing that he had encouraged extremism with what they called hateful language. Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies rejected that, arguing that the president’s political foes were exploiting a tragedy to further their political ambitions.

“I’m saying that President Trump has a lot to do with what happened in El Paso yesterday,” Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate who represented El Paso in Congress, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. Mr. O’Rourke said Mr. Trump “sows the kind of fear, the kind of reaction that we saw in El Paso yesterday.”

Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said it was outrageous to hold Mr. Trump responsible for the acts of a madman or suggest the president sympathized with white supremacists.

“I don’t think it’s at all fair to sit here and say that he doesn’t think that white nationalism is bad for the nation,” he said on “This Week” on ABC. “These are sick people. You cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head. These are sick people. You know it, I know it, the president knows it. And this type of thing has to stop. And we have to figure out a way to fix the problem, not figure out a way to lay blame.”

Linking political speech, however heated, to the specific acts of ruthless mass killers is a fraught exercise, but experts on political communication said national leaders could shape an environment with their words and deeds, and bore a special responsibility to avoid inflaming individuals or groups, however unintentionally.

“The people who carry out these attacks are already violent and hateful people,” said Nathan P. Kalmoe, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University who has studied hate speech. “But top political leaders and partisan media figures encourage extremism when they endorse white supremacist ideas and play with violent language. Having the most powerful person on Earth echo their hateful views may even give extremists a sense of impunity.”

This has come up repeatedly during Mr. Trump’s presidency, whether it be the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., or the bomber who sent explosives to Mr. Trump’s political adversaries and prominent news media figures or the gunman who stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue after ranting online about “invaders” to the United States.

David Livingstone Smith, a philosophy professor at the University of New England and the author of a book on dehumanization of whole categories of people, said Mr. Trump had emboldened Americans whose views were seen as unacceptable in everyday society not long ago.

“This has always been part of American life,” he said. “But Trump has given people permission to say what they think. And that’s crack cocaine. That’s powerful. When someone allows you to be authentic, that’s a very, very potent thing. People have come out of the shadows.”

Grant Stinchfield, a former host of NRATV, the defunct online media arm of the National Rifle Association, said his “heart aches” for the victims of El Paso, but he accused the news media and Democrats of unfairly blaming Mr. Trump for a crime committed by a “disgusting, deranged human being.”

“Evil has existed since the beginning of time,” Mr. Stinchfield said. “To blame the president or any other conservative on the actions of a deranged lunatic is insane and flat-out disgusting. The problem with liberals today is they do not want to take responsibility for anything. They will blame everyone but the shooter.”

Kris Kobach, the former secretary of state in Kansas and an immigration hard-liner who is close to Mr. Trump, said Democrats were being outrageous. “They are trying to exploit this horrific tragedy to attack the president and push an open-borders agenda and push gun control,” he said. “It’s not only incorrect, it’s improper to do this at a time when people are still grieving.”

Dark, anti-immigrant language has flavored American politics for generations. Politicians in the 1880s and 1920s rose to power by seizing on fears of Italians, Japanese, Chinese and other immigrants, stoking fears about the loss of the “American identity.”

In more recent years, those who trafficked in racist conspiracies and warned that immigrants were a threat to the safety and economic well-being of native-born Americans were largely ignored by the bipartisan establishment even as they gave voice to the views of many Americans who felt disenfranchised.

But Mr. Trump embraced racist conspiracies for years: He was among the leading voices who pushed the “birtherism” lie claiming that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. And since his campaign for the presidency, Mr. Trump has taken those views to the center of American politics. He denounces immigrant gang members as “animals” and complains that unauthorized migrants “pour into and infest” the United States. Illegal immigration is a “monstrosity,” he says, while demanding that even American-born congresswomen of color “go back” to their home countries.

He uses the word “aliens” to refer to immigrants long after it was deemed dehumanizing even by other Republicans. And his language about immigration is suffused in anger: In El Paso earlier this year, he demanded that Democrats help him “deport criminal aliens and keep the coyotes and traffickers and drug dealers the hell out of our country.”

His preferred recourse to illegal immigration often seems to rely on force. He sent the military to the border last year before the election and at one point even said he would order troops to open fire on migrants who throw stones, disconcerting military leaders who objected to what they considered a disproportionate response.

At a Florida rally in May, the president asked the crowd for ideas to block migrants from crossing the border.

“How do you stop these people?” he asked.

“Shoot them!” one man shouted.

The crowd laughed and Mr. Trump smiled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he said. “Only in the Panhandle.”

Along the way, Mr. Trump has empowered groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has been designated a hate group by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. He has become a reliable megaphone for anti-immigrant screeds carried by Breitbart News and Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Network.

And he has seeded his administration with activists, lawyers and a cadre of former Capitol Hill staff members on the far end of the anti-immigration spectrum, all of whom had toiled for years in obscurity, viewed by Democrats and Republicans alike as too radical.

Stephen Miller, who promoted anti-immigration views as a congressional aide, is now the chief architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. Julie Kirchner, the former executive director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, is a top official at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages legal immigration.

Jon Feere, a former legal analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates significantly less immigration, is a top adviser at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And Stephen K. Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, ran Mr. Trump’s campaign and served in the White House as the president’s chief strategist.

While the police in Ohio said they were still looking into the motive of the Dayton gunman, the El Paso killings were quickly linked to politics. In the 2,300-word manifesto tied by the police to Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the El Paso shooting, he said he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

Mr. Trump said much the same four years ago, at an event hosted by the Texas Patriots at a Houston-area school. “Everything’s coming across the border,” Mr. Trump said. “The illegals, the cars, the whole thing — it’s like a big mess, blah. It’s like vomit.”

Mr. Crusius described legal and illegal immigrants as “invaders” who are flooding into the United States, a term Mr. Trump has frequently employed to argue for a border wall.

In July 2015, Mr. Trump tweeted at critics: “WHAT U REALLY SHOULD B ANGRY ABT IS THE INVASION OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS TKING OVER AMERICA! NOT DonaldTrump.” After using the term regularly during last fall’s campaign, he has begun using it for next year’s campaign as well. In one Facebook ad in February, for instance, his campaign wrote, “It’s CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION.”

In March, Mr. Trump defended the use of the term before an audience of conservative activists. “They don’t like it when I say it — but we are being invaded,” he said of his critics. “We’re being invaded by drugs, by people, by criminals. And we have to stop it.”

White House aides argue that there is a vast difference between favoring tough policies at the border and condoning violence, but they resigned themselves to a fresh round of criticism of the president from the moment they heard about the El Paso shooting and the manifesto.

Several of Mr. Trump’s advisers said they were happy that his public messages since the shooting had been restrained and presidential, but they conceded that he needed to do more to unify the country.

Still, few advisers believed he would be easily moved to perform as past presidents have during national crises, with a grand speech or even a news conference with the F.B.I. director, to whom the president would have to partly cede the stage.

For their part, other Republicans made a point over the weekend of denouncing white nationalism, going where Mr. Trump himself would not.

“There have now been multiple attacks from self-declared white terrorists here in the U.S. in the last several months,” George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and son of former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, said in a statement. “This is a real and present threat that we must all denounce and defeat.”

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silviajburke · 7 years

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The Walls Close in on Team Obama

This post The Walls Close in on Team Obama appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

[Ed. Note: To see exactly what this former Reagan insider has to say about Trump and the fiscal threats from politics and the debt ceiling, David Stockman is sending out a copy of his book Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back to any American willing to listen – before it is too late. To learn how to get your free copy CLICK HERE.]

It goes without saying that conservatives and their Sean Hannity media megaphones hated Barack Obama with a passion, and now realize that his administration facilitated and orchestrated a smear attack on the GOP candidate for President.

For instance, the Daily Caller was all over the case today with even more inflammatory detail from a former U.S. Attorney and two White House National Security Council (NSC) veterans:

Former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice ordered U.S. spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president, according to former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova.

“What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.

“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”

Col. (Ret.) James Waurishuk, an NSC veteran and former deputy director for intelligence at the U.S. Central Command, told the Daily Caller News Foundation’s (DCNF) that many hands had to be involved throughout the Obama administration to launch such a political spying program.

“We’re looking at a potential constitutional crisis from the standpoint that we used an extremely strong capability that’s supposed to be used to safeguard and protect the country,” he said. “And we used it for political purposes by a sitting president. That takes on a new precedent.”

Michael Doran, former NSC senior director, told the DCNF Monday that “somebody blew a hole in the wall between national security secrets and partisan politics.” This “was a stream of information that was supposed to be hermetically sealed from politics and the Obama administration found a way to blow a hole in that wall,” he said.

“That’s a felony,” he told the DCNF. “And you can get 10 years for that. It is a tremendous abuse of the system. We’re not supposed to be monitoring American citizens. Bigger than the crime, is the breach of public trust.”

Senator Rand Paul pointed the finger at Susan Rice. And now that Obama’s fingerprints are all over the Deep State’s 2016 election intrusions, there is an opening for junior GOP legislators to follow Senator Paul’s brilliant lead.

In pouncing on the Susan Rice smoking gun Rand has managed to meld a partisan attack on Team Obama with a spirited and cogent defense of constitutional liberties under the 4th Amendment; and to expose the Deep State’s frightening potential for abuse of power.

At the moment, the pro-establishment spinners and their boosters in the mainstream editorial pages are trying desperately to distract from the case they can no longer deny.

That is to say, yes, Susan Rice — and probably CIA Director Brennan and others — did “unmask” the names of Trump associates. But it was all done, they maintain, in the pursuit of their duties to acquire “foreign intelligence information” and was in no way improper.

Likewise, they are loudly insisting that the Deep State surveillance apparatus was just going about its ordinary business of monitoring nasty foreigners when Trump associates — or even the Donald himself — became an inadvertent victim of “incidental” surveillance. So there is nothing sinister about that, either.

It’s not gonna wash.

There can be little doubt that the whole Russian hacking narrative was invented by the Deep State, and then massaged and leaked by top Obama officials including Rice, Brennan and numerous others for one purpose alone that had nothing to do with national security.

That is, to prevent the election of an impetuous, strong-willed anti-globalist that the establishment deeply disapproved and then to re-litigate the election once the unthinkable happened on November 8th.

So not only is the whole hacking story essentially a glorified piece of opposition research peddled by the DNC and its affiliates, whatever “forensic evidence” that may exist was undoubtedly manufactured by the Deep State itself.

That’s right. Owing to the latest Wikileaks disclosures of March 2017 via a trove of leaked CIA documents it calls “Vault 7,” it now appears that all of the other dubious IC’s claims and “assessments” about Russian hacking have been ash-canned.

That is, Vault 7 suggests the CIA has the ability to manufacture and deposit electronic trails to “misdirect attribution” by leaving false cyber fingerprints.

Using a library of foreign malware and hacking tools, the CIA can plant Russian, Chinese, Iranian or other hackers’ fingerprints to make the hackers appear to be from one of those countries — even as they do the job from the comfort of their offices in Langley, VA.

Needless to say, that explains how the alleged Russian hackers could be so “clumsy” as to leave obvious and damning fingerprints on their work.

So it is probable that the Russians were “clumsy” because they weren’t actually “Russians”. They were undoubtedly CIA operatives from the Center for Cyber Intelligence.

But every single dirty deed of this illicit campaign will come out because the Deep State is not a monolith; it’s still populated with whistleblowers and operators with a score to settle.

I actually have some authoritative experience on this matter.

As an aide to a top House GOP leader back in the day, I had an insider’s bird’s-eye view of the Watergate drama between early 1973 and August 1974 when Nixon famously boarded the helicopter and bugged out of town with a pardon soon thereafter. And there was virtually nothing that didn’t come out once people started covering their backsides and settling scores.

If the Donald has the courage of his convictions, he will authorize the Department of Justice (DOJ) to unleash one or more ambitious U.S. Attorneys against Susan Rice, Brennan and others. Owing to their massive leaking campaign from the illicit Trump surveillance operation, they are all surely felons.

But I also expect that the dueling narratives about the election meddling of “Vlad versus Barry” will expose the soft underbelly of the Deep State and the toxic anti-constitutional essence of its operations.

I am speaking of NSA’s bulk collection of all the email, voice and data bits which pass through the internet and communications arteries of the nation.

Here’s the thing. The most pressing danger the nation faces arises from a few thousand barbarous jihadis bumping around the rubble-strewn cities and villages of the middle east that Imperial Washington has destroyed. But even this remnant no longer uses cell-phones or any other digital devices.

If they need to be tracked, it can be done the old-fashioned way with greenbacks on the barrel. Human intelligence (HUMINT) wouldn’t cost even 1% of the $75 billion now spent on the intelligence agencies annually, and would give the American constitution and our process of democratic self-government another lease on life.

In the meanwhile, the coming war of the two election hacking narratives –Vlad v. Barry — will absolutely dominate the Imperial City.

That beltway brawl will result in absolute paralysis and dysfunction in Washington soon — if it has not arrived already.

And so nothing constructive will happen on the Trump Stimulus, and a continuous Fiscal Bloodbath around continuing resolutions and debt ceiling increases will become the order of the day.

So, as I keep saying, get out of the casino. Now!

Regards,

David Stockman for The Daily Reckoning

The post The Walls Close in on Team Obama appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

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hyaenagallery · 7 years

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Mina Crandon part 4 Crandon performed many of her séances in the nude, and was reported to throw herself onto the laps of her male sitters. She was also described as an alcoholic. During séances, Eric Dingwall told Crandon to take off her clothes and sit in the nude. Crandon would also sometimes sprinkle luminous powder on her breasts and because of such activities William McDougall and other psychical researchers criticized Dingwall for having improper relations with Crandon. Historian Ruth Brandon has noted that as Bird, Carrington and Dingwall were all personally involved with Crandon, they were biased and unreliable witnesses. A review by the father of modern parapsychology, Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine, lent further insight into Crandon's performances. Dr. Rhine was able to observe some of her trickery in the dark when she used luminous objects. Rhine claimed to have observed Crandon committing fraud in a séance in 1926. According to Rhine, during the séance she was free from control and kicked a megaphone to give the impression it was levitating. Rhine's report documenting the fraud was refused by the ASPR, so he published it in the Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology. In response, defenders of Crandon attacked Rhine. Arthur Conan Doyle published an article in a Boston newspaper claiming "J. B. Rhine is an Ass." An elaborate investigation was held by a committee of Harvard scholars. Finally, the Harvard committee also pronounced Crandon as fraudulent. On June 30, 1925, one of the Harvard investigators saw Crandon draw three objects from her lap. One object was shaped like a glove or flat hand, one resembled a baby's hand, and the third was described but not identified. #destroytheday

#destroytheday

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orbemnews · 3 years

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The Lawyer Behind the Throne at Fox LOS ANGELES — In early 2019, as the Murdoch family completed the $71 billion sale of 21st Century Fox to Disney, executives at the movie studio learned that someone was reading all their emails. And not just anyone: Viet Dinh, the Fox Corporation’s chief legal officer and close friend of Fox’s chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, had brought on a team of lawyers to investigate “the potential improper use of Fox data” by top 21st Century Fox executives he suspected of leaking to Disney while the terms were still being hammered out, a Fox spokeswoman said. The studio’s president, Peter Rice, and its top lawyer, Gerson Zweifach, protested that they were merely conducting normal transition planning — and that Mr. Dinh was being so paranoid he might blow up the transaction. The episode didn’t scuttle the deal. But the previously unreported conflict between the studio executives and Mr. Dinh, a sociable and relentless Republican lawyer who was the chief architect in 2001 of the antiterrorism legislation known as the Patriot Act, offers a rare glimpse into the opaque power structure of Rupert Murdoch’s world. The nonagenarian mogul exercises immense power, through News Corp and the Fox Corporation, in driving a global wave of right-wing populism. But basic elements of how his media companies run remain shrouded in mystery. In the case of the Fox Corporation, the questions of who is in charge and what the future holds are particularly hazy. The company, minus its studio, is now a midsize TV company adrift in a landscape of giants like Disney and AT&T that control everything from cellular phone networks to streaming platforms, film and television. Fox’s profits are dominated by Fox News. Lachlan Murdoch’s more liberal brother, James, who no longer holds an operational role in the family businesses, has made clear he’d like to see a change. And since the studio sold, a person who knows Lachlan Murdoch said, Los Angeles has become a less hospitable place to him and his family. If you’re a studio boss with actors and directors on payroll, Hollywood can overlook your embarrassing right-wing cable interests. But after the Disney sale, and after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Mr. Murdoch risked becoming a social pariah. James Murdoch didn’t help when he complained to The Financial Times about “outlets that propagate lies to their audience.” Last month, Lachlan Murdoch moved his family to Sydney, Australia, an unlikely base for a company whose main assets are American. The move has intensified the perception — heightened when he stood by as Fox News hosts misinformed their audience about Covid-19 last year — that Mr. Murdoch does not have a tight grip on the reins. The company takes pains to rebut that perception: The Fox spokeswoman told me that Mr. Murdoch is so committed that he has adopted a nocturnal lifestyle, working midnight to 10 a.m. Sydney time. (She also said it would be “false and malicious” to suggest that Mr. Dinh is exercising operational control over Fox’s business units.) It’s such a disorienting situation that one senior Fox employee went so far as to call me last week to ask if I knew anything about succession plans. I promised I’d tell him if I figured it out. But Mr. Dinh, 53, was ready to step in, and indeed has been seen internally as the company’s power center since before Mr. Murdoch headed across the globe. Mr. Dinh’s ascent caps an unlikely turn in his career that began when he met Lachlan Murdoch at an Aspen Institute event in 2003. The Murdoch heir later asked him to both fill a seat on the company’s board and to be godfather to his son. (“He couldn’t find any other Catholics,” Mr. Dinh joked to The New York Observer in 2006.) Two former Fox employees and one current and one former Fox News employee familiar with his role painted him as the omnipresent and decisive right hand of a chief executive who is not particularly hands-on. (They spoke only on the condition they not be named because Fox keeps a tight grip on its public relations.) While Mr. Dinh is not running day-to-day programming, he manages the political operation of a company that is the central pillar of Republican politics, and he’s a key voice on corporate strategy who has played a role in Fox’s drive to acquire and partner its way into the global online gambling industry. In a recent interview with the legal writer David Lat — headlined “Is Viet Dinh the Most Powerful Lawyer in America?” — Mr. Dinh called suggestions in this column and in The Financial Times that he’s more than a humble in-house counsel “flat-out false.” “To ascribe any role to me other than my day job, which is overseeing legal, regulatory and government affairs, is not only false, it would mean I have far more time than I actually do,” he told Mr. Lat in his Original Jurisdiction newsletter. “Lachlan hired me for what is very much a full-time job, which I can barely manage to do with 24 hours in the day.” Today in Business Updated April 2, 2021, 3:58 p.m. ET But his outsize compensation — $24 million in 2019, and $12 million last year after forgoing his salary for much of the pandemic — belies that, as do episodes like the high-stakes confrontation in the Disney deal and his unusually close personal connection to the Murdoch family. Mr. Dinh, who declined through the company spokeswoman to be interviewed, is a surprising figure to play a central role overseeing the most powerful megaphone of the Trump movement. He’s part of the tight, elite group of conservative lawyers who largely disliked Donald J. Trump’s bombast and disdain for the law — he is said to regularly deride the former president in private — though they appreciated his judicial appointments and some other policies. And Mr. Dinh isn’t just a member of that group, but a true star of it. A refugee from Vietnam who arrived at the age of 10, he once told VietLife magazine that he worked jobs including “cleaning toilets, busing tables, pumping gas, picking berries, fixing cars” to help his family make ends meet. He attended Harvard and Harvard Law School. As a student, he wrote a powerful Times Op-Ed about Vietnamese refugees — including his sister and nephew — stranded in Hong Kong. The piece helped win them refugee status, and eventually allowed them to immigrate to the United States. Mr. Dinh arrived with the conservative politics of many refugees from Communism, and followed a pipeline from a Supreme Court clerkship with Sandra Day O’Connor to a role in the congressional investigations of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. He was assistant attorney general for legal policy on 9/11, and he was “the fifth likeliest person” to wind up quarterbacking what would become the Patriot Act, said his old friend and colleague Paul Clement, who currently represents Fox in defamation lawsuits brought by two election technology companies. Mr. Dinh “led the effort to pull it all together, package it, present it to the Hill and get it passed,” said a former Bush White House homeland security adviser, Ken Wainstein. The package of legislation transformed the American security state, vastly expanding domestic surveillance and law enforcement powers. It allowed the F.B.I. to conduct secret and intrusive investigations of people and groups swept in by an expanded definition of terrorism. Mr. Dinh was often mentioned at the time as a brilliant young lawyer who could easily wind up the first Asian-American on the Supreme Court. He was also notably image-conscious, and “worked the media like crazy,” recalled Jill Abramson, a former Times Washington bureau chief and later executive editor. He’s also a master Washington networker whose relationships cross party lines. His best college friend is a Democratic former U.S. attorney, Preet Bharara. Through the pandemic, Mr. Dinh left chipper comments on other lawyers’ job announcements on LinkedIn. Mr. Dinh left government for private practice during President George W. Bush’s first term, and founded and sold a high-end Washington law firm, Bancroft. He developed a reputation as a well-connected workaholic, and a guy who would be up for a drink at lunch. He is not the sort of boss who worried about his employees burning out. His view was that “the less that he has to think about where his chauffeur is, the more work he can get done,” said a former assistant, Lindsey Shea, who also described him as a devoted mentor. Mr. Dinh’s close ties to the Murdochs drew criticism when he played a central role in a nominally independent investigation into the phone hacking by Murdoch journalists in Britain in 2011. Mr. Dinh stepped down from the Fox board to take the legal job in 2018. He tightened the company’s relations to the Republican establishment, with the former House speaker Paul Ryan joining the company’s board in 2019. And he built his own secretive political operation at the Fox Corporation, hiring a top Republican opposition researcher, Raj Shah, to monitor online criticism of the company and develop strategies for countering it. Now, Mr. Dinh finds himself in the strange position of many of Rupert Murdoch’s top lieutenants: He is paid like a chief executive, and fills much of the larger strategic role that comes with that job. He also has the sort of leverage you need in a family business, a personal relationship with Lachlan Murdoch that allowed him to take on Mr. Rice, who is himself the son of a close Rupert Murdoch ally. But Mr. Dinh is still working for a business dominated by the need to follow Mr. Trump and Fox’s audience wherever they lead, lest they be overtaken by networks further to the right, like Newsmax. And the family ultimately retains control. And Mr. Dinh’s own agenda can be hard to divine. In the interview with Mr. Lat, he largely repeated Fox News talking points about the quality and fairness of the network’s coverage. He did also express pride at Fox’s fleeting willingness to cross the president last fall, even though the network subsequently fired the political analysts who most angered Mr. Trump. “There is no better historical record of Fox News’s excellent journalism than to see how the former president tweeted against Fox,” Mr. Dinh said. Source link Orbem News #Fox #Lawyer #Throne

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