The writer is a professor at and past president of Harvard University. He was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Obama from 2009 through 2010.
It is clear after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries that electorates are revolting against the relatively open economic policies that have been the norm in the United States and Britain since World War II. If further evidence is needed, one need only look to the inability of Congress to pass legislation on immigration reform and the observation that the last four candidates left standing in the U.S. presidential contest all oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Populist opposition to international integration is also on the rise in much of continental Europe and has always been the norm in much of Latin America.
The question now is: What should be the guiding principles of international economic policy? How should the case be made by those of us who believe that the vastly better performance of the global system after World War II than between World War I and World War II was largely due to more enlightened economic policies?
Dallas’s police chief revealed chilling new details Monday about the bloody showdown with cop-killer Micah Johnson, describing how the city’s streets were turned into a war zone as officers hunted down the madman.
Chief David Brown said 11 officers engaged in a gun battle with the rifle-toting Johnson as protesters and passers-by fled for their lives. Two other officers used explosive devices to try to bring him down, Brown said.
The killer, who fatally shot five cops and wounded seven more officers and two civilians, was eventually blown up by two officers operating a remote-controlled device in a building on the campus of El Centro College, Brown said.
“I just said, ‘Don’t bring the whole building down. You know what I want,’” Brown recalled telling the bomb squad officers.
“They improvised this whole idea in 15 to 20 minutes. It was extraordinary.”
file photo by Boyd Loving Some law enforcement officials say president has helped sow distrust between police and minorities
By
FELICIA SCHWARTZ,
BYRON TAU and
ZUSHA ELINSON
July 10, 2016 8:04 p.m. ET
As President Barack Obama prepares to head to Dallas on Tuesday after the deadly shooting of five policemen, he faces criticism from some law enforcement officials that he has helped inflame tensions between police and minority communities.
The White House said Sunday Mr. Obama would speak in Dallas, at the invitation of the mayor, at an interfaith memorial service to commemorate the attack’s victims.
The president has tried to walk a fine line between acknowledging the grievances of activists protesting police shootings of black suspects, and trying to cool some of the anger directed at police officers. Now he also faces complaints that he is partly to blame for creating a culture that some police say demonizes officers.
“The man responsible for the murders [in Dallas] was Micah Johnson, but having said that, I do think the president by his inaction has contributed to a climate where these things can happen,” William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, which represents about 240,000 law enforcement officers, said Sunday. “This president and his administration absolutely do not have our back and make our jobs more dangerous.”
Earlier last week, Mr. Obama said that complaints by activists and minority-community members about police violence had a legitimate basis. Mr. Obama said the recent police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota should trouble all Americans “because these are not isolated incidents.”
DALLAS, July 10 (Reuters) – The U.S. military veteran who fatally shot five Dallas police officers was plotting a larger assault, possibly using explosives, and he taunted police and wrote on a wall in his own blood before being killed, authorities said on Sunday.
Instead, Micah X. Johnson improvised and used his military training to gun down officers during a demonstration on Thursday evening, Dallas Police Chief David Brown told CNN. It was the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans,” said Brown, adding that the recent deaths of two black men at the hands of police in Minnesota and Louisiana led the Texas shooter to “fast-track” his plans and launch his attack.
DALLAS (AP) — Police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota were followed by calls from black militant groups and others to seek vengeance against officers. Almost immediately, several officers were attacked, including the five slain by a sniper in Dallas.
Now authorities are investigating whether the Dallas gunman was directed by those groups or merely emboldened by them.
“I think it’s safe to say we’ll leave no stone unturned,” Dallas Deputy Police Chief Scott Walton said.
Police have been tight-lipped about exactly what they’re investigating and what they’ve uncovered so far. Although Micah Johnson was connected to several militant groups on social media, it’s unclear if he was merely a follower or a more active participant.
Similar questions have been raised by international terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State group: How is the network encouraging and directing attacks? Is it a coordinated effort or are the attacks simply a byproduct of hate speech espoused by the groups on social media?
The number of black separatist groups nearly doubled in 2015, mirroring a similar increase among white hate groups that has taken place as police killings make frequent headlines, said Ryan Lenz, online editor and senior writer at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Still, many people who become radicalized do so without direct ties to any groups. Instead, they surf the web and grow their anger in private, Lenz said.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve seen this violence become an ever-present reality in our lives,” Lenz said. “We are in a polarized political climate right now where the ‘us-versus-them’ mentality has started to reign supreme.”
Johnson followed black militant groups on Facebook, including the African American Defense League, which posted a message that referenced the police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana: “You and I know what we must do and I don’t mean marching, making a lot of noise, or attending conventions. We must ‘Rally The Troops!’ It is time to visit Louisiana and hold a barbeque.”
Other groups Johnson “liked” included the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam and the Black Riders Liberation Party. The last two are described as hate groups by the law center, which monitors hate crimes and right-wing extremism.
Johnson’s Facebook photo showed him wearing a dashiki and raising his fist over the words “Black Power.” His cover shot carried the red, black and green Pan-African flag.
There’s no evidence such groups have directed violent events, but their rhetoric has served as inspiration, Lenz said.
Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are on guard for threats after the police killings and the Dallas attack. Protesters view the police slayings as further evidence of the law enforcement abuse that has energized the Black Lives Matter movement, which was fueled by the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
In countries key to the president’s legacy, people express profound disappointment in a man from whom they expected great things.
By NAHAL TOOSI
Back in 2008, the same qualities in the 47-year-old senator from Illinois that excited U.S. voters enthralled people around the globe. He was a fresh face and a compelling orator. He had spent his childhood in the Asia-Pacific, and his skin color alone made billions of people feel a connection with him. Perhaps most importantly, he was not George W. Bush, the president who invaded Iraq. Obama promised “hope” and “change” and people believed he could deliver—that he would end wars in Muslim countries, improve America’s standing on human rights, even alleviate global poverty. “Yes we can!” shouted The Age, an Australian newspaper, when he won office. Just months later, the rookie president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a nod more to his promise than to anything he had accomplished.
Obama’s overseas poll numbers were stratospheric in those early days. In countries like France and Germany, more than 90 percent of people surveyed by the Pew Research Center expressed confidence that Obama would “do the right thing regarding world affairs.” Even in some Middle Eastern countries, where U.S. presidents are rarely liked, nearly half of the populace had high expectations for Obama.
Deep-seated sympathetic leanings towards people and places outside the U.S. can compromise a man’s judgment and make complicated for him decisions and issues that are a snap to resolve for one whose love for and fidelity to this country is undiluted. One or both parents of foreign citizenship as of the moment of one’s birth (e.g. Ted Cruz (Cuban father), Barack Obama (Kenyan father), Nicky Hailey (Indian (i.e., the subcontinent) parents), Marco Rubio (Cuban parents), Bobby Jindal (Indian (again, the subcontinent) parents)), or birthplace OUTSIDE every U.S. state at a place where NEITHER of one’s parents is (a) the ambassador or equivalent top diplomat or (b) a member of HOSTILE occupying army (e.g., Ted Cruz (born in Canada), John McCain (born in Colon, Panama), George Romney (born in Mexico City), Barry Goldwater (born in Arizona before its statehood), are primary sources of such conflicted feelings. This is why the U.S. Constitution requires that the office of President of the United States not be occupied by, nor devolve upon, anyone but a natural-born citizen. We simply can’t afford divided loyalties in our primary governmental leader.
She put your secrets and security at risk too. Doesn’t that upset anybody? Your foreign intelligence services are less effective now because other countries know specifics about what the State Department was and will be doing – because Hillary Clinton (for whatever reason) put her email (Our email really) out in the open.
The fact that she had her own email infrastructure is irrelevant. She could have easily secured it, and easily archived it, but chose not to..that’s the proof of her intent.
Regarding the latest slate of devastating law enforcement events…
Let me start off by saying whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa. Hold up, folks. Take a deep breath and count to ten, like kids are taught to do. If you’re “feeling the heat”, then stick your head in a deep freezer until you cool off. Put your thinking caps on for a little while, and get ready to hear some calm, cool, and collected adult rational reflection right now, because I sure as heck am seeing intellect rarely employed today. By those of you who are speaking with maturity, thank you for furthering the conversation; for those of you flustering and blustering, have a seat and take a chill pill because you aren’t furthering the conversation…in fact, you’re emulating the murderous villains you’re against. Do I have your attention yet? I hope so.
Time for some civilized discussion. We are, after all, the most advanced and educated civilization on the planet today, correct? Right then…
1. I, as one person, do not speak for you. You, as one person, do not speak for me. A handful of murdering individuals do not speak for 320 million Americans. Logical consistency.
2. We all connect with the victims of these horrific acts, because these acts can happen to us and/or our loved ones anywhere at any moment. We also connect with the victims’ loved ones and friends, because we have all felt the loss of losing someone, expectedly or unexpectedly, no matter how prepared we think we are.
3. Emotions generally do not, and should not, govern policy, whether it is your individual policies toward the world or the federal government’s policies toward we the citizens. Why? Emotion overrides everything. Emotion blinds. Emotion is the lower order. Emotion is animalistic. Emotion is fickle. Remember, we all want cooler heads to prevail.
4. For these events’ perpetrators, the emotion of anger led to the irrationality of hate. Nearly all the posts I’ve viewed from my family and friends today have been deeply emotional negatively. Anger can easily gain control and override your system. Your anger, expressed via vitriol, more widely opens the door to hate. And we all know the slew of evil things hate leads to.
5. Your Facebook page is yours. Do with it as you see fit. Your FB autonomy is absolute. But when you un-friend people, shut-down dialogue, and attempt to shame disagreers, you place yourself in a mental bubble. Guess who else placed such self-imposition on themselves? Yeah, the horrible killers you rage against. They ignored everyone else, and followed an ignorant path that progressively led to such radicalization that they couldn’t contain such extremes anymore, so they took the lid off their pressure cookers by implementing death and destruction.
6. I know each and every one of you. Aside from familial obligation–which is a non-sequitur for me anyway, lol–I admire and respect each and every one of you, because you all enrich the tapestry of my own life with your own priceless uniqueness, in all your strengths and weaknesses. For you to close yourself off from the world–which includes me–in such a way, you only create and/or exacerbate impoverishment in our lives, decreasing the vividness and vitality of our tapestries. Why would you do that to anyone who does not deserve such treatment?
7. Disagreement is not a bad thing. Rational, substantive, civil discussion leads to self-fulfillment and fulfillment for others. Even if one does not come out on top in a debate, one is still strengthened by the experience through self-permission. Why? You do not have all the answers. No one, in and of himself, has all the answers. Together, we find more answers. We gain perspective. We solidify our principles and acquire new ones. We learn how to overcome our weaknesses and build our strengths.
8. Success is a journey. It is a process. It is in the pursuit that we find our life’s happiness and joys. You don’t find success in pumping out a kid or two, you find success and happiness in the pursuit of raising those children into mature and independent adults. Same idea when it comes to dealing with current events: what were the strengths and weaknesses that we need to build upon and overcome, respectively? You can’t do that through shunning the world and shirking your responsibilities as a productive member of a democratic society. That’s what the killers did. ….And how’d that turn out?
9. There is one universal answer that, ironically, eventually solves all of life’s problems. The one exception to the general rule. Results are not necessarily immediate, though some results are immediate. Results may vary in degree, but they all fall into the improvement category. The momentum itself carries you forward more easily with time. Progress is a guarantee. Self-barricading is incompatible. You ready? Love. Love as a noun. Love as a verb. Love is universal because it is the only emotion–from which all other positive ones flow forth, including sadness (for from whence does sadness derive but joy and happiness fulfilled through love)–that spurs the intellect, and therefore civilization, on to betterment. Love of knowledge, love of intangible wealth.
10. Think about it. The most powerful statement of all time, in all of human history: “For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall NOT perish, but have everlasting LIFE.” Whether you are a Christian or not, religious or not, that is the most influential declarative statement of all time. It has determined the course of history like no other sentence ever has. And it’s based on Love. Love. Love manifested. Love manifested to overcome. Love manifested to overcome Hate. Love is found in every Faith. Love is found in every one of us. Love is in our hearts. Love is also in our minds and the energy that composes our souls. It is the impetus from which all intellect foundates.
Keep the faith. We all do it together, and our descendants can only….love us.
The Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings have caused an uproar among leftists because they fuel their narrative that racist white police officers are hunting down innocent black men. But the statistics – brought to light by the superb work of Heather MacDonald – tell a different story.
Here are five key statistics you need to know about cops killing blacks.
1. Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or “were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force,” according to MacDonald in a speech at Hillsdale College.https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler
2. More whites and Hispanics die from police homicides than blacks. According to MacDonald, 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only four percent of black homicide deaths were the result of police officers.https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler
3. The Post’s data does show that unarmed black men are more likely to die by the gun of a cop than an unarmed white man…but this does not tell the whole story. In August 2015, the ratio was seven-to-one of unarmed black men dying from police gunshots compared to unarmed white men; the ratio was six-to-one by the end of 2015. But MacDonald points out in The Marshall Project that looking at the details of the actual incidents that occurred paints a different picture:https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler
4. Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to fire a gun at blacks than white officers. This is according to a Department of Justice report in 2015 about the Philadelphia Police Department, and is further confirmed that by a study conducted University of Pennsylvania criminologist Gary Ridgeway in 2015 that determined black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun than other cops at a crime scene.https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler
5. Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to MacDonald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person. https://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandler
Five officers were killed and more wounded amid protests on Thursday A large crowd of protesters moved to parking lot outside 7-Eleven Large police presence was at the scene in response to reports of looting Several men outside the store were filmed making gestures and dancing
By KHALEDA RAHMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 15:41 EST, 8 July 2016 | UPDATED: 15:53 EST, 8 July 2016
A video filmed in the aftermath of a deadly attack on police officers in Dallas appears to show protesters dancing in a parking lot.
Five officers died and several more were wounded when gunfire erupted at a Black Lives Matter protest on Thursday night.
Hundreds of people packed into a 7-Eleven parking lot at Griffin and San Jacinto streets as police pushed the crowd away from the chaos of the crime scene, WFAA reports.
file photo by Boyd Loving
POSTED 4:22 PM, JULY 8, 2016, BY ASSOCIATED PRESS, UPDATED AT 05:44PM, JULY 8, 2016
Police say officers have been targeted in Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri in the aftermath of two high-profile killings of black men by law enforcement.
The attack in Tennessee occurred hours before the killing of five police officers in Dallas on Thursday night during a protest. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says the attacker told authorities that he was frustrated by the recent killings by police of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Police have not disclosed a motive in Friday’s attacks in Georgia and Missouri, which have been described as ambushes.
In a fourth attack early Friday, a motorist fired at a police car as the officer drove by. In all, four officers were wounded. The officer wounded outside St. Louis is in critical but stable condition. The wounded officers are expected to survive.
Houston, Texas (CBS HOUSTON) — A U.S. Border Patrol agent says that the federal government is “completing the smuggling cycle” by bringing unaccompanied minors into the country “for free.”
Speaking with Fox News on Thursday, Border Patrol agent Hector Garza said that the U.S. government’s complicity with allowing tens of thousands of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children into the country is finishing the smuggling process for criminal enterprises bringing the children up from Central America and Mexico.
Newly unearthed photos of President Obama in Muslim garb underscore his deep ties to the faith — and possibly help explain his reluctance to call out radical Islam, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said Wednesday.
The photos, aired on “The O’Reilly Factor,” were taken at the wedding of Obama’s half-brother, Malik Obama, in Maryland sometime in the early 1990s, O’Reilly said. They were not offered as evidence that Obama is Muslim, as some of his critics insist, but to show his “deep emotional ties” to the religion of his father and stepfather, O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly said the photos, taken in the 1990s, underscore Obama’s deep ties to Islam. (Fox News Channel)
“There is no question the Obama administration’s greatest failure is allowing the Islamic terror group ISIS to run wild, murdering thousands of innocent people all over the world, including many Muslims,” said O’Reilly. “Mr. Obama has never, never acknowledged that mistake, nor does he define the ISIS threat accurately.
It is the the deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001, NBC News reports
By NBC 5 Staff
Five officers are dead — four Dallas police officers and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer — after two snipers ambushed and opened fire on police at the end of a peaceful protest against nationwide officer-involved shootings Thursday night, officials say.
“This is a terrible blow to the city of Dallas. This is a terrible blow to the United States of America,” Rawlings said on the NBC’s “Today” show.
Rawlings said the suspect involved in an overnight standoff with police died after officers used explosives to “blast him out.”
Rawlings said he was not sure how the suspect died or what weapons were found on him. He said police have swept the area where the standoff took place and found no explosives.
