Sunday, April 30, 2017
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Friday, April 28, 2017
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Reminder To Progressives: Abortion Is An Economic Issue
Bernie Sanders traveled to Nebraska this week to throw his support behind Omaha Democratic mayoral candidate, Heath Mello, who is running against the incumbent Republican mayor,Jean Stothert. A Mello win, Sanders has said, would give hope to other progressive Democrats in conservative states.
But Mellos progressive credentials are questionable at best.As a state senator, he co-sponsored a bill requiring that abortion providers tell women they can have an ultrasound first, and mandating that providers who use ultrasound display the image in a way women can see if they choose. He said it represented a positive first step to reducing the number of abortions in Nebraska.
As a populist, Sanders has built a political career protesting economic inequality and yet by campaigning for Mello, he has demonstrated a willingness to separate economic justice from reproductive justice. (So has Democratic National Committee Chair, Tom Perez, who is also helping to campaign for Mello and who has defended that decision, saying the job of the DNC is to help Democratic candidates win.) But abortion access is not just a medical issue, or even a social one; it is, at its core, also an economic concern. Heres why.
Unintended pregnancies place an enormous financial burden on women.
Raising children in the United States is expensive. Like, more than $230,000 per child(from birth to age 17) expensive. That includes food, transportation, housing, education (but not college), health care and child care. Oh, and daycare for babies is now more expensive than college tuition in most states.
Women in this country already face a well-documented motherhood financial penalty. Research shows, for example, that mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs and they are offered lower starting salaries when they are hired. (Men dont appear to be similarly disadvantaged by becoming dads, and might actually benefit from it, career-wise.)
Having a baby is the most expensive health event that families face during their childbearing years. At the same time, a lack of workplace supports for many women during this critical time means a woman may not have paid sick days for prenatal appointments or well-baby care, or paid family and medical leave to use after giving birth. Addressing all of these issues is central to achieving economic justice for women and families, said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Roughly 60 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers, which means they understand these factors not in some abstract way, but both deeply and personally. In fact, economic concerns are a major reason why women chose to end pregnancies. Estimates suggest that between 40 and 75 percent of women seeking abortions do so for financial reasons.
The most common reason women give for wanting to terminate a pregnancy is that they feel that they cannot afford to have a baby or to have another baby, Diana Greene Foster, director of research with the University of California San Franciscos Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) told The Huffington Post.
Low-income women are hit the hardest by unplanned pregnancies and by policies that limit abortion access.
In the United States, roughly 5 percent of reproductive-age women have an unintended pregnancy each year, and those pregnancies disproportionately occur among low-income and poor women. In 2011, the unintended pregnancy rate among women living well below the federal poverty level around $18,000 for a family of three was five times higher than women living well above the federal poverty line.
Low-income women also struggle to afford abortion, particularly because the Hyde Amendment has long restricted Medicaid coverage for abortion care. Research shows that in order to come up with the money necessary for the procedure, women are forced to forgo food for themselves and their children, to miss rent payments and to sell off personal items.
When women are unable to get an abortion, they are more likely to be poor, less likely to work full time and more likely to receive public assistance, Foster said. And this has important consequences for their existing children and their ability to care for a new child.
Also, because two-thirds of the unplanned births in this country are paid for by public insurance programs, namely Medicaid, unintended pregnancies weigh on the economy as well.
That means that any line separating reproductive rights from economic concerns is an imaginary one. True progressives would do well to remember that.
CORRECTION:An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the bill Mello co-sponsored. It did not require women to have ultrasounds before abortions.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2p1xu55
The post Reminder To Progressives: Abortion Is An Economic Issue appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
Earth Day Pioneer Calls It A ‘Day Of Mourning’ This Year Thanks To Trump
SAN FRANCISCO Saturday is Earth Day and things havent looked this bad for the environment in a long time, according to a former Republican congressman who helped launch the holiday.
Pete McCloskey, who co-chaired the original Earth Day celebration in 1970, said theres little to celebrate this year as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress set out toslash budgets for environmental agencies and undermine laws that protect water, air and wildlife.
This will be a black day. This will be a day of mourning for what is about to happen to environmental regulations, said McCloskey, who represented parts of the San Francisco Bay Area in Congress from 1967 to 1983. In 1970, it was joyous as millions of people turned out against air pollution, water pollution.
The first Earth Dayis credited with galvanizing public support behind sweeping changes to how the government managed natural resources. Months later, Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency. The Clean Air Act was also passed in 1970, while the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. McCloskey co-authored the Endangered Species Act in 1973.
These hard-fought gains are in jeopardy, McCloskey told HuffPost. The White Houses budget proposal aims to reduce the EPAs spendingby 25 percent, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations budget would shrivel by 17 percent.
McCloskey pointed to a recent legal changeallowing hunters to shoot hibernating bears in Alaskaand worried that the Endangered Species Act would be dismantled.
While many federal agencies would get trimmed under Trumps budget proposal, there would bespending increasesfor defense, homeland security, transportation and veterans affairs. Trump often describes his push to cut back environmental protections, such asfuel efficiency standards, as a way to clear obstacles for business and create opportunities for job growth.
Its a disaster and its going to set aside what weve accomplished since the first Earth Day, said McCloskey, who registered with theDemocratic Party in 2007 after becoming disillusioned with President George W. Bushs administration.
During an Earth Day event organized by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (D) on Thursday, McCloskey made similar comments. In a statement, he urged voters to defeat California Republicans like Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, in next years elections and vote for candidates favoring conservation and climate change policies.
Thousands of scientists are planning to march on the National Mall on Saturday to protest what they see as Trumps disregard for science and government funding for research.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2pnuTUo
The post Earth Day Pioneer Calls It A ‘Day Of Mourning’ This Year Thanks To Trump appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Navy, Marines Ban Nude Photo-Sharing After Scandal
The Department of the Navy has issued new regulations outlawing service members from spreading nude images in the wake of last months photo scandalinvolving the Marine Corps.
The revised regulations, which apply to Navy and Marine Corps personnel, were dated Monday and made public on Tuesday, reported Navy Times. The changeamounts to a lawful order, which can be enforced with the full weight of the justice system, from non-judicial punishment to general court martial, the paper noted.
The revised rules prohibit the wrongful distribution or broadcasting of an intimate image and broadly defines what constitutes such an image, including those distributed with reckless disregard as to whether the depicted person would be humiliated, harmed, intimidated, threatened, or coerced.
The new regulations from the Department of the Navy, which includes the Navy and the Marine Corps, come more than a month after Marine veteran Thomas Brennan, who runs the nonprofit news organization The War Horse, first reported a Marines nude photo-sharing group to Marine Corps officials and wrote about the scandal for The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Brennans story blew the lid off a 30,000-member private Facebook group called Marines United, used by service members to share nude photos of female colleagues. Subsequent reports found that similar groups involving other branches of the military were operating on other private message boards.
The revision signed by Acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley is considered an interim change until a new copy of Navy regulations is printed.
The Marine Corps last month updated social media rulesto explicitly ban online sexual harassment and encourage victims to report misconduct.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2o6aRNH
The post Navy, Marines Ban Nude Photo-Sharing After Scandal appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Steve King Toasts Border Patrol After Deportation Of Dreamer
WASHINGTON Immigrant rights advocates were dismayed on Tuesday by reports that the first undocumented immigrant with active Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protections was deported under President Donald Trump.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) had the opposite reaction.
First non-valedictorian DREAMer deported. Border Patrol, this ones for you, King tweeted, with a photo of a beer.
King is an immigration hawk who staunchly opposes the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and any other protections for so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. He infamously said in 2014 that for every Dreamer who is a valedictorian, theres another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and theyve got calves the size of cantaloupes because theyre hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.
So its no surprise he had little sympathy for Juan Manuel Montes, a 23-year-old who came to the U.S. at the age of 9 and was detained and deported by the Border Patrol, first reported by USA Today on Tuesday.
Montes says a Border Patrol agent stopped him in Calexico, California, on Feb. 17 and did not allow him to retrieve his DACA documents or his ID, which he had left in a friends car. Lawyers for the Dreamer said in a complaint that Border Patrol agents pressured him to sign documents approving his removal that he did not understand, and they didnt provide him copies, allow him to see a lawyer or put him before a judge.
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ralph DeSio said agents apprehended Montes minutes after he climbed over the fence from Mexico and that he admitted under oath to having entered the country illegally. He added that Montes had a past theft conviction and said his DACA status expired in August 2015.
DACA does not guarantee safety from removal, and some Dreamers have been deported after losing their protections. About 1,500 people have lost DACA status due to criminal convictions or gang affiliation, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
But Montes could be the first documented case of a Dreamer with active DACA status being deported. He had past criminal convictions for driving without a license and shoplifting, but his record did not exclude him from the program and his paperwork was not set to expire until 2018, according to USA Today.
Trump maintained the DACA program even though he promised to end it which King believes he should follow through on. But he also said he would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents more leeway to do what they thought was right, vastly expanding the scope of who should be considered a priority for deportation.
Still, the president and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have said DACA recipients would not be the target.
Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), accused the president of breaking his word.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime advocate for Dreamer protections, said in a statement that he was disturbed by reports about Montes removal and had demanded an explanation from ICE.
Just last month Secretary Kelly promised me that no one with DACA would lose this protection unless they violated the terms of DACA, Durbin said. I intend to hold him to this commitment.
This article has been updated with comment from Customs and Border Protection.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2oTSsmm
The post Steve King Toasts Border Patrol After Deportation Of Dreamer appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Monday, April 17, 2017
Sunday, April 16, 2017
New United Airlines Policy Scraps Last-Minute Boarding for Crew Members
United Airlines now has a new policy preventing last-minute employee boarding. The change comes after fallout over a video that showed security violentlydragging a passenger who refused to give up his seatfor a crew member.
We issued an updated policy to make sure crews traveling on our aircraft are booked at least 60 minutes prior to departure, United spokeswoman Maggie Schmerin told The Huffington Post on Sunday, noting that previously crews could be booked up until the time of departure.
The change is is effective immediately and is a response to outrage over a viral video that showed security personnel dragging passenger David Dao off a flight from Chicago, Illinois to Louisville, Kentucky, last week.
This ensures situations like Flight 3411 never happen again, she said. This is one of our initial steps in a review of our policies in order to deliver the best customer experience.
Videos from witnesses that filmed Dao showed him bloodied and in distress after security forcibly pulled him from his seat and dragged him by his arms down the aisle. Media coverage created a PR nightmare for the airline.
A lawyer for Dao says his client suffered a concussion, a broken nose and missing teeth as a result of the incident.
TMZ first reported on the policy change Friday after it obtained internal emails.
This is so the denied boarding process in an oversell situation may be implemented in a gate or lobby area and not on board the aircraft, read an email dated last Friday, according to TMZ.
Schmerin said the airline is continuing a review process and will share additional concrete actions we will take by April 30.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2ps74aI
The post New United Airlines Policy Scraps Last-Minute Boarding for Crew Members appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Friday, April 14, 2017
Facebook Cracks Down on 30,000 Fake News Accounts Ahead of French Election
Too late for the U.S. presidential election, Facebook is going after 30,000 phony accounts used to distribute fake newsin France, ahead of the national vote there.
The company is using automated methods to help screen out the fakes, such as finding content repeated on hundreds of the phony sites. Facebook said in a statement Friday that its taking decisive action against the accounts, presumably shutting them down.
While these most recent improvements will not result in the removal of every fake account, we are dedicated to continually improving our effectiveness, Facebook technical program manager Shabnam Shaik wrote in a post.
The company is relying on improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity without assessing the content itself, Shaik added. Facebook hopes toreduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.
The company is running full-page ads in several French newspaperswith tips on how to spot fake news, reports Tech Crunch. The ads urge readers to carefully check the URL, date, photos, and facts in an article to decide whether it can be trusted.
Facebook is a key element in any effective fake-news strategy. Phony Facebook sites can amplify concocted stories a thousand-fold as they are repeated by people across a nation or the world. Readers or search engines then mistakenly judge the fake stories as real and important based on the number of people sharing them.
Both Germany and France are taking extra precautions after the proliferation of fake news during the U.S. election, some of which intelligence agencies claim was orchestrated by the Kremlin.
Facebook conceded it was partly responsible for the spread of fake newsduring the U.S. election. Heavily promoted fake articles claiming that Hilary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS became more popular than stories about the final days of the campaign.
The first round of the French presidential election takes place April 23.Facebook has been running fact-checking programs on its sites, hoping to weed out fake news and slow its distribution, Deutsche Welle reports.
In a separate crackdown, Facebook announced Friday it had pulled the plug on a major spam operation out of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other countries. The operation mainly reached outto publisher Facebook pages in an attempt to gain Facebook friends, who would then be targeted by spam,according to a Facebook statement.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2ph4Q0J
The post Facebook Cracks Down on 30,000 Fake News Accounts Ahead of French Election appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Thursday, April 13, 2017
This Meme Sums Up The Absurdity Of April Perfectly
In the age of alternative facts, Twitter trolls and the Trump administration, it seems like a single week cannot pass without some bizarre controversy splashing across the headlines.
So when Pepsi debuted atone-deaf Kendall Jenner commercial, United Airlines violently forceda passenger to voluntarily leave a plane and Sean Spicer claimed thatHitler never used chemical weapons, all within seven days,one clever comedian decided to round up the weeks viral news into the perfect meme.
Chris Melberger created the one person we can all laugh at: Spicer as a United Airlines pilot holding a Pepsi.
It was like every day was a PR nightmare, Melberger told Time magazine.I really wanted to combine all three into this manifestation of three trending topics on Twitters mind in human form.
Melberger is no stranger to (mild) internet fame: The 26-year-old is already Twitter verified and posts comedy sketches to YouTube. (Plus, he has a hat that says Internet Famous, so it must be true.)
But his United-Spicer-Pepsi meme may just be one of the finest things hes ever done. Some people are even calling it the best meme of 2017, although were hesitant since, at this rate, we can only imagine what nonsense will happen next week.
Melbergers meme was so timely that a politics editor for Time suggested newspapers should start photoshopping memes instead of running political cartoons.
People are also requesting that Melberger produce weekly round-up memes, but he isnt sure thats possible.
I dont know if well ever have this much of a crazy week, he told Time.
Dont challenge the universe, Melberger.You never know what will happen next.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2oa9kl0
The post This Meme Sums Up The Absurdity Of April Perfectly appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
LeBron James Plans Ohio Public School For At-Risk Kids
Basketball superstarLeBron James plans to open a public school in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, for students at risk of falling behind in academics.
The I Promise School will open for elementary students in the fall of 2018 with support from James family foundation, according to plans revealed on Tuesday.It plans classes for students in third and fourth grades during its first year, and will expand to include grades 1 though 8 by 2022.
The school will draw students who are at-risk in reading and who are in need of additional academic intervention before falling further behind their peers, the LeBron James Family Foundation said in a statement.
James, the Cleveland Cavaliers star forward, was raised by a single mother. He entered the NBA in 2003 after emerging as a basketball phenom at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron.
Jamesspoke about the school at an eventTuesday in a historic Akron theater. Even though I was underprivileged, he said, he was lucky to grow up with mentors, his mother and close friends.
They would not let me get off course, he said.A lot of the kids I see today in the community and all over the world are not lucky enough to have the same mentors and the same people around that can help their dreams become reality.
The I Promise School aims to provide a supportive environment for students who lack guidance, James said.
We definitely understand how important it is to create an environment where our most challenged and at risk students feel safe, supported an cared for, said Akron Public Schools Superintendent David James at the event as a wall of adults in We are family T-shirts stood on stage.
A formal proposal for the school will be submitted for school board approval in October.
James has previously offered Akron kids educational opportunities.He created 1,100 full-tuition scholarships in 2015 to the University of Akron for teens who completed an I Promise program that included goals for attendance and grades.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2oa2P1y
The post LeBron James Plans Ohio Public School For At-Risk Kids appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Police Use Helicopter, Thermal Camera And K9 Unit To Stop Teen Candy Thieves
Police in Ontario, Canada, are very serious about cracking down on candy crime.
The York Regional Police deployed a canine unit, helicopters and thermal-imaging night cameras to arrest three teenage boys suspected of sneaking into Canadas Wonderland, a theme park near Toronto, and stealing candy Saturday night.
Wonderland security guards alerted police some time after 10:30 p.m., when they sawthree males, reportedly wearing dark clothing with their faces covered, enter a store at the theme park and steal candy, police said in a statement posted on Facebook.
Officers posted video Tuesday of their extensive takedown to show would-be criminals just how serious they are about people who trespass on private property even if its just kids trying to steal candy.
Responding to the reports of trespassing, York Regional Police deployed a helicopter and used an infrared camera to find the teens, who were hiding under a tree. Officials in the helicopter dispatched a canine unit, which apprehended two 16-year-olds and a 15-year-old.
The youths were cooperative with police and were remorseful for their actions, police said in a statement.
The teens were released into their parents custody and entered into a Community Referral Program, per the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Asked by The Torontoist if dispatching a helicopter was an appropriate response to candy theft, Constable Andy Pattenden replied, Yeah, sure. Why not?
The call didnt come into us as three kids stealing candy, right? he added. It came in as a break-and-enter in progress.
Police did not press any criminal charges against the teens, but Pattenden suggested that the chase may have been punishment enough.
These kids definitely learned a lesson on that night, Pattenden told CBC Toronto. It was quite the response. They were probably scared out of their minds when they heard the helicopters and dogs hot on the trail.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2o5DAOJ
The post Police Use Helicopter, Thermal Camera And K9 Unit To Stop Teen Candy Thieves appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
What Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You To Know About His Twitter Followers
It turns out a substantial chunk of PresidentDonald Trumps followers on Twitter hail from shadowy, anonymous sources.
Ajust-published investigation of @RealDonaldTrumps more than 27 million Twitter followers by Bloomberg Businessweek found that about 28 percent are eggs.Literally, that means, for one reason or another, about 7.5 million followers have opted to stick with the default profile illustration, rather than adding their own photo. (Until earlier this month, Twitters default illustration was an egg, hence the name.)
But in practice, the most suspect account on Twitter is the egg. All too many of these accounts are launched by people who dont want to be identified or even associated with what theyre saying. Eggsare the internet equivalent of someone who doesnt stand by their work.Twitter dropped the iconbecause it had become synonymous with trolls and bullying.
Bloomberg also found that Trumps most vociferous supporter in terms of tweeting at the president is probably a bot (although not technically an egg):
Trumps most prolific respondent, @Trump2016_Fan, has posted more than 18,000 times in the past year, mostly all-caps messages of support for the 45th president. The account appears to be automated and did not respond to a request for an interview.
Alexander Taub, co-founder of Social Rank, which provided the data to Bloomberg, said none of this should be surprising. Popular Twitter accounts like Trumps tend to attract fake and otherwise dubious followers. And bots are, as Bloomberg noted, a rampant part of life on Twitter.
But for Trump, a man obsessed with crowd sizeand popularity metrics of all kinds, it does matter and for more than just the optics.Theres power in numbers, and the extra millions of supportive eggs and bots can boost his message, even when we dont know whos behind them.
Sure, people would pay attention to the presidents tweets no matter how many followers he had. But unlike real followers who may dissent from time to time, Twitter eggs (at least many of them) will happily parrotwhatever those tweets may be.
And Trumps amplified messages have real-world implications.
So real that after his election, Mexican peso traders half-joked that it would be cheaper to buy Twitter outright and shut it down than to continue burning through foreign currency reserves to defend the peso from Trumps tweets.
So real that his baseless tweet accusingformer President Barack Obamaof wiretapping Trump Tower has triggered actual investigations.
So real that Trumpsrepeated, yet unsupported, claimsabout widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election ignited a flurry of conversation from which even the White House has since distanced itself.
The White House seems to understand very well the impact of anonymous voices on the internet. Earlier this week, a Twitter lawsuit revealed that the Trump administration was attempting to force the company to identify the person behind an anonymous account critical of the president.
The Trump administration dropped the effortafter it went public.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2o2Dd6T
The post What Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You To Know About His Twitter Followers appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Trump Declines To Publicly Declare His Support For Steve Bannon
President Donald Trump declined to offer his full support for Steve Bannon, one of his top advisers, and instead downplayed Bannons influence in getting him elected to the White House.
New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin asked Trump if he still had confidence in Bannon, and the president did not say he did. Instead, he made it seem like Bannon, who led Trumps campaign beginning in August, was in the right place at the right time. In November, Trump tapped Bannon, widely seen to be the architect of his populist strategy, to be his senior counselor in the White House.
I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late, Trump told Goodwin. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didnt know Steve. Im my own strategist and it wasnt like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.
Bannon has reportedly clashed with Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law. The two have drastically different styles and philosophies Bannon is an ideological crusader who wants a deconstruction of the administrative state, while Kushner, until recently, was a Democrat.
Last week, Bannon was ousted from his role on the National Security Council something Kushner encouraged. Trump also told the Post that he had warned Kushner and Bannon that they needed to resolve their differences.
Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will, he said.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2p3QtN6
The post Trump Declines To Publicly Declare His Support For Steve Bannon appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Uber, Reeling From Controversies, Loses Another Executive
Ubers top executive for communications has left the beleaguered company, continuing a wave of turnover in the highest ranks.
Rachel Whetstones departure as head of communications was announced in an email Tuesday to employees from CEO Travis Kalanick.
In 2015, Whetstone left Google to become the ride-hailing apps senior vice president of policy and communications.
I am incredibly proud of the team that weve built and that just as when I left Google, a strong and brilliant woman will be taking my place, Whetsone said in a statement Tuesday. I joined Uber because I love the product and that love is as strong today as it was when I booked my very first ride six years ago.
Whetstones departure comes during a turbulent time for the ride-hailing app, and Recode reportedthat perhaps she did not want to handle the barrage of bad publicity.
The company is under scrutiny after The New York Times reportedthat officials deployed software that provided misleading data about rides to government regulators.
And the behavior of Kalanick himself has led to bad publicity for Uber.
I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up, Kalanick wrote after video emerged in February showing the CEO berating an Uber driver.
There have been a series of departures from the ranks of Uber executives in recent months as well. President Jeff Jones resigned last month while another senior vice president was forced out in February over failing to disclose to corporate officials that he had been investigated for sexual harassment while working at Google.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2p67MtM
The post Uber, Reeling From Controversies, Loses Another Executive appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Twitter now lets brands make their own custom hearts for Periscope live videos
Those little hearts you tap to signal to a live videos creator that youre enjoying the content might look a little different on Twitter in the future. The companyannounced todaya new way for brands to engage fans through live video it will now let themcreate their own custom hearts for use inPeriscopes live video. The customizations can be used alone or combined with pre-roll ads in brand sponsorships of broadcasts, says Twitter.
The first campaign to feature custom hearts already went live, with NBC Universal being the debut client. The studio used its own graphics in a marketing campaign for its new movie, The Fate of the Furious, which includes an integrated F8 custom heart for fans to tap on. (You can see it live in the video here.)
The custom hearts appear alongside the multi-colored hearts that are typically shown and that variation could induce users to tap more frequently, perhaps, translating into some sort of increased engagement metric for the brand advertisers to tout.
But brands dont exactly havefree reign to createtheir graphics through some sort of self-serve system, we understand. Twitter tells us that the customizations are instead designed in partnership with the brand before going live. That means Twitter wont have to vet and approve submissions an area where it got into trouble before, during the U.S. presidential campaigns.
At that time, the company came under fire for rejecting a custom hashtag campaign for the tag #CrookedHillary that included a stick figure emoji running with a bag of cash. Twitter explained its decision then as not wanting to confuse users who may have thought the ad represented Twitters own political viewpoint. It then decided not to run sponsored hashtag emojis for political campaigns in the future.
With brands wanting to market to users through the new custom hearts feature, its less likely theyll get into controversial areas like that. But in this day and age of tone-deaf Pepsi commercials and the like, you can never be too sure where a brand may misstep next. Twittershand-in-hand system of creating graphics at least gives the companymore control over the final product.
Twitter declined to speak about the cost for the customizations, however, when asked.
The custom hearts can be see on live and on-demand Periscope videos, regardless of whether that video is viewed on Periscope or Twitter.
Twitter is not the only business utilizingemoji as a means of engaging live video viewers Facebook Live also takes advantage of the format with its full range of reaction emoji, while Twitch uses animated emoticons to indicate cheering, and Musical.lys Live.ly app sells virtual gifts of emoji to let fans engage with creators.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2pm5E0H
The post Twitter now lets brands make their own custom hearts for Periscope live videos appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Monday, April 10, 2017
Cops Hunt Accused Gun Thief Who Sent Anti-Government Manifesto To Trump
Police in Wisconsin have been searching for days for a highly agitated man they say stole a cache of firearms from a gun shop and threatened public officials, including President Donald Trump.
Joseph Jakubowski, 32, sent a menacing, anti-government and anti-religion manifesto to Trump on April 4, the same day he stole a large quantity of high-end handguns and rifles from a gun shop in Janesville, according to the Rock County Sheriffs Office.
Jakubowski has been highly agitated recently regarding a variety of political issues, the sheriffs office said.
About 30 minutes after the break-in at the Armageddon Gun Shop last week, Jakubowskis station wagon was found on fire, the result of arson, the sheriffs department said in a statement.
Its unclear if Jakubowski is hiding in the southern part of the state or has fled the area, authorities said. Federal, state and local departments have supplied officers to help with the manhunt.
He also made threats against schools, but didnt mention a specific location, according to the sheriffs office. Janesville School District canceled classes on Friday as a precaution. More officers have been patrolling near churches, because of the unspecified anti-religious remarks in the suspects manifesto, the sheriffs office said over the weekend.
Authorities on Friday released video appearing to show Jakubowski addressing en envelope to Trump and buying postage to send his 161-page manifesto to the White House.
To anybody that got this letter, you might want to read it, the man police identified as Jakubowski says as he walks through a parking lot after visiting the post office. Revolution. Its time for change.
The sheriffs office said the manifestoincludes grievances against government and personal angst toward anyone or anything other than natural law or rule, according to CNN.
A second man also is heard on the video.
D-day. Today is the day, says the second man off camera as the video follows Jabukowski. So remember this face.
Jakubowski was imprisoned in 2009 for trying to seize a cops gun, The New York Times reported. He has long harbored anti-police attitudes, his stepfather said, and may be trying to provoke an officer into killing him, according to NBC News.
Jakubowski is white with brown hair and green eyes. He stands 5-feet-10 and weighs 200 pounds, according to the sheriffs office. Hes described as armed and dangerous.
The FBI is offering up to $10,000 for information that leads to his capture. Tipsters can call the bureau at 800-225-5324.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2o22xuB
The post Cops Hunt Accused Gun Thief Who Sent Anti-Government Manifesto To Trump appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Waiting for the new new thing
The smartphone wars are over, and everybody won. Life without our phones is almost unthinkable. I just spent the last five days on a couple of remote Pacific islands, and every so often Id look up and see a flower-garlanded local child immersed in a Samsung tablet and this seemed wholly unremarkable.
But now that the gold rush is over, and weve entered the mopping-up phase what next? What is, as Michael Lewis once put it, the new new thing? Conventional wisdom gives us five major contenders: AI, AR/VR, biotech, blockchains, and drones.
AI is the biggest contender. Neural network pattern recognition opens whole new categories of hitherto insoluble problems. Computers that can see and know what theyre seeing? Thats a very big deal, as evidenced by, for instance, self-driving cars. Also, AI-as-in-pattern-recognition is very likely a major step (albeit one of very many) towards AI-as-in-artificial-intelligence.
AR/VR is also transformative. A whole new, uniquely immersive form of media, entertainment, and cognitive/navigational tools. I am no biotech expert, but by all accounts its at the dawn of a new era, and not only because of CRISPR. Blockchains could upend the finance industry, transform commerce, destroy the barriers that keep out the worlds unbanked and underbanked, and replace most international aid.
Drones meaning not just polycopters, but unpiloted vehicles of all kinds will (for better or worse) transform the military, defense, surveillance, and disaster response industries far more than they already have, and may turn the transport of high-value goods into an aerial packet-switched network, just as shipping containers revolutionized bulk goods.
But the weird thing is that none of these transformative technologies are likely to be truly transformative, in terms of their effect on the majority of ordinary human lives, any time soon. (By which I mean: the next few years, i.e. by 2020.) Eventually, yes! Immediately, no.
Its like 1995, when everyone in tech knew the Internet was going to be huge, utterly revolutionary but not quite yet. Or the first iPhone demo, when those with eyes to see recognized that this would change everything .- in a few years. Like that times five.
Its as if were standing on a beach, knowing that multiple simultaneous tsunamis have been set in motion on the opposite side of this ocean. One or two of them may falter and vanish beneath the waves, but at least a few of them will upend everything, when they hit.
Startups and investors dont want this pause at all; they want a brand-new smartphone-sized gold rush, and they want it now. Hence their desperation to e.g. make chatbots happen. But given the scale of the manifold changes coming our way, maybe a year or three to catch our collective breath, to ready ourselves, wont be such a bad thing. Because it seems clear that the rate of change of the 2020s is going to make these topsy-turvy teens look like stasis.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2nu6ifY
The post Waiting for the new new thing appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
What Will The Trump Economy Look Like?
When the economy generated over 200,000 new jobs in January and again in February, Donald Trump suddenly decided that he respected the government statistical agencies. But when the economy produced only 98,000 jobs in March, the Administration was uncharacteristically quiet.
That same report revised the earlier numbers downward by about 38,000 jobs. Compared with a year earlier, job creation in February and March declined by 56.4%.
So, what sort of economy will the Trump presidency produce and how will it affect the elections of 2018 and 2020?
The stock market likes Trump. After a brief dip in stock prices following his election (financial markets famously hate uncertainty), stock traders decided they like Trump. With deregulation, tax cuts, infrastructure spending, weakening of trade unions, and Trump back-pedaling on a threatened trade war, whats not to like?
But gains in stock prices reflect expected higher profits, not a healthier real economy. Even if the market keeps doing well, that doesnt translate into better conditions for ordinary workers and consumers. At some point, higher profits come at the expense of wage gains.
In addition, there is likely to be a duel between a rising deficit driven by tax cuts and a newly prudent Federal Reserve. The deficit will produce economic stimulus, but the three interest rates hikes predicted for the next year will restrain it. Whats the net-net? Its anybodys guess.
Little is likely to change for the better in the economic outlook of the people who voted for Donald Trump.
In addition, the spike in stock prices suggests to some that the market is also close to bubble territory. Yales Nobel economist, Robert Shiller, who warned about the 2008 collapse, says the market is already way overvalued. And the coming gutting of the Dodd-Frank Act and of other regulatory protections against financial abuses will increase the risk of a new cycle of bubble and crash.
In terms of other strategies of job creation, there is no miracle cure consistent with the economic policies likely to be delivered by Trump and the Republican majority in Congress. The Goldman-Sachs wing of the administration has already won the power struggle with the economic nationalist wing on trade policy.
The infrastructure program is likely to be a fake, based on tax credits and privatizations rather than increased public investment. The continued assault on public workers will undercut one of the few oases of secure middle-class jobs.
Bottom line: Little is likely to change for the better in the economic outlook of the people who voted for Donald Trump. States that made the difference for Trump, like the industrial upper Midwest, are still in a long-term industrial slide. The stock market may or may not settle back down to earth between now and 2018. But there will be little in the way of bragging rights for Trump to claim for the workaday economy.
On the contrary, the trends of more contingent workTask Rabbits, Amazon warehouse pickers, Uber drivers, temp workersis likely to intensify. More robots will be replacing more human work. Fewer good payroll jobs will be on offer.
As a consequence, the Republicans are likely to follow the usual pattern of lost seats in Congress in the first mid-term election of a new presidents administration. And Trumps personal unpopularity, plus the remarkable mobilization of grassroots progressives are likely to add to the downdraft.
As Trump would say, its going to be great.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis Universitys Heller School. His latest book is Debtors Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility. http://ift.tt/1ebQpNt
Like Robert Kuttner on Facebook: http://ift.tt/1fTBCec
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rkuttner
Read more: http://ift.tt/2ohoeJp
The post What Will The Trump Economy Look Like? appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Netflixs long-time chief product officer Neil Hunt is leaving the company
Streaming video provider Netflix is makinga change in its senior management, as the company announced long-time chief product officer Neil Hunt will be leaving in July. International executive Greg Peters will be taking Hunts placein the lead product role.
Hunt, who has been with Netflixfor 18 years, has overseen a numbermajor shifts inthe companysbusiness, as it transitionedfrom a DVD-by-mail service to a U.S.-based desktopstreaming business to a company thatmakes its videos availableon smartphones and connected TV products all around the world.
Replacing Hunt will be Greg Peters, who has held multiple roles in product development and business development over the last nine years withthe company. Most recently, Peters leddevelopment efforts within Netflixs Tokyo office, where he oversaw content licensing and creation, as well as local marketing.
Ina statement issued along with the announcement, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said:Greg and Neil have collaborated through the years to make the Netflix experience all over the world absolutely incredible I look forward to having Greg take on this role and to celebrate with Neil our 100 millionth member.
In addition, Netflixannounced thatChief Talent Officer Tawni Cranz, who has been with the companysince2007, would also be leaving.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2ob3Urv
The post Netflixs long-time chief product officer Neil Hunt is leaving the company appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Postepic is an app for elegantly sharing book quotes
Its fair to say the smartphone camera has becomethe digital tool of most use, rendering the average persons camera roll essentially amemory buffer where carefully composed photographs rub up againstsnaps of receipts, funny stuff you saw on the street and fanciedsharing with friends, and, sometimes, snippetsof text you came acrossin a (paper) bookand wanted to make a note of. Snapping a photo in that moment isa stand in for the lack of real-world copy and paste.
And its the latter kind of photo (text quotations) that the founders ofsmartphone app Postepic want to liberate from this unstructured jumble of visual data. Indeed, the first version of the app, released last year as a bootstrapping side-project by a bunch of book-loving friendsafter they graduated from university in Poland, was just a basic way for them to organize and share photos of the quotationsthey had cluttering their camera rolls.
We started this project as we wanted to build something together, says co-founder ukasz Konofalski. We all share a passion for books and were used to sharing quotes and books recommendations between each other. We came across some reports that showed that in Poland in 2016 only half a book will be read on average, so we also wanted to support readership in general by building a bridge between traditional books and mobile world.
Two things really surprised us when we finally launched it in June 2016: the number of new books worth reading we discovered by simply sharing quotes with each other; and a very warm reception we received from the developers and users communities alike. We have received volumes of valuable feedback from them and got back to work.
Version 2 of the app, which launched this week, turns a basicideainto an app that has enough form and function to feel appealing to use. The coreadditional feature is optical character recognition (OCR) meaning that instead of uploading and sharing ugly-looking (and hard to read) chunks of raw page text, i.e. in their original photo form, Postepic users can now lift the wordsoff the page, capturing and editing the text and its visual presentation bychoosing fromaselection of fonts and backgrounds.
The final result presentsthe text snippetinside a square frame, in a way thats both easy to read andvisibly pleasing (for an example of how utilitarian quotes looked in v1 of the app see the image at the bottom of this post). So Postepicbasically lets people turn a favorite quote into an easily shareable unit of digital social currency. Aka,an Instagram for book quotes.
Last year Facebook added a feature aimed at enhancing the impact ofthe text statusesbeing shared via its platform, givingusers the ability to add colored backgrounds to their textupdates to makethem more visual. And with so much visual noise being injected into messaging and communications apps, this is hardly surprising. Point is, if you want something to stand out in the age of Instagram Stories (Snapchat Stories, Facebook Stories, WhatsApp Stories etc etc), it has to look right asthe bar for beingnoticed keeps getting higher.
And withall this visual noise clamoring for our attention, it can feel like the written word isbeing forgotten or overlooked as people ditcha thousand words in favor ofsharing a few photos. Yet a well-turned phrase has the power to be both arresting and enlightening, as well as a hint ofgreaterdepths lurking within the full work. Sogiven how much attention has been (and continues to be) lavished onvisual forms of communication from photo filters to selfie lenses to style transfer theres arguably spacefor a clever social sharing app that brings the power of the written word back into focus.
Notably, Apples new social video sharing app Clips includes an auto-captioning feature. Thats great for accessibility, but also a reminder that words-as-text still have powerand with a little technological automagic can be effortlessly edited back into the selfie frame.
Postepic is not the first app to take a shot at wordy snippets, though. Others have tried to buildan Instagram for book quotes Quotle, for example but no one has yet managed to generatesignificant momentum for the concept. It might be because sharing book snippetsis inherently more niche than sharing photos (its certainly more bounded, given language barriers). Or becauseno one has made a slick enough version to attract more mainstream appeal.
Postepics v2app seems to beatQuotle on OCR speed. And because itschosen to fix the sharing format as a square its content inherently feels bettergroomed for social sharing vs the more wordy/text-heavy Quotle. (Although, on the flip side, Postepics ease of use and more formulaic format might attract a flood of clich sharers and drive down the quality of discoverable quotes.) But clearly the founders hope is that the uniform sharingformat setsPostepic up to benefit from viral uplift if users sharewatermarkedquotes to their larger follower bases on platforms likeInstagram (as other apps have). Time will tell if they can make it catch on.
Its certainly stilla fairly unformed thing at this stage, especially given the size and nature of itsearly adopter community having only clocked a few thousand downloads for its MVP v1 via a launch onProduct Hunt. So even though the team has curated a bunch of quotations themselves to populate the app, youre more likely to find quotesabout scaling a startup than lines from a Shakespearean sonnet. But the core function of v2 has been executedwell, within a clearapp structure. So its super simple to capture, edit and share nicely presented quotes.
Quotation lengthis capped at 600characters to ensure readability (and curtail any copyright concerns). Photo backgrounds are also limited to a handful ofgeneric shots and textures offered within the app at least for now, to avoid users uploading inappropriate imagery, says Konofalski (on that front,remember Secret?). While the OCR tech supports ten languages at this point: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The app also lets you tag quotations for subject matterand toadd sources (a requirement if youre making a quote public). Using these labelsyou can then browse and search quotes, while a favoritesfeature lets you curate a like-list if you spot quotes shared by others that you like.And if you dont want to share thequotes you create with the crowd you dont have to you can keep individual quotes private and just use the app to create an organized, visual library of the best bits from the books youre reading.
On the community front, the main feed of Postepic is an assorted jumble for now, showing a stream of non-topic sorted trending quotes that Konofalski says turns over every few hours based on what others are liking. Currently theres no way to follow other users to customize what you see here but thats down tohow nascent the community is. Our goal is to offer a solution that many content and photo sharing apps use: to give users a choice to pick their favorite genres and authors to adjust their feed, he says. Additionally, we want to launch a functionality of following other users, so their posts show up in users feed [but]decided to postpone the functionality until we reach a community size that would warrant this.
Postepic does also support social sharing to other platforms, as youd expect. Though this doesnt alwayswork as youd imagine.For example, testing sharing to WhatsApp the app merelycreated a generic text message with a link to view the quote in Postepic, rather than including the visual form of thequote in a WhatsApp message template (though this is likely a WhatsApp restriction on sharing from a third party app). A basic workaround is obviously to screengrab a quote and upload it manually where you like as a photo. Sharing to Twitter incorporated both the image and a text message with a link when I tested it. Konofalski says that with most well known apps it willautomatically import/drop an image intothe other app.
The appis free to download (and iOS only for now), and while the team says it has a fewideas for potential monetization down the line such as hostingpre-launch book campaigns, or offering writers a subscription-based platform to connect with fans the focus for nowis fully on building up the size of the community to try to reach a critical mass of readers.
Does generation Snapchat read books? I guess theyll soon find out
Read more: http://ift.tt/2oaerDl
The post Postepic is an app for elegantly sharing book quotes appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Spotify Premium Director Robert Lamvik leaves company for meditation app Headspace
Meditation app Headspace recently brought on Robert Lamvik, Spotifys now-former director of its Premium service, and Dr. Megan Jones Bell, former chief science officer at mental health startup Lantern. Their respective roles at Headspace are head of growth and chief science officer two new roles at the company.
Weve always had team of scientists, but as we go into this next stage of growth, we thought it was important to build out the seniority of the team and bring real leadership to it, Headspace co-founder Rich Pierson told me. Its a really important part of what we do. With the growth side, weve got to that stage now where turning our free users into subscribers is a really important part of the mission as well.
Lamvik spent almost four years at Spotify working on the music streaming companys growth and revenue initiatives, i.e. subscription service Spotify Premium. With Lamvik on board Headspace as head of growth, the goal is to essentially turn Headspace into a subscription leader like Spotify.
[Spotify has]basically perfected the freemium model, Lamvik told me. This was an opportunity to join a mission-driven startup like Headspace and an opportunity to bring people together and bridge together health and happiness.
He went on to say that his goal at Headspace will be to educate and inspire people to learn more about the freemium product. Lamviks departure from Spotify is notable, given that Spotify has been rumored to be considering going public but might not take the traditional approach of filing an initial public offering,TechCrunchs Katie Roof reported this past week.
Headspace makes money through selling subscriptions to its guided meditations. Anyone can try out the service for free through Headspaces Take 10 program, which offers 10 guided meditations that you can replay as many times as you want. But if you want a variety of meditations, thats where the money comes in. Headspace has a few membership plans. One costs $12.95 per month on a month-to-month basis and another costs $7.99 per month if you sign up for a full year.
Headspace wouldnt get into specifics about growth projections, but was willing to say that more than 14 million people have downloaded the app, and that the goal is to more than double revenue this year versus last year. Super helpful, I know.
Bell, on the other hand, told TechCrunch she was attracted to Headspace for the broader canvas to paint on in regards to changing the culture around mental health wellness.
For me, joining Headspace is bringing me back to the root of my personal and professional mission to make that broader impact, Bell said.
As chief science officer, Bell plans to expand upon the research and evidence of the work Headspace is doing.
Were very keen to show measurable impact and particularly to validate that, Bell said.
Headspace has raised$38.3 million in funding, with its most recent round coming in at $30 million in September 2015 fromThe Chernin Group, Advancit Capital, Allen & Company, Breyer Capital, The Honest Company co-founderJessica Alba, actor Jared Leto, TV personality Ryan Seacrest, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and others.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2nr4tQL
The post Spotify Premium Director Robert Lamvik leaves company for meditation app Headspace appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
The hoverbikes are coming
Autonomous passenger drones might be coming to Dubai this summer, but in Russia I had the chance to check outthis startup which literally wants to build a hoverbike.
Emerging from the Skolkovo startups and science park just outside of Moscow,human-carrying drone makerHoversurf has created a sing-seat hoverbike which looks awesome, but does rather make you fear for your legs, let alone the legs of other people you might encounter.
The Scorpion-3 is the updated version of the prototype Scorpion-1 I saw being demonstrated on a tennis court, but is fundamentally the same thing. The pilot sits on it like a motorcycle, and flies around just like you might expect a hoverbike to do. However, as you can see from even the official videos, its still got some way to go before it matches the hoverbikes you might have seen in movies like Star Trek.
Hoversurf is positioning the bike as an extreme sports instrument and to buy one might set you back at leat 6 figures, so I wouldnt expect to see the bike on your local highway any time soon. However, they are looking at its transportation potential.
Hoversurf has developed its own in-house software to control the Scorpion-3 in either automated mode of or with full-manual control. That means it also has in-built systems to automatically control and limit the maximum speed and altitude of the aircraft to prevent accidents. It flies a lot better than the version I encountered, thats for sure.
Chef Engineer and co-founder Alex Atamanov tells me the electric version will hover around for about 30 minutes, but a hybrid version with a petrol engine will go for a whole hour, which rather puts a few other human-carrying drones into the shade.
Heres their Official video:
Meanwhile in the UK, Malloy Aeronautics has developed a Hoverbike which it plans to develop with the US Army.
The hoverbike began its life as a Kickstarter project. The hoverbike is designed to do many of the same jobs as a helicopter, but without the problems, price or complexity.
And if you need a reminder of Hollywoods ideas about hoverbikes, heres a couple of examples:
The Island The chase scene:
Start Trek (reboot)
Read more: http://ift.tt/2oa5NVf
The post The hoverbikes are coming appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Bird Slams Into Man’s Face In Bloody Roller Coaster Accident
Roller coasters are designed for thrill seekers, but one man got more than he bargained for at the newly opened Ferrari Land in Barcelona, Spain.
A man and his friend went for a ride on Red Force, which is being touted as Europes fastest roller coaster, on Friday and literally crashed into an unfortunate surprise.
While riding the 112 mph coaster, a bird slammed into the mans face, leaving behind a bloody mess. Shocked by the impact, the man felt his face until he found a bird pushed up against his neck thanks to the rides extreme acceleration.
He tossed the bird aside and, with blood smeared across his face, appeared to tell his friend what just happened. Moments after the encounter, the man seemed to accept his and the birds fate and rose his hand for another drop.
Its unclear if the man suffered any significant injuries, but, at the very least, he appeared to be thrilled the last few seconds in the video.
A similar accident took place in 2012 when a 12-year-old boy was hit by a bird while riding a roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. That boy was taken to a hospital and suffered minor injuries to his face and neck.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2obN9wo
The post Bird Slams Into Man’s Face In Bloody Roller Coaster Accident appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Why Trump’s Syria Strike Will Not End Well
U.S. President Donald Trump claims the objective of his cruise missile strike on Syria is to deter Syrian President Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons again. But six years into Syrias brutal civil war, Trump does not have the luxury of defining his objective that narrowly. Whether he likes it or not, he will be judged by his interventions impact on the trajectory of this war. And there, his action has no path to success.
By now, it is clear that the missile strike hasnot impededAssad from using his air force to strike rebel strongholds. In fact, Syrian warplanes reportedly carried out strikes yesterday against rebels near the city of Homs taking off from the very air base hit by U.S. missiles. Trump even gave Assad advanced notice via Russian President Vladimir Putin, which enabled the Syrian dictator to move his troops and bunker his planes. Moreover, Trump left one of the airstrips at the targeted base untouched, which is why Assad could quickly use the base to launch further attacks.
Very soon, Trump will face the first reactions to his strike. Both Assad and Putin are likely to intensify their assault on the rebel strongholds and the civilians living in those areas. The end result will be a more intensified civil war with more civilian casualties and even greater difficulty for diplomatic efforts to bear fruit. This will create two opposite pressures pressure to de-escalate as a result of confusion over what the U.S. is trying to achieve and pressure to escalate in order to save face and achieve a defensible result before any de-escalation takes place.
The end result will be a more intensified civil war with more casualties and greater difficulty for diplomatic efforts.
The de-escalation option will reveal the significant limitations to Trumps new-won sympathy for the plight of the Syrian people, as well as to his commitment to prolonged military operations. If he chooses escalation, on the other hand, he risks a wider regional war, including potential confrontation with Russia. The dynamics of this particularly complicated conflict will make Trump lose control of the course of events. Furthermore,the type of military operation that could potentially steer developments in Syria is so sizable that both Congress and the American public would vehemently oppose it, as they did in 2013.
Whichever path Trump chooses, success is unlikely.
But what if Trump had the political maneuverability to get away with the narrow objective of simply deterring Assad from gassing his own people? Couldnt the cruise missile strike be successful?
Even in that hypothetical scenario, the odds are against Trump because it wont entirely remove the use of chemical weapons from the Syrian theater. After all, the so-called Islamic State has reportedly used chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq more than 52 times. Nor will it stop Assad from killing thousands of his own people using conventional weapons. The pictures may be less alarming, but the carnage will continue, making Trumps action difficult to defend.
Helping ensure that civilians arent trapped in Syria should be the first and most obvious thing the U.S. can do to help.
At that point, the very same people cheering Trumps intervention will turn against him, feeling betrayed and let down. In their view, Trump will have left the job unfinished. The impulse that something must be done to put an end to the humanitarian disaster in Syria is correct. But when that something can only mean military measures, the U.S. makes itself part of the problem rather than the solution.
It is profoundly hypocritical of Trump to launch missile strikes to protect Syrian children when he himself has prevented those same children from finding refuge in America. During his election campaign, Trump callously statedthat he could look in [Syrian refugee childrens] faces and say You cant come. Ill look them in the face.
Helping ensure that children and civilians arent trapped in Syria should be the first and most obvious thing the U.S. can do to help. Second, a far more robust dedication toward finding a diplomatic solution is needed, although such a solution is now more difficult to achieve. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry should be commended for his efforts to broker a Syrian deal. I describe in my forthcoming book on the Iran deal negotiations that Kerry, together with former President Barack Obama, provided a key ingredient for the success of those talks: a near unprecedented degree of political will and commitment toward making the negotiations succeed.
Trump launching strikes before trying diplomacy gives little hope that he has the political will to truly resolve the conflict.
Diplomacy over Irans nuclear program had been taking place on and off for more than a decade. But those negotiations were profoundly flawed. And even when they became more appropriately structured and realistic, they often faltered due to insufficient political will from one or both sides. The readiness to expend the necessary political capital and pay the domestic political price to achieve a deal was simply missing. Diplomacy had to succeed on the cheap.
But complex international disputes such as the stand-off over the Iranian nuclear program or the Syrian civil war cannot be resolved on the cheap. Trump launching strikes before trying diplomacy gives little hope that he has the political will to truly resolve the conflict.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2ol2bSB
The post Why Trump’s Syria Strike Will Not End Well appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason