Friday, October 18, 2019

For Flint, the Mayoral race is vital to continued improvement in replacing the water pipes.

I doubt Flint, Michigan will ever trust a Republican again in a position on the Mayor and Council.

October 15, 2019

If it wasn’t for the yard signs (click here) sprinkled around town, you might not know that Flint is electing a mayor next month. 

It’s been a low-key campaign between incumbent Karen Weaver and state representative Sheldon Neeley (D-Flint).

However, the quiet nature of the campaign may change this week. Weaver and Neeley will meet in their only debate this Thursday, where the two may exchange barbs publicly that until now have only been said in private.

Elected in 2015 and surviving a recall election in 2017, Karen Weaver led Flint through its water crisis.  Since 2016, the mayor says her administration has made significant progress upgrading the city’s water system and replacing lead service lines.... 

Everyone knows the current Mayor Karen Weaver (click here), but, who is Sheldon Neeley? Rep. Neeley believes Flint's water resolve should be further along. I don't believe that is a valid point of view when considering the faulty methods being used in the beginning of the water pipe replacement. And if 
Rep. Neeley sincerely wants to have the Flint project more along more quickly, will he be as thorough in the assessment as Mayor Weaver has been. I think Mayor Weaver has won the trust of the people in protecting them from exploitative practices by contractors. That is going to be hard to beat.


October 2, 2019
By Tom Travis

Speaking with East Village Magazine (click here) on his birthday, Sept. 20, Flint mayoral candidate Sheldon Neeley offered insight about how he would conduct his administration if he wins the Nov. 5 election. He was pressed for time and was able to grant 20 minutes on the phone for the interview.

Neeley cited that if elected, his focus would be on what he calls his “Five Points of Light” — residential, recreation, economics, education and safety.

Neeley is familiar to many Flint residents, having served as Flint’s Sixth Ward councilperson for nine years and for the last six years as Michigan’s 34th District state representative.

He could be characterized as a seasoned politician, from his years of experience holding elected offices. In his terms in the state legislature, he has served on the health policy, commerce and trade, tax policy, local government, and transportation and infrastructure committees. For the past four years Neeley has served on the legislative Black Caucus in the House of Representatives....

Rep. Neeley has been frustrated with these circumstances for some time now.

May 31, 2018

..."In 2015, on behalf of the residents of my city, (click here) I demanded that the state take action to address the water crisis. It took three months for Attorney General Schuette to review Gov. Snyder's administration's involvement in the crisis and begin to hold them accountable. One month ago, I once again demanded that the state take action to protect the most vulnerable people in our community, including seniors, pregnant women and homebound individuals. I urged him to advocate on behalf of our most vulnerable population and restore bottled water distribution to concerned residents after it was cut off. We have still not received a response.

Rep. Neeley must be knowledgable to the problems Flint residents have encountered for years now. He seems involved in all the events leading up to deceptive practices by the contractors to the current state Attorney General to review the cases regarding the deaths and injuries to Flint residents.

July 14, 2017

State Representative Sheldon Neeley (click here) believes that Governor Rick Snyder's decision to allow two Health and Human Services employees charged with felonies over the Flint Water Crisis is hurting Flint residents trust in government.

Shortly after Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced new charges in the Flint Water Crisis against Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon, and Chief Legal Executive Dr. Eden Wells, Governor Rick Snyder took to the airwaves to show his support for the pair.

Snyder is allowing Lyon and Wells to stay on the job until the charges make their way through the court system.

Snyder says in a video released by his office that Wells and Lyon are committed to the recovery of Flint, and are presumed innocent until otherwise proven differently in court.

Lyon is facing involuntary manslaughter charges, and Wells is facing obstruction of justice charges, for their handling of the Legionnaire’s outbreak which spread through the city in 2014 and 2015.

State Senator Jim Ananich, (D) Flint, says he doesn’t believe they can effectively do the job, and should be fired.

“These are very serious charges and it calls into question whether or not they are able to manage the agency, and protect millions of people in the state whose safety depends on them. I felt that the governor’s statement defending these employees, but saying nothing about the damage they did to Flint resident tone deaf to say the least and disgusting to be honest about it,” Ananich says....

It is never too late to uphold the dignity of life.

October 17, 2019

Hamburg, Germany — Bruno Dey was 17 years old when he joined the unit Death's Head unit of Adolf Hitler's SS, the division tasked with running Nazi death camps. On Thursday, now 93, Dey faced the first day of his trial on charges of being an accessory to more than 5,000 murders. It could be the last trial of its kind in Germany, as Dey is one of the few Nazi suspects still alive who could be charged over their actions during the Holocaust....

...Judy Meisel (click here) is one of the 20 co-plaintiffs in the case against Dey. She witnessed the atrocities carried out by the Germans in Stutthof. Together with her mother and her sister Rachel, she was sent to the concentration camp from her native Lithuania in 1941 after Hitler's forces invaded.

"Her mother was murdered in the gas chamber," Meisel's grandson Benjamin Cohen told CBS News on Thursday after watching the trial begin. "They were tortured, her hair was ripped out by two SS men when they arrived at the camp. It was total brutality."

Meisel is now an American citizen and lives in Minnesota. She couldn't travel to Germany for the trial for health reasons.

She and her sister both managed to escape from Stutthof. Her grandson has vowed to tell her story, and he hopes to hear Bruno Dey's side of the story, too, to get an answer to the question his grandmother has longed for.

"How could they do this? How could someone be a part of that?" he said. "Her lesson is the power of the human spirit, to come out of it not hateful and not looking for revenge."...                 
October 13, 2019

Washington - US Defense Secretary Mark Esper (click here) said Sunday the Pentagon would cooperate with the congressional impeachment inquiry -- in an apparent break with President Donald Trump's policy to thwart the probe.''

Esper said his department would try to comply with a subpoena from House Democrats seeking records relating to the withholding of US military aid to Ukraine.

"We will do everything we can to cooperate with the Congress," Esper said on CBS's "Face The Nation."

His reassurance came days after the White House announced it would not cooperate with the Democratic-led House of Representatives, calling its impeachment push illegitimate and unconstitutional....

This is reported in RT.

The "pause" isn't about the Kurds or anyone else, it is an excuse to remove sanctions from Turkey. The agreement was most likely engineered by Putin. This is how communist countries take care of each other, they propagandize policy and pretend it is all going to be okay.

17 October 2019
...According to a text of the agreement, (click here) Ankara promised that the military operation, dubbed ‘Peace Spring’, will be "halted upon completion of this withdrawal."  The "safe zone" in question, the text says, "will be primarily enforced by the Turkish Armed Forces."
During the 120-hour period no further sanctions - triggered by the Turkish incursion - will be imposed on Ankara. When the ceasefire becomes a “permanent” one, Washington will cancel the executive restrictions against Turkey, Pence explained.
The US President Donald Trump, for his part, stated that the sanctions were no longer necessary after the deal had been agreed upon. Hailing the "amazing" outcome of the negotiations,Trump also said that it required a “tough love" to get the deal done....

The BBC

Yep, everyone is blowing smoke up Putin's skirt. 

17 October 2019
By Steven Rosenberg

These aircraft blazed a trail in the colours of the Russian flag during Mr Putin's visit to Abu Dhabi on 15 October

...In the Middle East, (click here) the transformation is stark. Four years after Moscow launched its military operation in Syria, Russia is replacing America as the key player and power broker in the region.

In the space of just a few days, Vladimir Putin has spoken by phone to the Turkish president and invited him to Moscow; he had a phone call with the Israeli prime minister where they discussed "security issues"; he visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

This is how popular Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets views the change:

"The current situation in the Middle East would have been unthinkable in the days of Henry Kissinger and his idea of 'global geopolitical chess'. The oversized giant by the name of America lost its way in broad daylight… while Russian diplomacy is ahead of the game.

"Russia plays the role of the universal mediator and political broker, and none of the regional powers can ignore it."...


This is what Vladimir Putin has accomplished in Syria and for this he gets fanfare? He is responsible for innumerable deaths in the Middle East, increased aggression by Turkey and continued the war at the eastern border of Ukraine. I hardly call him a peacemaker. Trump is his puppet in hopes of winning another term in office.

..The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), (click here) a monitoring group based in the UK, estimated the death toll since the start of the war to be as high as 511,000 as of March 2018. Years of relentless fighting left 6.6 million displaced internally and 5.6 million around the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)....

...Indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects by the Syrian-Russian military alliance persisted in 2018. In February, government forces launched a military campaign to retake Eastern Ghouta, an urban suburb of Damascus. Over 1,600 civilians were reportedly killed between February 18 until March 21. The Syrian-Russian military alliance struck at least 25 medical facilities, 11 schools, and countless civilian residences.

Similarly, on June 16, the alliance led an offensive in Daraa and Quneitra governorates, southwest of Syria, triggering massive displacement towards Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Parties to the conflict continued to use unlawful weapons. The Syrian-Russian military alliance used internationally banned cluster munitions and chemical weapons in re-taking areas. Human Rights Watch investigated 36 cluster munition attacks between July 2017 and June 2018 and another two-dozen more possible cluster munition attacks. Evidence suggests the alliance used incendiary weapons in Ghouta and Daraa....