A Downy Woodpecker from Kengi. Incredible detail, click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
A Downy Woodpecker from Kengi. Incredible detail, click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
Vladimir Putin awarded Rex Tillerson the Russian Order of Friendship. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/Tass.
It has been leaked that Rex Tillerson is even more involved with Russia than previously thought. It’s bad enough, that 500 billion dollar deal now a possibility, but it has come to light that Tillerson is the longtime director of an US-Russian oil company, conveniently located in the Bahamas.
Rex Tillerson, the businessman nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, is the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show.
Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – has been a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, since 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.
The leaked 2001 document comes from the corporate registry in the Bahamas. It was one of 1.3m files given to the Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source. The registry is public but details of individual directors are typically incomplete or missing entirely.
Though there is nothing untoward about this directorship, it has not been reported before and is likely to raise fresh questions over Tillerson’s relationship with Russia ahead of a potentially stormy confirmation hearing by the US senate foreign relations committee.
ExxonMobil’s use of offshore regimes – while legal – may also jar with Trump’s avowal to put “America first”.
Tillerson’s critics say he is too close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that his appointment could raise potential conflicts of interest.
ExxonMobil is the world’s largest oil company and has for a long time been eyeing Russia’s vast oil and gas deposits. Tillerson currently has Exxon stock worth more than $200m.
Only six hours today, my fingers can’t take any more. Current Hours: 1,048. Skeins Used: 152.
© C. Ford.
© C. Ford.
Oh, is it ever a pain to lose your callouses. Ouchy.
Well, the Pennsylvania electoral voters all seem to have their heads firmly lodged up their asses.
One elector, Ash Khare, said he and each of the 19 others have been assigned a plainclothes state police trooper for protection.
“I’m a big boy,” said Khare, an India-born engineer and a longtime Republican from Warren County, who estimates he receives 3,000 to 5,000 emails, letters, and phone calls a day from as far away as France, Germany, and Australia. “But this is stupid. Nobody is standing up and telling these people, ‘Enough, knock it off.’ ”
[…]
“I take my job as an elector very seriously, and in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump won,” said Mary Barket, a Northampton County resident and president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Republican Women. “So any argument thereafter, especially about the nature of him being a president, is not going to have an effect on me.”
Barket said she has been inundated with phone calls and emails and letters over the last month. Some tell her to read the Federalist Papers or express fear over Trump becoming the country’s commander-in-chief.
But she said she generally doesn’t open the messages.
“I don’t have the time, first of all,” she said. “Second of all, there’s really not much to be said that’s going to do anything to change my mind.”
[…]
In interviews last week, a number of electors said there was no chance anyone will defect.
“There is zero chance of that,” said elector Lawrence Tabas, a Philadelphia lawyer and general counsel for the state GOP. “If you want to place a bet on that in Vegas, you can make enough money to retire.”
[…]
Khare said he understood that the country is deeply divided and that emotions are running high, but said he was clear on where he stands.
“I will not change my mind,” he said.
Richard Stewart, a Cumberland County resident and the state Republican Party’s assistant treasurer, said he has received probably more than 60,000 emails and hundreds of letters about his role as an elector.
He described the people contacting him and other electors as “sincere but ill-informed and uneducated with respect to the process.”
He has not engaged.
“If Hillary Clinton had won, I certainly wouldn’t be calling up her electors saying change your mind,” he said. “I know how the system works. They lost. They ought to get over that.”
Gee, thanks ever, Pennsylvania.
Via Post Gazette.
The exhibit is a Bill of Rights “nativity.” The cutout depicts the Statue of Liberty and Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington gazing in adoration at a “baby” Bill of Rights.
A sign beside the nativity reads: “Happy Winter Solstice. At this Season of the Winter Solstice, we honor reason and the Bill of Rights (adopted Dec. 15, 1791). Keep State & Church Separate.”
At the bottom it reads: “Thou shalt not steal, please.”
The exhibit is permitted to be up through the end of December.
“We’d much prefer that government property, judicial or otherwise, be free from religion — and irreligion,” said FFRF Co-President Dan Barker in a press statement. “But if a devotional nativity display is allowed, there must be ‘room at the inn’ for all points of view, including irreverence and freethought.”
Via MyWebTimes.
In Texas, however, the governor was extremely upset by the display, and had it removed:
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Gov. Greg Abbott has asked the State Preservation Board to immediately remove a Bill of Rights-themed nativity display in the State Capitol. It was removed Tuesday afternoon.
In a letter to the board’s executive director Monday, the governor called the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s display “juvenile” and “tasteless sarcasm.”
Abbott says the display does not serve a public purpose, adding that activities that promote a specific viewpoint are prohibited in the public areas of the Capitol. “Far from promoting morals and the general welfare, the exhibit deliberately mocks Christians and Christianity,” the governor says.
Via KXAN.
Republican Michael ‘Duke’ Lowrie is running for state Rep. in Louisiana’s District 8 (Duke Lowrie official website).
The patriotic duty of all Americans – be the best bigot you can be! Yet another bigoted xenophobe is running for office. A republican, natch.
Mic.com reported that Michael “Duke” Lowrie believes that it is the patriotic duty of all Americans to withhold their consumer dollars from businesses that benefit Muslims in any way.
The former paramedic and firefighter announced this week that he is running to represent Louisiana’s District 8 in the state House. He told the Shreveport Times that he stands by remarks he made about not supporting Muslim businesses or companies that hire Muslim workers.
“We are a Christian nation. The threat of Islamic terrorism is real. Too many times, politicians are sometimes so afraid to speak the truth because of the PC culture in which we live. I’ll call it how I see it. We must tackle Islamic extremism head on. I believe President Trump will do that,” Lowrie said in a statement on Friday.
No, we are not a Christian nation. That’s even written into all those old documents xenophobes such as yourself revere. I’m not a Christian, but so far, no one has shown up to revoke my citizenship. I wish you nasty, evil bigots were afraid to speak your lies and poison, the world would be a nicer place if you all put a lid on it. Since when do people who are doing nothing except working hard equate to terrorism? Only in the heads of xenophobes like Mr. Lowrie.
In a November, 2015 Facebook post, Lowrie wrote, “Many of you may or may not know but Shreveport – Bossier was one of the cities on the Islamist kill lists. Perhaps they despise our hospitality here or our over the top support for our military. Regardless the fact is the Islamist (sic) seek to kill us and make us submit to their false religion and god.”
They despise us for our hospitality! Our hospitality is so famous! Oh, so is our extremist support of military! It’s a pity these fools can’t be poisoned by irony. Right now, I’d settle for them being able to discern fantasy from reality. Here’s the FB post:
So friend’s. The time has come that we must face and take action against this evil that has been placed before us. All day I have prayed and contemplated what to do. Many of you may or may not know but Shreveport Bossier was one of the cities on one of the islamist kill lists. Perhaps they despise our hospitality here and or our over the top support for our military. Regardless the fact is the islamist seek to kill us and make us submit to their false religion and god. There are many who worship, if you call it that, islam here among us. I do not believe they deserve the peace of our culture or the continued fruits of our society while following this religion. I for one will no longer knowingly go to or do business with any establishment that has someone who I know is a follower of islam working there. I will challenge every islamist I see to denounce their false god and religion. Those islamist here walk among us in stores and we act is if they are no different than any of us. Well im sorry they are different. Their religion demands you convert or die.
Why yes, Muslim people do walk among other people, often in stores. That’s called shopping, Mr. Lowrie. Most people have to do that sooner of later. If their religion demands you convert or die, then why haven’t you converted or died yet, Mr. Lowrie? It just couldn’t be that those people who share that Christian faith of yours simply want to live their lives without undue fuss, right? (And yes, it’s the same damn religion. Same god. Abrahamaic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.) Even in the wilds of nDakota, I know a fair number of Muslim people, and no one has talked religion at all, let alone stated “convert or die!” For fuck’s sake. Oh, and “the peace of our culture”? Really? A country filled with white bigots, toxic with aggrieved entitlement mentality and way too many guns, a peaceful culture? You’re part of American “culture” Mr. Lowrie, and I’d say peace is the last thing on your mind, given your fantasies.
The “ISIS Kill List” conspiracy is a misinterpretation of an ISIS propaganda effort from March of 2015, according to Snopes.com. ISIS published a list of U.S. service personnel it deemed as enemies of Islam and their home addresses.
Snopes said, “Although the March 2015 ISIS report was treated seriously by the U.S. military and law enforcement at the time it was issued, the Pentagon noted that the list seemed to be more of an ISIS social media scare tactic using information taken from publicly available online sources than an actual threat.”
Lowrie and others among the conspiracy-minded view the “Kill List” as a blueprint of what targets the terror group plans to “destroy.”
An inability to face reality should be an automatic disqualification to holding office. How I wish.
The election to fill the House seat takes place on March 25. So far, Lowrie is the only candidate who has declared.
Oh, please, someone with a brain, step up!
Via Raw Story.
Prince’s Bay Lighthouse on Staten Island.
This week saw the New York City landmarks preservation commission designate ten new buildings, bringing the total this year to 27, and clearing a 50 year backlog. Amongst the sites recognised are the Bergdorf Goodman department store, churches in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Harlem and an early farmhouse on Staten Island.
David M. Friedman, left, with Donald J. Trump and his daughter Ivanka in 2010. Mr. Friedman has said he does not believe it would be illegal for Israel to annex the West Bank. Credit Bradley C. Bower/Bloomberg.
Once again, a Trump pick has proven to be the worst possible choice. David Friedman has been chosen as ambassador to Israel, and he’s considered to hold scarily far right views, even among the far right. I’m sure he has a “good brain” though, and that will make the specter of no peace whatsoever okay.
President-elect Donald Trump named David M. Friedman as ambassador to Israel on Thursday — proving that the Israel-Palestinian peace process is basically screwed for the next four years.
Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer and previously a Trump campaign adviser on Jewish world issues, has zero diplomatic experience and holds far right views on Israel — even among the far right in Israel. Friedman opposes a two-state solution because he believes that the number of Palestinians in modern-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza — currently over 6 million and expected to equal the number of Israeli Jews by the end of 2017 — is exaggerated.
“There are always creative ways to allow people to live in peace,” Friedman told Haaretz in June. “It is not always about the land. We don’t accept the idea it is only about land. Nobody really knows how many Palestinians actually live there.” He also told the publication that Trump doesn’t see a Palestinian state as “an American imperative at all.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that Friedman doesn’t believe Israeli settlements on Palestinian land — which are considered illegal under international law — are an obstacle to peace. In fact, he is president of the American Friends of Bet El; the Bet El settlement was build on private Palestinian land without approval, but Friedman’s group has sent it millions of dollars over the past few years. (Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has donated at least $20,000 to the organization.)
[…]
Friedman has also called for the United States to “veto any United Nations votes that unfairly single out Israel,” labelled the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement as anti-Semitic, and called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands a “false notion.”
The appointment of Friedman falls in line with Trump’s own views on Israel and Palestine. The president-elect has shown remarkably little interest in helping the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Instead, he has said the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank should “keep moving forward,” promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and pointed to the illegal wall separating Israel and the West Bank — referred to as the “Apartheid Wall” or “Berlin Wall” by Palestinians — as inspiration for what the United States should do on the U.S.-Mexico border.
There was a lovely pile-up of music in the Atheists Want to Abort Baby Jesus, Oh My! thread, and as that post was facepalm enough for a week, today we’ll do something different.
And this is obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2iQ0NSWNV8
From Kengi, so sweet. Click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
Beautiful, serene scenes from Giliell. I love these so much. Click for full size.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Gorgeous photos of European Blue Tits, from Charly. Click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.