Vitali Klitschko is the former heavyweight boxing champion-turned-politician. He’s on the front lines of the opposition against Ukraine’s ruling government both on the street and in high-level negotiations.
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Let the pros show you how to do a closed-grip push-up. For more info on Maximus Australia, check out their Facebook page.
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C.J. Ross announced she is taking leave after her second suspect decision. She scored Mayweather vs. Alvarez a draw and nobody else saw it that way.
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There was a moment towards the middle of Sunday evening’s debate when Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cumulative speaking time was several minutes longer than that of her challenger, Peer Steinbrück. The result was a few questions in a row for Steinbrück — and he used the opportunity to go on the attack. He threw one roundhouse after another, not unlike a boxer pinning his opponent against the ropes.
Except, as became clear throughout the debate, Merkel is almost impossible to strike cleanly. The harder a well-prepared Steinbrück swung on Sunday night, the wider was the margin by which he missed.
The 90-minute debate on Sunday evening was the only time the two candidates are to meet for a face-to-face chat ahead of the general election on Sept. 22. Merkel has done her best throughout the campaign to ignore her challenger as best she can, and limiting the number of debates to one was also her way of sending the central message: My challenger is hardly worth talking about.
Steinbrück was clearly eager to change that narrative on Sunday. He was quick to list the numerous things that Merkel had not managed to accomplish in her last eight years in the Chancellery: Improvements to old-age care, establishment of a comprehensive minimum wage, a clear plan to control energy prices and sufficient attention to economic stimulus in Southern Europe.
On almost every single one of those issues, Steinbrück was able to clearly, if a bit wonkily, pinpoint Merkel’s shortcomings and gain the rhetorical upper hand. At least temporarily. Repeatedly, however, Merkel was able to wriggle out of the trap that Steinbrück had set, returning to her talking points and placidly listing her government’s accomplishments. It is, she said at one point, “relatively sensational” what her center-right coalition has accomplished in the last four years. She followed up with such trenchant observations as “our work is not over yet,” “we have demonstrated that we are capable” and “Germany is a motor for growth” and an “anchor of stability.”
Almost Smug
And that is the central problem facing Steinbrück as the campaign enters its final weeks. Even as Merkel’s wait-and-see leadership style is often infuriating, the economic numbers make Steinbrück’s uphill battle even steeper. The job market is strong, growth is returning to both Germany and the euro zone and, for all the current discussion about a third aid package for Greece, the euro crisis has faded temporarily into the background.
The result was a strikingly confident, almost smug, Merkel calmly responding to the attacks from Steinbrück, only occasionally raising her voice so as to be allowed to finish some oft-repeated campaign platitude before being interrupted by one of the debate’s four moderators. She was more like a grandmother at a fireside chat — albeit one wearing a necklace in the colors of Germany’s flag — than a politician battling for re-election. Whereas Steinbrück repeatedly broke out his unbecoming open-mouthed sneer coupled with a clipped, biting tone, Merkel would only give him a condescending smile. If the SPD candidate was trying to demonstrate why he lags so far behind the chancellor in personal popularity ratings, he was successful.
Even in the discussion over the possible third aid package for Greece, an issue on which Steinbrück has been consistently blasting the chancellor for not being honest with the German electorate, the SPD candidate was unable to score many points. To be sure, he repeated his charge that Merkel’s crisis policies were doing more to harm Southern Europe than help it — and accused her of not coming clean about how much saving Greece will ultimately cost. But when he himself was asked what the price tag might ultimately be, he — perhaps unwisely — answered honestly, professing that it was impossible to know.
There was, however, one moment in the debate when Merkel was completely out of sorts. Towards the end of what was largely a tedious hour-and-a-half, one of the moderators drilled Merkel about the vast data surveillance undertaken in Germany and around the world by the US intelligence agency NSA. If, Merkel was asked, a German sent an email from one German city to another German city, but it was routed across a server in the US and landed in the American surveillance net there, was that a violation of German law?
Decisive Blow?
Merkel is not one who fidgets often. But she fidgeted while formulating the only answer possible. No, that would not represent a violation of German law, she said, attempting to wrap the answer in sufficient rhetoric about the intricacies of data privacy and Internet law. Steinbrück, in response, accused Merkel’s government of not doing enough to defend Germans’ constitutional rights and called Edward Snowden, the man responsible for the revelations of NSA surveillance, “courageous.”
That, though, was just one moment. And, unfortunately for Steinbrück, it was a moderator who had struck the decisive blow, rather than he himself.
Still, as the SPD candidate repeatedly said toward the end of the evening, a few weeks remain in the campaign and his passable performance in the debate could ultimately help him close the wide gap separating him and Merkel. Most surveys taken immediately after the show ended indicated that viewers felt that Steinbrück had won. One flash poll taken after the debate Sunday night also showed that he had massively reduced the “likeability” gap between himself and Merkel by 17 percentage points and now trails her by just 3 points at 45 percent.
Such ephemera, however, is often just that. And pinning down Merkel will only become more difficult as the campaign reaches its end. The chancellor, after all, can now go back to largely ignoring her challenger, a strategy which has proven wildly successful thus far.
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2013
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SPIEGEL ONLINE – International – NSA Spying Scandal
Photo: Dees Illustrations
By Aaron Dykes
TruthStream Media
July 26, 2013
At least in Austin, it is thus: The city is moving in all around us; but look carefully, those amenities are boxing us in, not setting us free.
We made some comments about the Texas capital’s heavy dose of Agenda 21 in this mostly informal video that shows some of the city’s recent build up:
So goes the nation, or is this just our local issue? By the appearances of America2050.org (driven by the Regional Plan Association and funded by both the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation) effort to create densely populated Megaregions across the country, I would wager the answer to be ‘yes.’ The plan would essentially double the population of existing metropolitan areas.
The federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grants given to local communities, in turn partnered with the Dept. of Traffic and EPA, correspond with this agenda.
“Sustainability” is one of the key phrases used to justify this huge consolidation, not just of populations, but of power. But who elected regional planners to redesign the nation? No one, that’s who.
In Central Texas, vast authority was handed over to an organization called CAPCOG, the Capital Area Council of Governments, which is comprised of appointed leaders and which overseas a number of key development projects related to transportation, housing, zoning, economic re-development and etc. Similar organizations – lacking elected leaders, sufficient accountability or even general public awareness – exist across the nation.
As Melissa Melton previously reported, for Austin, as in other locales, this includes implementation of the “smart grid,” the adoption of international building codes, control over thermostat data, greater emphasis on mixed-use building structures, more multifamily units, and the like.
As a growing metropolitan city, Austin stands out as a prime example, in fact. Not only has Austin received HUD Sustainable Communities grants, but it has been designated by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA (who have been integral since 1992 in the implementation of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 goals) as one of ten STAR Beta Communities across the United States. Emblematic of this is the Mueller Community, which has been developed by regional planners to incorporate the sanitized, vision of a ‘sustainable urban’ Stepford Wives lifestyle in an ‘advanced smart grid’ model.
Unlike the East Coast, Texas is mostly new to super dense population zones. While buses exist, trains are sparse even in Houston and Dallas, and few are accustomed to mass transportation as a way of life. But with the politically shady imposition of toll roads, light rail (a taxpayer funded inner-city rail scheme) and an attempt to link urban living with “emerging Megaregions” like the “Texas Triangle,” that is changing.
For years, I passed by the Plaza Saltillo Metro Rail stop just a few blocks East of the famed 6th Street downtown area vibrant with the city’s night life and plenty of intoxicated patrons who could probably use a lift. But never have I seen anyone waiting at that rail station, day or night. And over the course of years, I never spotted the actual train – not once. Did it even exist?
I never got a direct answer to that rhetorical question floating around in my head, but I was delayed in my (rather despicable) automobile travel activities by a related end just a few weeks ago.
It was rush hour on North Lamar, and things were already busy and stressful on the road. The rail road barriers came down and things came to grinding halt. I assumed a freight train was hauling through and I wondered how many cars it would be and how long it would take. Instead, for a solid two or three minutes nothing at all came by.
Still the barriers impeded the busy flow of traffic. But nothing. It was another minute, maybe even two before the train finally crossed over what is a major road through the city of Austin.
When it finally came, the train was not a freighter hauling industrial products or commercial goods, but a two car metro rail ‘train’. Little had I noticed that over in the corner was a station dubbed Crestview, officially ‘west of Lamar between Justin St. and St. John’s Ave.’ And as surely as I was eager to get moving on those taxpayer roads, I realized that no one – not a soul – was visibly in that train. Not one passenger, yet the metro rail stop had blocked hundreds of cars for a full 4 or maybe even 5 minutes.
Is that outrageous? Or just what Texans can expect to face in coming years, along with higher taxes to cover new infrastructure and a fresh push for more trains and toll roads (encircling cities like Austin and typically built on top of, or taking over, taxpayer-funded roads), alongside the literal rise of dozens of new skyscrapers, and more and more “mixed use” buildings that include trendy shops, overpriced condos short on floor space, and a growing population of metro-minded dupes.
Subways and trains make plenty of sense in New York City and other East Coast metro areas, and quite a few European cities I’ve visited, however briefly. But this kind of transition in Texas and other areas of heartland America will not come without significant growing pains, plenty of cost, and a drastic but understated loss of sovereignty.
It is already being reported that California’s high speed rail is ‘collapsing’ under the strain of corruption. At a minimum, it is burdening West Coast dwellers with the high cost of graft and over-budgeted boondoggles.
Again, all this ‘concentrated growth’ is sold in the name of “sustainability” or protecting the environment. But consider for one moment what would happen in the event of economic collapse, civil unrest, food shortages, natural disasters/terror attacks, or even temporary shortages (for whatever reason). The biggest cities in the country would quickly become the worst possible places to be. Statistically, the average home only holds a few days worth of food before they run out, while grocery stores hold only a three or four days worth of food. Electricity outages or the like could potentially cause panic even quicker than food.
Without going into all the details, that picture should get across one simple concept: an urban zone like this is not “sustainable” in any real sense.
That kind of sustainability is a myth.
