Dodging the Biden bullet. https://www.news.com.au/world/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-mohammad-bin-salman-dodges-blame-for-jamal-khashoggi-killing/news-story/551e7bb57098720f9b277355cdee0866
U.S. moves to shield Saudi crown prince in journalist killing. Cover up or kissing ass?CBS News is reporting that the administration is not interested in going after the Saudi Prince for the killing of a Journalist.
The Biden administration declared Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should be considered immune from a lawsuit over his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 23, 2018. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images
The administration said the senior position of the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and recently named prime minister as well, should shield him against a suit brought by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group Khashoggi founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s call to shield the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”
The State Department cited what it said was longstanding precedent. Despite its recommendation to the court, the State Department said in its filing late Thursday, it “takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
Saudi officials killed Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. They are believed to have dismembered him, although his remains have never been found. The U.S. intelligence community concluded Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had approved the killing of the widely known and respected journalist, who had written critically of Prince Moh
US President Joe Biden seems to have forgotten his promise to make Saudi Arabia a pariah. The Biden administration asked for a 45-day extension to submit suggestions on the status of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman s Sovereign Immunity. Molly Gambhir brings you the details. #Biden #SaudiPrince #WIONFineprint About Channel: WION The World …
How telling is it when even Moderna tells you that the new booster jab doesn’t work well against the latest virus. Now they released this vaccine without any human testing. But now that they’ve jabbed millions, and they say it’s not as effective.
Moderna’s updated COVID-19 vaccine booster performs worse against a virus variant that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States, the company announced on Nov. 14.But an analysis of approximately 40 participants using assays showed that that the titer levels triggered by the updated booster were 5-fold lower against BQ.1.1, the strain that is quickly becoming dominant in the United States, Moderna said in a press release.
New Jersey’s teachers are now required to teach climate change beginning in kindergarten and across most subjects, including art, social studies, world languages, and PE. Supporters hope the lessons will spread.
This article appeared in both WaPo and The Hechinger Report.
PENNINGTON, N.J. — There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the energetic efforts of her class of third graders to clear the air.
Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School in Pennington, New Jersey, had tasked the kids with tossing balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing forests. The first round of the game was set in the 1700s, and the kids had cleared the field in under four minutes. But this third round took place in the present day, after the advent of cars, factories and electricity, and massive deforestation. With fewer forests to catch the balls, and longer distances to throw, the kids couldn’t keep up.
“That was hard,” said Horsley after the round ended. “In this time period versus the 1700s, way more challenging right?
“Yeah,” the students chimed in.
“In 2022, we got a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Horsley. “What’s the problem with it, what is it causing?”
“Global warming,” volunteered one girl.
Two years ago, New Jersey became the first state in the country to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects. The standards, which went into effect this fall, introduce students as young as kindergarteners to the subject, not just in science class but in the arts, world languages, social studies, and physical education. Supporters say the instruction is necessary to prepare younger generations for a world — and labor market — increasingly reshaped by climate change.
In Suzanne Horsley’s climate change lesson, yarn balls represent carbon dioxide molecules. Students try to clear the atmosphere — or playing field — of the balls. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report“There’s no way we can expect our children to have the solutions and the innovations to these challenges if we’re not giving them the tools and resources needed here and now,” said Tammy Murphy, the wife of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and a founding member of former Vice President Al Gore’s Climate Reality Action Fund, who pushed to get the standards into schools. Just as students must be able to add and subtract before learning calculus, she said, kids need to understand the basics of climate change — the vocabulary, the logic behind it — before they can tackle the climate crisis.Historically, climate change has not been comprehensively taught in U.S. schools, largely because of the partisanship surrounding climate change and many teachers’ limited grasp of the science behind it. That started to change in 2013, with the release of new national science standards, which instructed science teachers to introduce students to climate change and its human causes starting in middle school. Still, only 20 states have adopted the standards. A 2020 report from the National Center for Science Education and Texas Freedom Network Education Fund found that many states that didn’t follow the new guidance weren’t explicit in their standards about the human causes of climate change, and a few even promoted falsehoods about its causes and degree of seriousness. Meanwhile, discussion of climate change outside of science class remains relatively rare, educators and experts say.New Jersey is trying to change that, but it’s not a simple task. Like teachers around the country, educators here are exhausted after years of Covid disruptions, and, as elsewhere, some schools face dire teacher shortages. On top of this, many educators don’t feel prepared to teach climate change: A 2021 survey of 164 New Jersey teachers found that many lacked confidence in their knowledge of the subject, and some held misconceptions about it, confusing the problem with other environmental issues such as plastic pollution.
For now, the climate instruction requirements haven’t faced much pushback from climate deniers and conservatives, who’ve trained their attacks instead on the state’s new sex-education standards. But state officials anticipate some criticism as the lessons begin to roll out in classrooms.
A more pressing concern — and one that plagues any education initiative because of local control of schools — is that the lessons are rolling out unevenly across the state. Schools in affluent towns like Pennington tend to have more time and resources to introduce new instruction; schools in poorer communities like Camden, which are often the most vulnerable to climate disasters, may lack the resources to do so.
“I am happy to see New Jersey as a pioneer of climate change standards,” said Maria Santiago-Valentin, co-founder of the Atlantic Climate Justice Alliance, a group that works to mitigate the disproportionate harm of climate change on marginalized communities. But, she said, the standards will need to be revised if they fail to adequately emphasize the unequal impact of climate change on Black and Hispanic communities or ensure that students in those communities receive the instruction.
New Jersey is making some effort to help teachers adopt the standards, setting aside $5 million for lesson plans and professional development, and enlisting teachers like Horsley, who holds a master’s degree in outdoor education and has a passion for the environment, to develop model lessons.
Supporters are trying to ensure that teachers have plenty of examples for teaching the standards in age-appropriate ways, with racial and environmental justice as one of the key features of the instruction.
“It’s not like we’re asking kindergarteners to look at the Keeling Curve,” said Lauren Madden, a professor of education at the College of New Jersey who prepared a report on the standards, referring to a graph showing daily carbon dioxide concentrations. “We’re trying to point out areas where we can build some of those foundational blocks so that by the time students are in upper elementary or middle school, they really have that solid foundation.”
On a recent weekday, Cari Gallagher, a third grade teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School in central New Jersey, was reading to her students the book “No Sand in the House!” which tells the story of a grandfather whose Jersey Shore home is devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Later, the students sat down to write about what they’d heard, drawing connections between the book and their own lives, world events or other books they’d read.
After the writing exercise, Gallagher directed the students to split into small groups to build structures that would help provide protection against climate change calamities. The kids used Legos, blocks, Play-Doh and straws to create carports, walls and other barriers.
That same morning, a kindergarten class at the elementary school listened as their teacher, Jeffrey Berry, held up a globe and discussed how different parts of the world have different climates.
At Hopewell Valley Central High School, in Pennington, art teacher Carolyn McGrath piloted a lesson on climate change this summer with a handful of students. The results of the class — four paintings featuring climate activists — sat on the windowsill of her classroom.
“It felt empowering to see people like me, who reflect me and my identities,” said Mackenzie Harsell, an 11th grader who’d created a portrait of 24-year-old climate activist Daphne Frias, who, like Mackenzie, is young, and is disabled. “This project told me I could do anything.”
Research suggests education does have an impact on how people understand climate change and their willingness to take action to stop it. One study found that college students who took a class that discussed reducing their carbon footprint tended to adopt environment-friendly practices and stick with them over many years. Another found that educating middle schoolers about climate change resulted in their parents expressing greater concern about the problem.
Jeffrey Berry, a kindergarten teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School, encourages his students to care for plants and nature. Kindergarteners tend to the “garden of good manners,” pictured here. Credit: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report
“Education is certainly a way that we could have perhaps slowed down where we are right now in terms of the climate crisis,” said Margaret Wang, chief operating officer with SubjectToClimate, a nonprofit that is helping teachers develop and share climate lessons. More jobs related to climate change are already opening up, said Wang, and kids will need skills not just to discover scientific innovations but to tell stories, advocate, inspire and make public policy.
Back at Toll Gate elementary, Horsley, the wellness teacher, was getting ready to hand off the third graders to their classroom teacher. Before filing back into the school, a handsome brick building that suffered flooding last year during Hurricane Ida, students reflected on the lesson.
Ayla, a third grader dressed in jeans and tie-dye sneakers, said it made her want to “do something” about climate change because “I don’t want it to get so hot.”
Wes, another third grader, said adults could have done more to protect the environment. “I think they’ve done a medium job because they’re still producing a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot of people are littering still.”
“I feel bad for the other animals because they don’t know about it, so they don’t know what to do,” added his classmate, Hunter.
“We know about it,” said Abby, who was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Girl Power.” She said it was up to humans to drive less and recycle and protect other species from climate disasters.
“When I first found out we were going to learn about climate change in gym, I was like, that’s surprising, because normally we learn that in class,” Abby added. “But I’m glad we did it in gym,” she continued. “It was really fun.”
Climate CHANGES. Your hubris that we cause it or that we can change it is — unprintable.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the terrible killings of the four college killings in Idaho. They were killed with a knife. But yet the progressives are using this as a reason we need an assault weapon ban law passed.
So are knives now the new assault weapon of choice?
The university said Monday their bodies were found in an off-campus apartment following a suspected homicide and identified the victims:
The students were: Ethan Chapin, a freshman from Mount Vernon, Washington, and a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity majoring in recreation, sport and tourism management in the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences; Xana Kernodle, a junior from Post Falls majoring in marketing in the College of Business and Economics and a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority; Madison Mogen, a senior from Coeur d’Alene majoring in marketing in the College of Business and Economics; and Kaylee Goncalves, a senior from Rathdrum majoring in general studies in the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences.
In a statement, university president Scott Green said, “Words cannot adequately describe the light these students brought to this world or ease the depth of suffering we feel at their passing under these tragic circumstances.”
“The university is working directly with those affected and is committed to supporting all students, families and employees as this event undeniably touches all of us,” he added.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., listens as Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., speaks during a news conference on the introduction of their Protection from Abusive Passengers Act at the U.S. Capitol Building on April 6, 2022 in Washington. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
First I’m not and never have been a lawyer. But having been in law enforcement and been involved in several lawsuits tells me that Swalwell made the right choice getting out of the legal field cause he has no clue. Jonathan Turley sets him straight.
The fault lines for the 2024 elections are already taking shape with the two parties in diametrically opposed positions and there is no greater divide than over parental rights. That stark difference was no more evident than in a tweet from Rep. Eric Swalwell who mocked the notion of parents making major decisions in the education of their children.
The California Democrat insisted that it is akin to “putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials?” Swalwell declared: “Please tell me what I’m missing here … This is so stupid.”
What Rep. Swalwell, a lawyer, is missing is called informed consent. Since he asked for assistance, let’s deal with each in turn.
Patients and medical consent
American torts have long required consent in medical torts. Indeed, what Swalwell seemed to suggest would be battery for doctors to make the key decisions over surgical goals or purposes. Indeed, even when doctors secured consent to operate on one ear, it was still considered battery when they decided in the operation to address the other ear in the best interests of the patient. Mohr v. Williams (Minn. 1905).
In Canterbury v. Spence the court rejected claims that a physician can make key decisions given “the patient’s right of self-determination.” Thus, doctors in the United States do have to secure the consent of patients in what they intend to do in surgeries or other medical procedures. (There are narrow exceptions such things as “substituted consent” or emergencies that do not apply here).
Ironically, California has one of the strongest patient-based consent rules. As the California Supreme Court stated in Cobbs v. Grant (1972): “Unlimited discretion in the physician is irreconcilable with the basic right of the patient to make the ultimate informed decision regarding the course of treatment to which he knowledgeably consents to be subjected.”
While obviously a patient cannot direct an operation itself, the doctor is expected to explain and secure the consent of the patient in what a surgery will attempt and how it will be accomplished. That is precisely what parents are demanding in looking at the subjects and books being taught in school. Moreover, that is precisely the role of school boards, which has historically exercised concurrent authority over the schools with the teachers hired under the school board-approved budgets.
Clients and legal consent
Swalwell is also wrong in suggesting that clients are not in charge of their own trials. Not only must attorneys secure the consent of their clients on what will be argued in trial, but they can be removed by their clients for failure to adequately represent their interests. It would be malpractice for a lawyer to tell a client, as suggested by Swalwell, that they do not control the major decisions in their own cases.
Ironically, the informed consent under defined in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as the “agreement by a person to a proposed course of conduct after the lawyer has communicated adequate information and explanation about the material risks of and reasonably available alternatives to the proposed course of conduct”).
Obviously, lawyers must follow their own ethical and professional judgment in trials, and tactical choices are generally left up to the lawyers. However, the main objectives of the trial remain for the client to “knowingly and voluntarily assume” Metrick v. Chatz (Ill. App. Ct. 1994).
Much like the claim of parents, clients demand the right to reject a plan for trial and the arguments or means to be used at trial. This right of consent is ongoing and can be exercised at any point in the litigation.
Informed consent
Of course, the key to informed consent is that parents are given the information needed to secure their consent. School districts have been resisting such disclosures and pushing back on parental opposition to major curriculum or policy decisions.
What is most striking about Swalwell’s reference to patients and clients is that they, under his educational approach, have far more voice in a wart removal or a parking ticket challenge than the education of their children. If anything, his analogies support the call for greater parental knowledge and consent.
In other words, “what is missing here” is that Rep. Swalwell’s interpretation could constitute both medical and legal malpractice. It may also constitute political malpractice as both parties now careen toward the 2024 elections.
The UK’s Home Office will use a key fob-like device to track people who are subject to deportation orders 24 hours a day, meaning at any point they could be required to scan their fingerprints and confirm their location.
People who are subject to deportation orders in the UK will soon be required to carry a GPS-enabled fingerprint scanner at all times, so that the Home Office can verify their location and identity, New Scientist has learned. Privacy campaigners say the devices are a form of unnecessary biometric surveillance that could exacerbate people’s mental health problems.
The UK began using GPS-enabled ankle tags to track adult foreign-national offenders who are subject to deportation orders in August 2021. People in this position, also known as immigration bail, aren’t UK citizens and have committed a crime that resulted in a custodial sentence of more than 12 months or are considered to be “persistent offenders”. According to the most recent data, as of 30 September, 2146 people were being monitored in this way.
The new devices, which resemble a large key fob and are produced by Buddi, will be given to people on immigration bail soon, the Home Office has confirmed. They will track an individual’s location 24 hours a day. Lucie Audibert at Privacy International says the charity understands that the devices will be rolled out this autumn.
Users of the device will have to scan their fingers when prompted, to confirm their identity and proximity to the device. The Home Office wouldn’t say how often this will be required and hasn’t said explicitly why the fingerprint scanners will be better than ankle tags.
A racial discrimination suit was filed cause the guy claims they wanted a black sign language interpreter. What? The white guy wasn’t dancing?
Keith Wann, 53, was one of at least two people forced off the production by the non-profit Theatre Development Fund – which staffs Broadway shows with American Sign Language interpreters – after the group decided it was “no longer appropriate to have white interpreters represent black characters for ASL Broadway shows.”
Wann filed a federal discrimination lawsuit on Tuesday against the organization and the director of its accessibility programs, Lisa Carling.
The Theater Development Fund declined to comment. Carling, Guy and Disney Theatrical Productions, which produced the show, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Sonya Curry hugs her son Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry (30) as he walks off the court after defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the NBA Western Conference finals at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City, Okla., on Saturday, May 28, 2016. Golden State defeated Oklahoma City 108-101. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
So Mr. Curry’s mom after having one abortion, turned it around and had three children, one being Basketball great Stephen Curry. thanks to the folks at Breitbart for the quote below.
“So God is just bringing it all together and showing me to be able to say, ‘Hey, here’s this decision I made at this point, and look at the blessing that he has become,’ and I just thank God for that and I just say to God that it was meant to be,” Curry concluded. “And, to not carry judgment. You don’t have to carry a lot of judgment forever. Give ourselves some grace in making the decision with what we had to make the decision with when we made it. But, my favorite scripture says that all things get worked together for the good, and those called according to His purposes and praise Jesus. It all worked out. There’s Stephen, and look what he’s doing, and it’s just amazing to me.”
It does my heart good to see that companies worldwide are expanding production of oil and gas. We have this from our friends at Breitbart.
A German non-governmental organization (NGO) called Urgewald, which monitors carbon emissions, presented a report at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt that said nearly all of the oil and gas companies in the world are planning significant expansions over the next few years, in a dramatic rebuttal of the climate change movement’s demand for zero emissions.
“The outcome of our calculations is truly frightening: oil and gas companies’ short-term expansion plans are not in line with the net zero emissions course put forward by the IEA (International Energy Agency),” said Urgenwald’s Fiona Hauke.
Gaslight Joe and energy prices Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times
Gaslight Joe and energy prices Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times
Their policies are aligned to fight climate change — not lowering your prices at the pump
OPINION:
Earlier this week, President Biden just couldn’t resist exposing either his ignorance about energy, his hostility to affordable energy, or both.
He threatened oil companies with a tax on their profits. Such a tax would, of course, be paid for by consumers and — rather than increase production and reduce prices, like Mr. Biden says he wants — would do the exact opposite and reduce production and increase prices of gasoline and other oil products. Here’s a news flash: The president and his team don’t care.
The call for a tax on profits is the just like the proposed suspension of the federal gas tax, the very real emptying of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or the limits on exports that are currently being considered. All of these actions — and the associated tiresome rhetoric — are all intended to convince the voters that Team Biden really cares about high gasoline prices.
They don’t. They are perfectly content to have you pay high gas prices. There’s no way any of their fantasies about climate change can happen without high energy prices, specifically high oil and natural gas prices.
They just don’t want you to blame them for those prices. So, naturally, they are looking around for someone else to blame. It is no surprise that they’ve landed on oil companies.
Unfortunately for them, oil companies don’t set the price of oil. Neither does any one particular producer or consumer. The price is set in a global market with lots of buyers and lots of sellers who agree on a price and then exchange cash for oil. This sort of thing happens in all kinds of markets all over the planet each day.
Prices of oil are going up because demand is high relative to supply. Despite the lie the president tells you, this is not because of the war in Ukraine. That conflict has not prevented any Russian oil from coming to the global market.
The imbalance between demand and supply is primarily because of under investment in oil fields over the last decade. For example, Josh Young, the chief investment officer at Bison Energy, notes that investment in U.S. oil fields peaked in 2012 at about $16.5 billion dollars and dropped as low as $3.9 billion in 2021.
Last summer, the International Energy Agency concluded: “Our estimates for 2022 suggest that today’s aggregate fossil fuel investment is broadly aligned with the near-term needs of a scenario in which countries hit their climate pledges.”
In other words, the IEA acknowledges the reduced investment in oil and gas projects and considers it a good thing because that lack of investment will ultimately mean less oil and natural gas and, consequently, help countries meet their climate pledges. The IEA — like Team Biden — is mostly unconcerned about high energy prices.
While they are not responsible for global markets, Team Biden is responsible for the relentless downward pressure on American production of oil. Their emphasis on environmental, social, and governance-based investing means that investors are steered away from investments in oil and natural gas. The now routine propaganda — mostly from the government — about the mythology of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and an energy “transition” that has destroyed Europe’s energy system and is chewing through its economy further drives under investment in oil and natural gas.
Is there a different answer?
Well, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity has estimated that American oil production would be about 30% higher (or about 3 million barrels a day more) if Team Biden had just kept President Donald Trump’s policies in place.
That would be too easy. Team Biden has no intention of addressing the underlying problem of national and global under investment in oil and gas production and refineries over the last few years. To the contrary, their actions — weaponizing financial regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission against affordable energy, not allowing production on federal lands, even something as trivial as canceling the Keystone pipeline — indicate that they intend to make the problem worse.
If he were serious about the problem, Mr. Biden — or whoever is president nowadays — would clearly and directly reject notions of net zero, let go of the fantasy of banning gasoline-powered cars, and cease the jihad against oil and gas being waged by its own financial regulators.
The chances of all that happening are zero.
Mr. Biden and his crew want high gas prices. Those prices serve their purposes. All of the hand-waving and hand-wringing about oil companies and their profits, and all of the show associated with draining pretty much all of our strategic reserves, is a dangerous charade.
