Spiritual Education in USA: 07/28/17

Friday, July 28, 2017

Pakistan's Prime Minister Has Resigned After Supreme Court's Panama Papers Verdict

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has resigned after a unanimous and historic ruling by the country's Supreme Court, which disqualified him from holding public office.

This verdict was a result of a deep investigation of the Panama Papers case, in which the Sharif and his family were accused of corruption and not being able to substantiate their massive wealth with the appropriate documents."He is no more eligible to be an honest member of the parliament, and he ceases to be holding the office of prime minister," Judge Ejaz Afzal Khan, head of the implementation bench, said in the court about Sharif.The highly-anticipated verdict marks Sharif's third incomplete term. No prime minister in Pakistan has ever completed a full five-year term since the country's inception 70 years ago.The Sharif family was found living beyond their means and asked by the court to submit a paper trail of their spending, including their real estate property in London. Their lawyers failed to provide convincing documentation, and were also accused of submitting forged documents.

Another member of the Sharif family implicated in the case is Maryam Safdar Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister's daughter, who has been very vocal in the family's defense.

View image on Twitter — Others include her husband Captain Muhammad Safdar, and the prime minister's sons Hassan and Hussain Nawaz.

Pakistan's Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was also disqualified shortly after the verdict on Sharif.

Dar had submitted documents supporting the Sharifs to the court, to prove they had obtained their assets fairly.

Ex-cricketer and the leader of the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan was responsible for bringing Sharif and his family's links to offshore accounts and companies to the court's attention.

The allegations were originally made in April last year by Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.Sharif was among several leaders around the world identified by the law firm of involvement in corrupt off-shore activities.

7 Out Of The 10 Most Viral Articles About Angela Merkel On Facebook Are False

The most popular fake news post about the German chancellor leads to a Catholic version of YouTube that's apparently run by people in Moscow using servers in Moldova. Yes, seriously.

There have been hundreds of articles and videos published about the Angela Merkel, but no German-language post has attracted more shares, comments, and reactions on Facebook in the last five years than a video from Gloria.tv headlined, "Angela Merkel: Germans have to accept foreigners' violence."

With about 273,000 Facebook reactions, comments, and shares, it's by far the most successful German post about Merkel on Facebook. It's also false.

In fact, a BuzzFeed News analysis found that 7 of the 10 top-performing German posts about Angela Merkel on Facebook the last five years are false.

Using BuzzSumo, BuzzFeed News identified the articles about Angela Merkel published in the the last five years that generated the highest total number of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. Of the top 10, seven were false or a hoax, and the remaining three were either true or based on an opinion. All 10 were slanted against Merkel.

The analysis found that false stories and fake news about Merkel spread widely on Facebook, especially when linked with the topic of refugees. These stories come from far right websites and other non-traditional media, and outperform traditional media coverage of the chancellor. One reason this content spreads so widely is that it's shared by a variety right-wing Facebook pages and groups.

This finding is similar to a previous BuzzFeed News analysis of German and English-language content about Merkel that looked at the top-performing content in 2016.

The analysis also shows that German websites are not the only ones getting in on the action. One of the most successful posts is based on a video by far-right Canadian media outlet The Rebel.

Although Ezra Levant of The Rebel is highly critical of Merkel in the video, he does not label her “insane” — the German version simply added that to the headline.

The list of top-performing content also includes supposedly satirical articles that fooled people. One claimed that "Angela Merkel was run over in a traffic accident," and was published by a "website for funny pictures," debeste.de. That site is registered to an address in Poland.

German website Eine-Zeitung.net also published the article "Merkel wants to give all refugees the right to vote as soon as possible", which earned the second-most engagements on Facebook. But, aside from the words "In Satira Veritas" ("Truth In Satire") in the logo, there is no indication the post is satirical. Many readers thought the satirical articles were real and scolded Merkel and the lying press in the comments.

The top post about Merkel, from Gloria.tv, is a 7-second video clip in which the chancellor only says one sentence.

Since its publication in January 2015, the clip has generated 639,400 clicks, according to a traffic counter on the page. The video title says, "Angela Merkel: Germans have to accept foreigners' violence."

But does Angela Merkel actually promote acceptance of foreigners' violence like it says in the headline? No. The sentence in the video is taken out of context and the headline turns her real statement into the opposite of what it meant.

What she actually says is "...but we have to accept that the number of crimes is particularly high among young immigrants."

The clip is taken from a 2011 video, according to German fact-checking website Mimikama.

Here is Angela Merkel's full statement:"The thing here is to ensure security on the ground and to eradicate the causes of violence in the society at the same time. This applies to all parts of the society, but we have to accept that the number of crimes is particularly high among young immigrants. Therefore, the theme of integration is connected with the issue of violence prevention in all parts of our society."Merkel doesn't mean that Germans have to accept the fact that there's more violence among young immigrants. Instead, she says that the high number of crimes needs to be recognized and not ignored. By being shortened and headlined as, "Germans must accept the violence of foreigners," the meaning was warped.

Gloria.tv's slogan is, "the more Catholic the better." It's a platform similar to YouTube where users can upload videos.

In 2013, news site Die Zeit called Gloria.tv aggressive and right-wing after it showed German liberal priests, who supported the morning-after pill, with swastikas. The website itself was founded by Roman Catholic priest Reto Nay from Switzerland. However, since 2014 his name is no longer associated with the website. It's not clear who runs it now, but the Gloria.tv servers are registered in Moldova, and have a contact address in Moscow.

This is the building where the contact for the website is supposed to be based. There is no email address or telephone number. BuzzFeed News mailed a letter containing questions for Gloria.tv to its address in Moscow, but has not received a response.

BuzzFeed News contacted the user account, Tina 13, that uploaded the viral video on Gloria.tv. The person who replied denied they are the creator of the video.

A few minutes after our exchange, Tina 13 deleted the video from their, but it can still be found here. It's unlikely that Gloria.tv user "Tina 13" is the person who made the original shortened Merkel video. The YouTube version of the video dates back to 2014. However, the YouTube version only has about 50,000 Facebook interactions, which is much fewer than the Gloria.tv one.

How BuzzFeed collected the data:

BuzzFeed used the content analysis tool BuzzSumo. This tool allows you to search by keywords, URLs, and time periods and to sort the results according to the number of interactions in social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

BuzzFeed News searched in BuzzSumo for all articles in German which have the keywords "Angela Merkel", "Merkel", "Chancellor of Germany" or "Chancellor" in the title. It is therefore possible that either us or BuzzSumo missed articles about Angela Merkel. If that's the case, we would appreciate any feedback on what we missed.

BuzzSumo only allows for the last five years to be searched. We collected our data between July 17th, 2017 and July 25th, 2017.

At this point, it is important to emphasize once again that Facebook interactions do not translate automatically into website traffic. This analysis focused on the most successful individual articles about Angela Merkel. This does not mean that alternative media generate more overall traffic than the websites of traditional German media.

Congress Just Almost Unanimously Called Trump's Bluff On Russia Sanctions

The limits to Trump's ability to roll back sanctions on Moscow come as part of a package along with economic penalties against North Korea and Iran. It's still unclear whether or not the White House will sign the bill.

The Senate on Thursday took time out from debating health care to pass a bill to keep current sanctions on Russia in place until Congress says otherwise, setting up a potential clash with the White House.

Despite weeks of vacillating from the president's spokespeople over whether President Donald Trump would sign the bill, it passed easily by a margin of 98-2. Only Sens. Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul opposed the measure.

Along with hardening sanctions already in place against Moscow, stripping Trump of his ability to lift them without congressional approval, the bill adds new economic penalties against Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The House of Representatives voted 419-3 to enact the sanctions package on Tuesday, giving it a veto-proof majority moving forward. Two-thirds of both the House and Senate are required to overturn a presidential veto.

The White House did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment on whether the president will sign the bill or force Congress to vote to override a veto. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said following the House vote Tuesday that Trump had been “very vocal about his support for continuing sanctions on those three countries” but would wait to see what the final legislation looked like.

Sen. Bob Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters after the vote that he had spoken to both Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over the last week and had received "no indication whatsoever that they plan to consider a veto."

“When you have this kind of overwhelming vote, you know... I can’t speak for them, but if I were advising them, to even consider vetoing something with this support is not probably in anybody’s interest. ... They can count. They understand the math," he added.

Senators from both sides of the aisle spent the short window of time debating the bill on the floor Thursday night not so much trying to convince their counterparts, but praising each other for its bipartisan nature.

Sanders, one of just two no votes, said on Twitter following the vote that while he supported the sanctions on Russia and North Korea, he opposed the bill because he "worr[ies] very much about President Trump’s approach to Iran."

Russia, on the other hand, has said that the legislation further threatens relations between Moscow and Washington, which have been icy for the last several years. The current sanctions were put into place by the Obama administration in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2015, its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine, and its interference in the 2016 US election.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, praised the near-unanimous vote on Thursday.

“This bill passed with overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House, sending a strong message to Vladimir Putin that attacks on our democracy will not be tolerated," Warner said in a statement. “President Trump should sign this bill as soon as it hits his desk. Otherwise, he risks encouraging Russia’s interference in future elections.”

Asked whether signing the bill would indicate that Trump believes Russia interfered in the 2016 election, something he has been reticent to say, Corker said likely not. But, he added: "I think the lack of strong statements in that regard probably affected the outcome on this piece of legislation.”

ACIM Free Audiobook Insights Trailer, David Hoffmeister A Course in Miracles

This continues to be an amazing gift for my mind—the text and lessons read by David Hoffmeister—the clear and beautifully aligned teacher of ACIM, along with his insights on the lessons. The lessons of the course are a knock out blow to the ego, and truly practiced as Jesus asks will help you awaken, however the resistance is what makes the process of awakening seem difficult. David gives his practical experience that helps gently let go of the resistance and help align with what the Course teaches. If you have never done the lessons or have done them numerous times, I invite you to do a lesson a day with david for a few days and feel for yourself the beautiful impact it has for your mind.