This Masquerade - George Benson (1976)

This Masquerade - George Benson (1976) - YouTube

August 03, 2014

This Masquerade - George Benson (1976) - YouTube
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:30 AM

Uploaded on May 30, 2010

"This Masquerade" is a song written by Leon Russell. The song first appeared on the B-side of the single for Russell's 1972 hit "Tight Rope". The song has also been recorded by many other artists, such as Helen Reddy, The Carpenters, Shirley Bassey, Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77, No Mercy, Robert Goulet, and Kenny Rogers. Possibly the most notable version of the song was a top-ten pop and R&B hit for jazz guitarist/vocalist George Benson, who recorded it on his 1976 signature album "Breezin'". He had used his vocals infrequently on songs earlier in his career, notably his rendition of "Here Comes The Sun" on the "Other Side Of Abbey Road" album. Benson's recording of "This Masquerade" reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the Hot Soul Singles chart. Benson also won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year with his version of the song. This channel is dedicated to the classic jazz music you've loved for years. The smokin' hot, icy cool jams that still make you tap your feet whenever you hear them . . . Cool Jazz is here!

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Лондон направит для эвакуации из Триполи корабль с пехотинцами - YouTube
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:28 AM

Published on Aug 3, 2014

Пожарные не могут совладать с огнём на нефтехранилище в ливийском Триполи. Оно расположено близ аэропорта, за который не прекращаются бои. В результате столкновений противоборствующих группировок в Триполи и Бенгази погибли уже свыше 200 человек, почти тысяча ранены.

Другие страны в срочном порядке эвакуируют своих граждан. В субботу в афинский порт прибыл фрегат «Саламис». На его борту — десятки греков, китайцев, британцев и бельгийцев. Сообщается также об одном гражданине России.

«Там дейст…
ЧИТАТЬ ДАЛЕЕ: http://ru.euronews.com/2014/08/02/new...

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NFL Hall of Fame Welcomes Class of 2014 - YouTube
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:21 AM

Published on Aug 3, 2014

The National Football League Hall of Fame welcomes seven new members in the class of 2014. (Aug. 3)

ПУТИН В ШОКЕ сегодня 2014! Западные СМИ уже ЗНАЮТ Кого обвинять в КРУШЕНИИ ЛАЙНЕРА
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:18 AM

Это стоит Увидеть!! ШОКирующие Кадры и не только ! БУДЬТЕ ПРОСТО В КУРСЕ СОБЫТИЙ!
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К гей-параду в Стокгольме присоединились шведский премьер и Кончита Вурст - YouTube
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:16 AM

Published on Aug 3, 2014

В Стокгольме прошёл 17-й ежегодный гей-парад — крупнейший за всю историю шведской столицы. К тысячам танцующих представителей ЛГБТ-сообщества впервые присоединился премьер-министр страны Фредрик Райнфельдт. Участвовала в параде и победительница «Евровидения-2014» Кончита Вурст.…
ЧИТАТЬ ДАЛЕЕ: http://ru.euronews.com/2014/08/03/swe...

How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:09 AM

Joao Rodrigues had been listening and holding his tongue. For a day and a half, brand managers, ad agency creative types and Facebook strategists had gathered in airy conference rooms and around cafeteria tables in Facebook’s Madison Avenue offices, filling up whiteboards and scratch pads with one heartfelt or clever tagline after another.

The idea was to come up with a big, sweeping campaign to market MegaRed, a premium alternative to fish oil pills, to users of the social network. Each ad had to be so compelling that it would get people to stop scrolling through their news feeds — what Facebook calls a thumbstopper.

But from where Mr. Rodrigues sat, as the guy who would write the checks for the proposed campaign, the Facebook people seemed to be missing an essential point.

The advantage of advertising on the world’s largest social network was that it could do something television ads could not: Using sophisticated analytics, it could help him find people who were already buying fish oil or other products that suggested they were concerned about the health of their hearts, and perhaps persuade them to switch to his brand.

At the meeting, which Facebook calls a publishing garage, the company’s ad strategists were saying they wanted him to spend money to show ads to every American woman 45 and older on Facebook — as many as 32 million people.

Finally, with some exasperation, Mr. Rodrigues — the marketing director for vitamins, minerals and supplements at Reckitt Benckiser, the company that owns MegaRed — blurted out what he’d been thinking. For that kind of broad blitz, he said, “I can go to television at a quarter the price.”

Ever since it began selling ads 10 years ago, Facebook has been combating doubts about its value to marketers. Search engines like Google offer advertisers a direct link to people seeking out particular products, while television remains the dominant way to reach a mass audience. Now, Facebook claims, it can provide the best of both.

With its trove of knowledge about the likes, histories and social connections of its 1.3 billion users worldwide, Facebook executives argue, it can help advertisers reach exactly the right audience and measure the impact of their ads — while also, like TV, conveying a broad brand message. Facebook, which made $1.5 billion in profit on $7.9 billion in revenue last year, sees particular value in promoting its TV-like qualities, given that advertisers spend $200 billion a year on that medium.

“We want to hold ourselves accountable for delivering results,” said Caroline Everson, Facebook’s vice president for global marketing solutions, in a recent interview. “Not smoke and mirrors, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.”

John Swift, who heads North American media buying for Omnicom Media Group, one of the world’s largest purchasers of advertising, said that Facebook won’t replace TV anytime soon, but it offers a flexible canvas to reach consumers. “You’re not going to Facebook to watch a show,” he said. “But Facebook offers the unique combination that you don’t really see in a lot of digital platforms of amazing scale as well as a very personal engagement opportunity.”

Both Facebook and marketers have strong reason to explore its potential.

Consumer brands, from the beer giant Budweiser to start-ups like the clothier Trunk Club, want to reach people where they are spending their time. More and more, that place is Facebook. In June, the social network accounted for about one of every six minutes that Americans spent online, and one of every five minutes on mobile phones, according to comScore, a research company. Mothers, the typical household’s chief buyer of consumer products, are among the most dedicated users, spending nearly four times as many minutes on Facebook as other people.

Marketers are starting to become believers in the value of Facebook, shifting more of their budgets to the service from other media channels, especially print and direct mail. The company just reportedunexpectedly strong growth in revenue and profits for the second quarter, prompting investors to send its stock to record highs.

Still, Facebook has changed its pitch and the products it offers advertisers so often that many marketing executives are wary. A few years ago, the company was telling brands to increase the number of people following their pages. Now it says fans are largely irrelevant. Until late last year, it was promoting the power of ads in which people’s likes and comments about a brand were turned into endorsements sent to their friends. After legions of user complaints — and a class-action lawsuit — Facebook switched gears again. Now it boasts about its ability to pinpoint potential customers on their cellphones and <a href="http://Facebook.com" rel="nofollow">Facebook.com</a> based on its data about them. The company’s newest offering uses those profiles to serve targeted ads inside other companies’ mobile apps. Facebook is also pushing new video ads that would compete with TV for marketing big events, like movie openings.

Given the social network’s constantly changing messages, it was no wonder Mr. Rodrigues was annoyed. He had come to Facebook for its promise of precise ad targeting.

“We go against fish oil users,” he declared at the brainstorming meeting, meaning he wanted the ads to appear on the news feeds of those users. “We go against people who have heart concerns.” Several other R.B. managers chimed in their support.

Brett Prescott, the Facebook advertising strategist leading the two-day session, was used to this kind of reaction and came back with a well-honed response. Yes, Facebook looked more expensive than TV. But advertising on Facebook was like firing a shotgun. “And you are firing that buckshot knowing where every splinter of that bullet is landing,” he said.

Laurent Faracci, R.B.’s chief marketing officer for the United States and Mr. Rodrigues’s boss, was also at the publishing garage. He was willing to give Mr. Prescott’s approach a chance.

Making a Thumbstopper

Unlike some products that have hit it big on Facebook, such as Oreo cookies and the Wendy’s pretzel bacon cheeseburger, MegaRed krill oil isn’t an easy product to “like” or even understand, which makes selling it all the more difficult.

MegaRed is essentially a premium variation of fish oil — a nutritional supplement purchased by roughly one in six American households and swallowed in the belief that it will lead to a healthier heart. “Taking fish oil is not a pleasant experience,” Mr. Faracci said. “It’s a huge pill and a fishy aftertaste. As soon as you take it, there’s a burp back.”

MegaRed’s capsule is smaller, and the company claims its oil is more quickly absorbed by the body. It also comes from Antarctic krill, a tiny crustacean, instead of from larger fish that can accumulate toxins in their bodies.

But the pills are expensive, costing about $57 for a year’s supply, more than double the $25 price of generic fish oil. Big retailers like Walgreen and Costco have also come out with their own brands of krill oil that undercut MegaRed’s prices.

Complicating the sales pitch is conflicting science. The National Institutes of Health say there is some evidence that fish oil can reduce high triglycerides, which are one indicator of high cholesterol and may be a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. But a new analysis of past studies of fish oil by researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, published online in December by JAMA Internal Medicine, found little proof of health benefits. And some research has suggested that high consumption can actually be harmful.

Indeed, R.B.’s lawyers won’t let its marketers claim that MegaRed pills actually lead to a healthier heart. They can only suggest it with scientific-sounding language like “supports three markers of heart health”: triglycerides, C-reactive proteins and the omega-3 index.

Not exactly a thumbstopper.

R.B., a British company that owns big consumer brands like Lysol cleaners and Durex condoms, bought MegaRed in December 2012 as part of its $1.4 billion acquisition of Schiff Nutrition. It was convinced it could increase sales by brightening the stodgy marketing of MegaRed and other Schiff brands like Move Free and Airborne.

Mr. Faracci discovered Facebook’s value in 2012, when he oversaw a campaign for Lysol Power & Free, a version of the cleaning solution with fewer harsh chemicals. The campaign, aimed at mothers, emphasized the health benefits of using a gentler product and generated twice as much in sales as it cost. According to measurements from Nielsen, it made the people who saw it 8 percent more likely to consider buying the product.

Mr. Faracci was convinced that MegaRed could pluck the heartstrings of Facebook users in a similar way.

The goal of the two-day “garage” last August, which Mr. Faracci allowed me to attend, was to come up with specific MegaRed ads that would be compelling enough to grab the attention of a mother or grandmother scanning her Facebook feed on her phone while in line at the supermarket — and eventually, prompt her to buy the pills.

MegaRed had 8 percent of the dollar value of the “heart health” market, which includes fish oil, according to R.B.’s analysis of IRI shopper data through Sept. 8, 2013. But the company’s research showed people didn’t know much about the brand. Once they learned about it through Facebook, Mr. Faracci believed, many of them would switch.

Facebook, which has held around 200 of these sessions with more than 100 companies over the last few years, hosted the meeting in Midtown Manhattan (it has since moved to bigger quarters near Astor Place). The garage brought together about 20 people from R.B., Facebook and the brand’s advertising agencies, Karlen Williams Graybill and MRY.

Before the session began, R.B. and its agencies had settled on a theme: “What does your heart beat for?” The idea was that taking a daily MegaRed would keep your heart going so you could do what was important to you.

MegaRed’s previous Facebook ads drew about one “like” or other interaction for every 260 people who saw them. The company wanted to do a lot better.

The people in the room began tossing around ideas. An image of a sine wave with the sound of a heart beating? Love stories? Music from the band Heart?

No, too literal.

“The things we share on Facebook are stories of the heart,” said Eric Schnabel, a creative strategist from Facebook’s Chicago office who had worked on marketing other products that made health claims, like the cereal Special K.

The team started free-associating ideas for poignant emotional moments. A son’s wedding. Playing tennis every week. Caring for a Harley. Going to a jazz festival. Soon the whiteboard was covered with sticky notes.

Next they stepped into the shoes of two model customers, both female, from two different generations, to help the marketers tailor their pitches.

Agnes was a 65-year-old baby boomer. The team started filling out her profile. She regularly went to yoga and Zumba classes and played golf. She traveled a lot, heading to Vermont for a three-day weekend. She liked to pull out pictures of her grandchildren. She was Facebook friends with her grown-up nephews but her own son had unfriended her.

Linda, a Gen X-er, was 50. She aspired to raise healthy kids, and was worried about her parents’ health. Perhaps she was divorced, trying <a href="http://Match.com" rel="nofollow">Match.com</a> for online dating.

Mr. Schnabel laid out a few guidelines. Visuals count. “Great words with an image attached to them are the purest form of expression,” he said.

Story lines that stretch across multiple ads, spread out over days or weeks, could also be very effective. “We try to make them more like ‘Law and Order’ than ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” Mr. Schnabel said. “You don’t need to see every episode in order for it to make sense.”

But don’t overdo it, he warned. Ads that pop up too frequently feel like spam. Facebook itself generally aims to show one ad for every 20 items in a person’s news feed, although users who like or comment frequently on ads might see more.

Discussing Agnes, the fictional grandmother, the group focused on passions she never had time to pursue. One ad could show a couple her age wearing backpacks in front of the Eiffel Tower. Another, learning to cook the perfect meatball in Italy.

A home run would be a message that people liked enough to share with their friends and family — giving a free boost to the campaign.

The most thumbstopping idea of the day came from Roger Lu, a Facebook manager who primarily works on data and ad targeting: A child’s crayon drawing of his grandfather pulling a quarter from his head, with the caption: “Thank you for finding money in my ear, Grandpa.”

“It’s much more emotional and much more unexpected,” said Mr. Schnabel approvingly.

Selecting the Targets

Figuring out the ad content was the fun part. The tension between Facebook and R.B. emerged when it came time to figure out how MegaRed should spend its money.

Modern data collection practices have made it remarkably easy to locate individuals based on what they tend to buy. Online shopping carts and store checkout scanners record purchases, and data brokers like Datalogix gather information from loyalty cards, customer email addresses and other sources to build a profile based on their past purchases.

Facebook and its competitors can match that offline data to their own dossiers on users to help marketers target their pitches and evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns. Although the matching has Big Brother overtones, Facebook says it takes pains to protect user privacy, using acomplex process to make individual profiles anonymous before matching them.

At the meeting, Mr. Rodrigues argued that MegaRed’s money would be best spent going after a narrow group of consumers. Tapping into Datalogix’s database of retail purchases, MegaRed wanted to find not just current fish oil users but other people worried about their hearts. Called “lookalikes,” they are signaled by their purchases of products like canned salmon, oatmeal, Cheerios, health supplements, aspirin and blood pressure monitors, as well as by liking Facebook pages on heart-related topics.

The Facebook folks countered that such specific targeting would be very expensive. Under Facebook’s auction system, advertisers compete for limited slots in the users’ news feeds; the more targeted the pitch, the higher the cost for reaching each 1,000 people. With only a small pool of targets, R.B. would be competing with other brands that wanted to reach those same people, forcing it to pay more to be the advertiser that won the slot.

Also, Mr. Prescott argued, the emotional campaign for MegaRed might very well draw in people whose potential interest in fish oil was not readily apparent. MegaRed should show ads to every American woman 45 and older and see who was interested in each one, then place those ads in the feeds of people in the same demographic buckets, he said.

Kyle Benedetti, who at the time was director of sales for SocialCode, an ad management platform working with R.B. and Facebook, said, “We can tell you within the first 15 minutes of a post whether it’s a good post or a bad post.”

In Mr. Faracci’s experience, that ability to shift a Facebook campaign quickly based on immediate feedback was the platform’s biggest strength.

Mr. Rodrigues was more skeptical. “We don’t know whether Facebook is the right tool,” he said.

“Let us take these inputs and see how big these audiences are,” Mr. Schnabel urged. If the broad-brush approach wasn’t working, the data should show that pretty quickly.

Crunching the Numbers

Over the next few months, the creative team produced dozens of specific ads and began putting them into the news feeds of both fish oil users and the broader audience.

In mid-November, shortly after the eight-week marketing campaign had begun, nearly a dozen members of the original team reassembled for a progress report.

One of the first ads targeted at the broad group — the photo of a boy and his grandfather, “being there to push him in the right direction” for his first bike ride — had already drawn more than 18,000 likes and nearly 600 comments.

“My heart beats when my grandkids r happy my 6 year old just learned how to ride his bike n he did it on the 3rd try,” wrote Marybeth Ortiz, a housecleaner from Nevada, whose comment was highlighted in the team’s review (Turns out, though, she never bought any MegaRed.)

Another ad, a scene of ice and snow promoting MegaRed’s Antarctic roots and aimed at heavy vitamin shoppers, had fallen flat, as had some ads aimed at fish oil users.

“I have found that the MegaRed smells and taste WORSE than the generic fish oil capsules!!” Carolyn Davis, a Facebook user in Tennessee, wrote in response to an ad about krill oil’s claimed lack of aftertaste. “It turns my stomach to even open the cabinet I store it in!! As soon as this bottle is gone I will never buy it again!!”

“It’s O.K. that things don’t work,” Mr. Faracci said at the end of the review. “It’s much cheaper than using market research.”

Still, R.B.’s marketers are sticklers for measurement, and the final exam for Facebook would be how the ads did on several crucial performance indicators.

When the campaign was completed at the end of December, it was clear that it had failed on one goal: it had fallen well short of the 100,000 fans MegaRed wanted to add to its Facebook page.

But how Facebook did on the most important measurements — the number of people who saw the ads and the effect on their purchases of MegaRed — would take several more months to assess, requiring Nielsen surveys of people who saw the ads and an analysis by Datalogix of MegaRed purchases by Facebook users in the supermarket.

In April, the results finally came in.

During the eight-week campaign, 18.1 million women aged 45 and up saw at least one ad, according to Nielsen’s research. That was 56 percent of the target audience. The number who said they were now more likely to buy MegaRed rose by two percentage points.

About one out of every 84 Facebook users who saw the ads liked, commented on or shared them — triple the rate of engagement with MegaRed’s previous ads. That greatly increased the chances that their friends on Facebook would also see the messages.

On the most crucial measure — sales of krill oil — the campaign generated about twice as much revenue as R.B. spent on the ads, according to an analysis by Datalogix. That was better than R.B.’s historical return from TV ads, which the company measures once every year or two.

MegaRed also gained more than a percentage point of market share, with 9.2 percent of the dollar value of the heart-health market, based on R.B.’s analysis of IRI shopper data through Feb. 23. R.B. was also running TV ads, handing out samples and doing in-store marketing at the same time, but the company says the Facebook campaign contributed to the gains.

The campaign’s performance turned Mr. Rodrigues into a Facebook fan, and MegaRed is now running video ads on the social network.

“We need to be where the consumer is,” he said in a recent interview. “And if on top of that, I get a bigger return on my investment, that’s even better.”

Still, television will continue to get most of the marketing budget, both for MegaRed and for other R.B. brands. “We’re never going to stop TV,” Mr. Faracci said. “It has a massive role to play. It is a primary source of entertainment. It has good economics.”

But Facebook has established itself as a powerful complement, he said, sometimes extending the reach of a campaign to millions of people who never saw it on television.

R.B., which has gone through about 10 publishing garages with Facebook, is so pleased that it is escalating its global commitment to the platform. It plans to announce Monday that it will spend at least $100 million on Facebook over the next few years as part of a deeper partnership between the two companies.

“Facebook is a fantastic tool for doing personalized marketing at scale,” said Heather Allen, who oversees all of R.B.’s marketing efforts worldwide. “This will be a successful relationship with us if it really drives business results.”

Facebook has committed an entire team, headed by Mr. Prescott, to work on R.B. campaigns around the world, including Britain, Italy, Brazil, India and Australia. “We’re putting skin in the game with them,” he said.

With legions of other companies yet to win over, Facebook is expanding its publishing garage program internationally and offering other creative consulting services to big brands and ad agencies. “There’s no question that in order to work with the world’s largest marketers, you have to invest resources to do that,” said Ms. Everson of Facebook.

However, Facebook has a million and half advertisers, most of them small. Eventually, she hopes, her company can find ways to teach all of them how to turn their ads into thumbstoppers.

“That’s a long-term journey,” she said. “That’s the North Star that we’re trying to get to.”

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Militarism and Humiliation Cast Shadow on Germany
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:07 AM

KIEL, Germany — On June 28, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II was preparing to indulge in a favorite pastime: racing his yacht Meteor at a regatta that is still held each year in this seafaring stronghold. When he learned of the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Hapsburg Empire, he hastened to Berlin. But he quickly returned to this Baltic Sea port, on which he lavished so much money and time in his frantic race to match or outdo British naval superiority.

In many ways, Kiel epitomized Germany’s rapid industrialization and militarization from 1870 to 1914, under Otto von Bismarck and then the kaiser. Numbers alone tell a story: In 1870, as Bismarck unified Germany, Kiel had around 30,000 inhabitants. By 1914, when Europe’s leaders stumbled into World War I, its population exceeded 227,000.

A 100-YEAR LEGACY OF WORLD WAR Ⅰ

Four years later, Kiel bore witness to the depths of German defeat. A sailors’ rebellion that started here spread nationwide and helped force the abdication of the kaiser in November 1918. The next year, rather than let the Imperial Fleet fall to the enemy, German commanders on Scapa Flow, off Scotland, scuttled 52 of the fleet’s 74 vessels. Under the Treaty of Versailles, signed five years to the day after the archduke’s assassination, the proud navy was limited to just a few ships and 15,000 men — far fewer than the 35,000 German sailors who had perished in World War I.

Might, militarism and humiliation: These are the memories that make Germans today reluctant to project their clout as, once again, Europe’s economic powerhouse. One hundred years on from World War I, German leadership in Europe is both desired and resented, a historically rooted ambivalence that is keenly felt by the Germans and by their wary neighbors.

Most Germans remain reluctant to see their country’s force deployed in any way commensurate with its economic heft. But this abstention from military action does not mean that Germany is not throwing its weight about.

During the European debt crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel demonstrated that no solution was possible without Germany’s helping hugely to pay for it. Always calm, she brooked little criticism and brushed aside anti-German sentiment as she pushed to impose austerity on supposedly profligate European neighbors.

Today, with nationalism and populism on the rise in Europe, Ms. Merkel is central in trying to untangle a tussle over European leadership that may hasten a British exit from the European Union, and she faces demands from two other major partners, France and Italy, to relax stringent budgetary demands.

In Germany, the enormity of Nazi crimes in World War II tends to overshadow World War I, which consumed more than 37 million lives, including those wounded and missing, and four empires. In some ways, the 100th anniversary has reminded Germans that Hitler and his supporters bore deep scars from the country’s catastrophic defeat in 1918. Germans are observing the occasion with some 80 exhibitions nationwide, and with countless discussions and seminars. “The Sleepwalkers,” Christopher Clark’s chunky history of how Europe went to war in 1914, is a best seller and its author a coveted guest for centenary discussions.

In Kiel, the imperial stamp always lingered. A statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I on horseback adorns a central park. The Kiel Canal, to this day an important waterway linking the North and Baltic Seas, was named after Wilhelm II when it opened in 1895. Outsize paintings of the opening still stare down at the regal Kiel Yacht Club.

Paradoxically, it was development on land that helped bolster the importance of this natural deep-sea port. By the time of Bismarck, the growth of railways had brought goods and people to Kiel from all over Germany and enabled the delivery of imports throughout the newly unified country. Later, shipyards that had produced Germany’s first submarine in 1851 were central to Wilhelm II’s naval race with Britain.

Especially after 1900, Wilhelm poured torrents of money into the German Navy. In 1906, Britain’s Royal Navy took delivery of H.M.S. Dreadnought, with its groundbreaking armament of big guns. Wilhelm and top members of his navy and government responded with plans to build two dreadnoughts and one battle cruiser per year, as well as to dredge and widen the Kiel Canal so the large new vessels could use it.

Four battle cruisers were produced in Kiel from 1907 to 1910, completed ahead of schedule. Naval spending rose steadily at least until 1912, when military commanders came to consider a land war more likely.

Britain and France were alarmed by Wilhelm’s ambition. Britain’s determination to keep its navy supreme only heightened German anxieties, already running high because the kaiser felt beleaguered on two fronts. The huge Russian Army ensured that his perceived foes had more men under arms than Germany and its Austro-Hungarian allies could muster.

In some sense, his naval expansion may have been a salve for this insecurity. At any rate, the Reichskriegshafen Kiel, the imperial war harbor here, profited. By the time war broke out in 1914, the navy had 22 pre-dreadnought ships, 14 dreadnoughts and four battle cruisers.

Three more warships were completed by November 1914, and construction continued throughout the war, with a battle cruiser added in late 1914, 1916 and 1917. Naval historians, however, tend to accord more significance to Germany’s U-boats, which were responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, for instance, eventually helping to draw the United States into Europe’s Great War.

A similar shipbuilding boom erupted in the 1930s after Hitler took power and reached an agreement with Britain, ushering in a new wave of production of submarines and surface battle vessels. The shipbuilding made Kiel a prime target for Allied bombs, and by the end of the war in 1945, it was 80 percent destroyed.

Today, Kiel is still a seafaring town. Submarines are still built here. Sailors bob on Kiel Sound. Instead of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, hulking cruise and cargo ships dominate the urban shoreline. But the city is a mosaic of ill-matched architecture and buildings that have changed purpose. Wilhelm’s proud Naval Academy, for instance, is now the parliamentary seat of Schleswig-Holstein, the state of which Kiel is the capital. The mishmash lends a defeated air to a place still pondering how to remember and interpret a dreadful 20th century.

The histories of two concrete memorials illustrate the scars. One was originally intended to honor Germany’s naval dead in World War I. The other is the Flandernbunker, or Flanders bunker, built outside the main surviving military base here. Its name stems from a Nazi campaign to lionize the Germans killed in the World War I trenches, and it sheltered military commanders and select civilians in the global conflict that ignited two decades later.

Today, a local art historian, Jens Rönnau, runs the bunker as an alternative arts and conference center with a goal of teaching peace and how to avoid future wars.

Last month, about 150 people spent two days on what Uta Körby, a 69-year-old Kiel native working to draw attention to the Nazi past and memorialize its victims, calls “Battleground: History.”

The location was the memorial built for the World War I sailors. It is a tower and flamelike structure of reinforced concrete with an outer layer of north German brick, soaring nearly 300 feet above the coast at Laboe, where Kiel Sound meets the open sea. It was designed in 1927, but finished and opened only in 1936, when Kiel hosted the sailing events in the Olympics. Hitler attended but did not speak.

Instead, the Nazis left their mark in a subterranean memorial hall with a demand: “Bare your head and be silent!” Exiting up one staircase, today’s visitors — there are 200,000 a year — confront a 1936 glass tableau of sailors’ lives on ship and shore, in which a still-discernible swastika has replaced the sun.

For Jann M. Witt — the amiable, bearded historian of the German Naval Association, which looks after this memorial and a U-boat dry-docked across the road — the meaning of the place is clear: It was designed to glorify the German Navy and its victims in World War I. When the British, whose bombs had left the memorial unscathed, returned it to the association in 1954, the Germans decided it would be for all their naval victims in the two world wars, “and our dead adversaries.”

That was still too militaristic for many. So in 1996, it became a memorial for all those who have died at sea — a sweeping designation that has brought some notable international elements but results in a muddled exhibition that is still a tad nationalistic in tone.

Mr. Witt and his associates believe that the memorial can carry a message of peace. Standing in a hall that shows every German ship lost in the two world wars, the 35,000 German sailors lost in World War I and the 120,000 said to have been lost in World War II, Mr. Witt recalled visiting with his grandfather, a member of the navy, when he was a boy.

“This,” he said, “was the first place that I realized that war is not a game.”

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· · · · · ·

Putin Strives to Harness Energy of Russian Pilgrims for Political Profit
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:06 AM

SERGIYEV POSAD, Russia — The pilgrims tramped toward the storied monastery by the thousands — chanting prayers, singing and embracing the kind of nationalist fervor that President Vladimir V. Putin seeks to harness as his own.

The official reason for the trek to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the seat of the Russian Orthodox faith and the country’s original monastery, was to commemorate the 700th birthday of its founder and namesake.

But amid that tide of pilgrims — official estimates hovered around 30,000 — swirled diverse political and religious currents related to Mr. Putin’s effort to cast himself as the defender of traditional values, a campaign that has become more pronounced since Russia’s involvement with Ukraine.

The birthday celebrations in Sergiyev Posad emphasized St. Sergius’s role in shaping a unified Russia, a narrative that dovetails with the nationalism and conservative morals that Mr. Putin espouses.

Some historians and church figures are crying foul, however, over what they say are the Kremlin’s efforts to reshape the saint’s legacy to enhance political goals, fostering what one critic called “an official cult.”

“They are creating a myth around St. Sergius, making him out to be an obedient servant of the Russian state, which he was not,” said Irina Karatsuba, a historian who often aligns herself with unpopular causes. “He is one of the important embodiments of what was and is the best in Russia. But the way they are trying to link him to the Russian state is nonsense; it’s political manipulation.”

The pilgrimage illustrates one way Mr. Putin is trying to use Russian Orthodoxy as a tie that binds Russians together, analysts said, fashioning a fresh ideology for his continued rule after 14 years as either president or prime minister. His participation in the St. Sergius celebration last month was broadcast live nationally.

Church officials said they wanted St. Sergius to serve as an example of spiritual hope for Russians in their daily lives.

The Russian Orthodox Church was resurrected after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, ending 70 years of often brutal Communist repression. The church seems only too happy to hitch its halting rebirth to Mr. Putin’s fortunes, hoping to attract more adherents. Although 80 percent of the 140 million Russians identify themselves as Russian Orthodox culturally, the number who actually attend church is tiny. The church says it is nearly 10 percent, but experts say it has long hovered around 3 percent.

Another reason for St. Sergius’s elevation is the current crisis in Ukraine.

The birth of the Russian Orthodox faith dates back to Vladimir the Great, grand prince of Kiev, and the mass baptisms performed at his behest there in 988, bringing Christianity to what then became Holy Rus.

But now that Russia and Ukraine are locked in a proxy war, the government and the church realize that the physical link to an important religious symbol is being severed, noted Geraldine Fagan, author of “Believing in Russia — Religious Policy After Communism.”

Because those roots — not to mention the relics of St. Vladimir himself — are in the territory of an estranged neighbor, Russia appears to be casting St. Sergius as his replacement, Ms. Fagan said.

In the late 14th century, aside from founding the first monastery, St. Sergius of Radonezh persuaded the Russian princes to stop their murderous, internecine fighting and concentrate on throwing off the Mongol yoke.

“St. Sergius was the beginning not just of Russian monasticism or the Russian spiritual tradition,” said Vladimir Legoyda, the head of the information department for the Holy Synod. “In many ways he is the source of Russia itself.”

The saint has long been revered as a humble figure, content to spend his days in prayer and dressing like a beggar. He turned down the job of leading the church, but was given the unique title of abbot for all Russia.

“He is a great personality in Russian history,” said Margarita Popova, a 48-year-old English teacher who traveled 17 hours by bus with her teenage son from their home near Volgograd for the anniversary. “Russia before Sergei Radonezh and Russia after was perhaps two different Russias.”

Ordinary people, Ms. Popova said, do not have the time to pray for themselves, for Russia and for the world constantly. The monks who do so are following a tradition started in the Russian Orthodox Church by St. Sergius. He is often identified as the original staretz, a Russian word that means a monastic spiritual leader, one who has achieved tangible experience in the future kingdom of God.

Beyond spiritual matters, the crowd at the birthday commemoration at the monastery here, 45 miles north of Moscow, was unquestionably in the Putin camp. Many compared him to a czar, and meant it as a compliment.

“He has just not been anointed,” said Vladimir Bubelev, 60, an officer in the naval reserves wearing a brass pin showing the profile of Nicholas II, the last czar, on his lapel.

“But his powers are greater than those of Nicholas II,” Mr. Bubelev said. “On many questions he acts like a monarch — he makes correct, willful decisions. This is very good. Plus he is a believer!”

As it happens, the birthday of St. Sergius and the anniversary of the death of Nicholas II fall within a couple of days of each other in July. The church made Nicholas II and his immediate family saints in 2000. The czar’s 1917 overthrow was for many Orthodox faithful the last time that a man anointed by God governed Russia.

When the czars ruled, Mr. Bubelev persisted, Russia evoked both nobility and morality. The Romanovs deeply revered both St. Sergius and a later, 19th-century monk, St. Seraphim of Sarov, also worshiped by the Russian Orthodox.

“They helped the czars rule Russia in the right way — they made Russia rich,” Mr. Bubelev said. The czars “went to their relics and asked for God’s help, and they succeeded. Thank God Mr. Putin is asking for their help now.”

But Ms. Karatsuba, the historian, pointed out that the Romanov rulers also tried to elevate the concept of Holy Rus as a national ideal in their campaign to stall political reform in the 19th century. That turned out badly for them in 1917, she noted.

Still, the Slavic nationalism prevalent among the faithful makes them a natural base of support for Mr. Putin’s policy that all ethnic Russians are worthy of protection wherever they are. That has been his stated reason for championing the cause of anti-Kiev insurgents in southeastern Ukraine.

“We are all one people, we are all part of Holy Rus,” said Dmitry Markov, 28, a buyer for a cellphone company who attended the St. Sergius commemoration. “Any person, regardless of where he lives, if he is Russian in spirit, he must be defended by his president, by his country, because he is an indivisible part of the nation.”

Mr. Putin, who attended the anniversary celebration less than 24 hours after a civilian plane disaster in Ukraine that many blamed on Moscow, addressed the faithful for only about five minutes. He lauded the “patriotic, national and moral resurgence” inspired by the monk, including his campaign to build monasteries as both spiritual centers and real fortresses to protect Russia.

“His wise and solid words as a mentor and guide were a spiritual pillar and support during a difficult time of foreign invasion and internal discord,” Mr. Putin said.

“It was then that he spoke his prophetic words: ‘Our salvation lies in love and unity,' ” Mr. Putin said. “This appeal, filled with unshakable faith, helped to unite Russia’s lands and stamped itself forever on our people’s soul and in our historical memory.”

The commemoration, planned for years, provoked some quiet grumbling within the church itself, however, that it was too elaborate. With a war raging next door, the money could have been spent on better things, critics said.

Patriarch Kirill I himself led the 10-mile procession that started the commemoration, beginning from the monastery at Khotkovo, where the saint’s parents are buried, to the St. Sergius monastery. The patriarch walked under a white umbrella carried by a younger priest, and during a break in the march closeted himself away from the adoring throng in an air-conditioned mobile home.

“Faith without deeds is dead,” said Michael Storojinsky, 53, a religious music producer, explaining why he was walking for five hours under the relentless summer sun. “I was a Communist in the days when the Communist Party said it was battling religious superstition,” he said. The party “placed itself on the pedestal that was meant to be occupied by God.”

Correction: August 3, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the year Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, was assassinated. Nicholas II was assassinated in 1918, not 1917, which was the year he was overthrown.

Read the whole story

· · · · · ·

U.S.-Russia Nuclear Deal Stalls as Tensions Over Ukraine Rise
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 9:05 AM

WASHINGTON — The growing confrontation between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine has derailed a recent accord that promised one of the most expansive collaborations ever between the countries’ nuclear scientists, including reciprocal visits to atomic sites to work on projects ranging from energy to planetary defense.

It was only 11 months ago that the American energy secretary — Ernest J. Moniz, a former M.I.T. professor who has championed scientific programs that would bury the Cold War competitions between the United States and Russia — went to Vienna to sign the agreement, an indication of how recently the Obama administration believed it had a chance of building on a quarter-century of gradual integration of Russia with the West.

Handshakes and congratulations exchanged with Mr. Moniz’s Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Kirienko, sealed an arrangement that would let Russian scientists into, among other places, the heart of the American nuclear complex at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was constructed 70 years ago, and a dozen sister laboratories devoted to the making of the American nuclear arsenal. In return, American scientists would be allowed deep into Russian nuclear facilities, including the birthplace of the Soviet bomb.

The Energy Department’s announcement of the deal also highlighted its potential for “defense from asteroids,” shorthand for a proposal to recycle a city-busting warhead that could be aimed at an incoming earth-destroyer — a plot Hollywood had imagined 15 years before in two far-fetched thrillers, “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact,” in which Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, among others, saved humanity.

Today, the real-life accord is on ice. This year, the Energy Department canceled nuclear meetings, symposia and lab visits with Russia.

Daniel B. Poneman, the deputy energy secretary, said that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March had prompted the decision to freeze the accord.

“We’ve made it very clear that this is not a time for business as usual,” Mr. Poneman said Friday in his office. He added, however, that the Energy Department continued to work with Russia on the security of atomic materials.

American officials and experts say the decision will limit how much each side knows about the other’s capabilities and intentions after more than two decades in which American and Russian nuclear scientists worked alongside one another. Those programs let once-bitter rivals, locked in the ultimate arms race, take each other’s measure and deepen relationships, reducing the chances for deadly miscalculation and technological surprise.

Now, both sides are slipping back toward habits reminiscent of the Cold War. The joint atomic projects have declined substantially. Last week, Washington accused Moscow of violating a major arms treaty on missile technology. After the negotiation of the modest New Start treaty in 2010, progress toward another round of nuclear warhead reductions is dead in the water and unlikely to be revived duringPresident Obama’s term in office.

Satellite photographs released publicly by American intelligence agencies purport to show the movement of heavy arms across the Ukrainian border from Russia — evidence reminiscent of the kind released by the United States during conflicts half a century ago over Cuba and Berlin.

Perhaps most startling is not the direction of these steps, but their speed: As recently as January, the two sides were meeting regularly on joint arms control and scientific programs. The cancellations show how rapidly Mr. Obama has moved from a strategy that assumed Russia’s continued interest in cooperation to one that assumes that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is out to take as much territory and control as he can, and that letting Russian scientists into America’s nuclear complex is unwise.

For Mr. Obama, the motivation for negotiating the accord clearly had much less to do with asteroid destruction than geopolitics.

The United States’ 20-year effort to secure Soviet nuclear materials was winding down. Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons lab who has worked closely with Russian scientists, said the agreement had promised a new phase of teamwork and technical collaboration.

“It was an attempt to get back to good scientific cooperation,” Mr. Hecker said. “Unfortunately, such things were struggling before Ukraine and have gone nowhere since.”

That is not true of every effort at cooperation. Americans and Russians are still working alongside each other, though increasingly at cross-purposes, on the Iranian nuclear negotiations. The United States still needs its astronauts to ride to the International Space Station on Russian rockets, and it wants to keep buying Russian engines for its missiles.

Even so, at a moment when the White House is imposing sanctions and working to counter the flow of weapons into Ukraine, it might be difficult to justify an exchange of nuclear scientists. But some experts say it is when times are tense that such midlevel interchanges are the most critical.

“The idea of having thick relations with Russian nuclear scientists is a good idea,” said Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who negotiated some early deals on securing the Soviet arsenal during the Clinton administration, the peak of cooperation between American and Russian nuclear weaponsscientists. “People get to know each other, work on joint projects, and there is a basis for conversation and cooperation.”

That was part of the impetus, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, behind the West’s effort to fund new projects for Russian nuclear scientists. Keeping them busily employed, the theory went, made it less likely that they would sell their expertise to Iran, North Korea or a terrorist group with nuclear ambitions.

But the agreement last fall went far beyond that: It promised cooperation on complex, if peaceful, nuclear programs, including wide Russian access to the American nuclear complex.

While it would have allowed both sides to exclude “sensitive” military sites, it listed 137 American installations at 15 locations from coast to coast, including the centers for nuclear weapons design at Los Alamos and in Albuquerque and Livermore, Calif.

The 25 installations at Los Alamos included firing sites, the Warhead Verification Test Lab, the Sigma Complex for materials development and the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility, a giant X-ray machine that can peer into bomb processes.

The accord also listed five installations at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, including a giant particle accelerator that runs through miles of tunnels. At the Livermore lab, the Russians were to get access to a $5 billion laser the size of a football stadium designed to ignite miniature hydrogen bomb explosions.

The September accord was posted online late last year by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization based in Washington. The disclosure received little public notice.

In October, a month after the accord was signed, Russian and American scientists from the nuclear laboratories held preliminary discussions on planetary defense, said an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political implications.

In January, the State Department held a space forum in Washington with representatives of many countries, including Russia. It called for international cooperation on projects such as defending Earth from asteroids.

“We may have different flags patched to our spacesuits,” John P. Holdren, the president’s science adviser, said in an opening address. But as cooperative space projects have demonstrated, he added, “we can transcend these differences.”

William J. Burns, the deputy secretary of state, told the group that the United States welcomed global support for missions that would “help us learn how to better defend our planet from a catastrophic asteroid collision.”

While asteroid defense may seem like the stuff of science fiction, the risk burst into public consciousness early last year when a meteor exploded over Russia and injured more than 1,200 people, mostly as windows shattered into clouds of flying glass. “It’s not a laughing matter,” said William E. Burrows, author of the new book “The Asteroid Threat.” “If it brings the international community together, that’s a good thing.”

But the cooperative mood vanished after the invasion of Crimea. Russia complained bitterly: In April, Rosatom, its state nuclear energy company and partner in the accord, put out a statement calling the suspension of the partnership “a mistake that contradicts the constructive atmosphere that has built up.”

Politics, it added, “should have no place in this field.”

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· · · · · ·

Russian official burns Obama with Putin-leopard pic
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 8:53 AM

The image here was tweeted by Russia’s deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin.Twitter

It's come to this.

Russia is turning to Twitter to drop a sissy bomb on President Obama, using photos to challenge the manliness of America's commander in chief, while pumping up their main man, President Vladimir Putin.

The post by Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin included side-by-side images of the two presidents. In one, Putin is confidently holding a majestic leopard. In the other, a notably younger Obama is holding a small, fluffy dog.

The caption: "We have different values and allies."

Burn.

The tweet follows a long-running Kremlin tactic of playing up Putin's macho image -- and, in this case, making the American president look like the 90-pound McFly.

It was no doubt prompted by the Obama administration joining the European Union earlier this week with a new set of sanctions aimed at Russia for its alleged meddling in the Ukraine conflict.

The Twitter slam, though, seemingly hasn't hurt the already icy relations between Washington and Moscow. The White House said Obama again spoke with Putin on Friday to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

"The President reiterated his deep concerns about Russia's increased support for the separatists in Ukraine," the White House said. "The President reinforced his preference for a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine, and the two leaders agreed to keep open their channels of communication."

No mention of the fluffy dog picture.

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· ·

Obama, Putin Discuss Ukraine, Missile Treaty - ABC News
Sunday August 3rd, 2014 at 8:53 AM

Putin - Google News

Business Insider

Obama, Putin Discuss Ukraine, Missile Treaty
ABC News
Capping a week of aggressive action against Russia, President Barack Obamapressed Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday for a diplomatic path out of Ukraine's struggle with Moscow-backed pro-Russian separatists. Putin countered by calling U.S. and ...
Experts Explain Why The New Russia Sanctions Still Won't WorkBusiness Insider
Russian official burns Obama with Putin-leopard picFox News
Putin tells Obama that latest sanctions against Russia are counterproductiveThe Guardian
Washington Post-Slate Magazine
all 5,524 news articles »

Андерс Ослунд: «Главная угроза экономике России – Путин, а не санкции» - ГОЛОС АМЕРИКИ
Saturday August 2nd, 2014 at 8:24 PM

Путин – Новости Google

Андерс Ослунд: «Главная угроза экономике России – Путин, а не санкции»
ГОЛОС АМЕРИКИ
Владимир Путин – упрямый человек, и это значит, что даже в свете наложенных на Москву санкций он, скорее всего, не изменит своей позиции по украинскому вопросу и продолжит поддерживать сепаратистов. Это приведет к ухудшению инвестиционного климата в России, снижению ...

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Page 3

Президент России
Saturday August 2nd, 2014 at 8:02 PM

По инициативе американской стороны состоялся телефонный разговор Владимира Путина с Президентом Соединённых Штатов Америки Бараком Обамой.

Лидеры двух стран обменялись мнениями в связи с развитием острого кризиса на Украине. Несмотря на существенные различия в оценках ряда принципиальных моментов, с обеих сторон подчёркнута особая актуальность задачи незамедлительного и устойчивого прекращения боевых действий на юго-востоке Украины и начала политического процесса. В этой связи дана позитивная оценка состоявшихся в Минске консультаций контактной группы, отмечена необходимость продолжения переговоров в таком формате.

Обсуждён ряд аспектов отношений между Россией и США. Глава Российского государства охарактеризовал линию на наращивание Вашингтоном санкционного давления как контрпродуктивную, наносящую серьёзный ущерб двустороннему сотрудничеству и международной стабильности в целом.

Президенты согласились, что нынешнее положение дел не отвечает интересам обоих государств. В этом контексте состоялся обмен мнениями о перспективах российско-американского диалога.

Obama's Inexplicable Love for the Dark Side
Saturday August 2nd, 2014 at 7:13 PM

American Thinker

Historically, the most destructive leaders are malignant narcissists with a sociopathic streak, superficially charming and impressive, but manipulative, heartless, and intent on constantly smearing their perceived enemies.

Bill Clinton is also a major narcissist, but as an adult he did not have a compulsion to constantly malign other people. Clinton has recently said that he truly hates Obama, and he knows the man. Imagine the firestorm if any Republican said that.

Now it seems that Obama wants to torpedo Hillary’s campaign and support Elizabeth Warren, the phony affirmative action Indian at Harvard Law, to force more leftist radicalism on the American people. Hillary looks tired and confused, while Warren is a major rabble-rouser for the left, just like our current Occupant.

Active malevolence toward mainstream America is very much in character for the hard left. They hate you and me for what Joe McCarthy did sixty years ago to the Stalinist left; and the more we learn about that history, the more it seems that the anti-communists were right. Their list of America-haters is endless: Jerry Wright preached hatred for 20 years to the Obamas. Franklin Marshall Davis, Obama’s teenage “mentor”, the Hawaiian CPUSA rep and soi-disant poet, specialized in the poetry of racial rage. Bill Ayers stands by his old demand to “kill your parents.” Chris Matthews, who seemed sane and balanced when he worked for Tip O’Neill, is getting paid by his bosses at Comcast and GE for genuine hate speech against the rest of us.

(Research supports the idea that these destructive traits can be solidified by years of drug use, especially crystal meth, but also cannabis.)

The most ironic thing is to watch the left complaining about “divisiveness” when the rest of America will not bow to them --- revealing their sense of narcissistic entitlement. Like any closed cult, they know they are completely right, and therefore entitled to power over others, no matter how corrupt and illegal. Lois Lerner has now been shown to have this kind of entitled rage. It cannot be overemphasized that these are standard features of psychiatric disorders.

Obama grew up among such people, as he tells us in his autobiographies. His amazing sense of more-than-human entitlement combines his own history -- the fact that he was rejected at age ten by his mother, who sent him to Hawaii -- together with the radical cult that raised him. Obama is so cocksure that he can’t imagine how sane and decent people could disagree. This is different from other presidents: Clinton and LBJ certainly were power hungry, but they knew when to compromise.

The parallels with violent Muslims are striking. Aggressive Muslims feel they are entitled to rule the world. Any competing faith makes you an enemy -- Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Jewish. They are told so every Friday night by their imams and mullahs -- which is why Muslim mobs have always gone on rampages on Fridays. There is a strong link between hate preaching and terrorist violence in the Muslim world. The Saudis have long sponsored Nazilike hate radio and TV through the Arab and Persian media (see <a href="http://MEMRI.org" rel="nofollow">MEMRI.org</a> for daily translations.)

The obvious reason for Hamas and other theocratic Israel-haters is the fact that Israel owns most of Jerusalem. Liberals never seem to understand that idea, because they live in a fantasy world where religion is on its way out, and soon we will live in soft Marxist paradise, atheists one and all. Nobody in Russia and China believes that anymore, because Stalin and Mao tried to abolish religion for decades and failed. Today, Putin acts like a Russian Orthodox believer (when it suits him), and the Chinese are constantly suppressing religious revivals in Beijing. Only the Western left believes in that ole-time religion of militant atheism.

In sum, Obama is deeply stuck in his mental quarrel with America. His anti-American, anti-middle class rhetoric is remarkably stereotyped, which raises the possibility that he is cognitively rigid -- unable to change his mind in the face of facts. Rigid leaders can’t adjust when the facts change, as they always do in politics.

Which brings me to the genuine Dark Side of humanity, and the stunning support this administration gives to it.

YouTube and social media have now penetrated the liberal media defense against Islamofascist cruelties.

Ask yourself whether we are not honestly seeing the face of evil in this list. Please show it to your liberal friends.

1. Boko Haram stealing 300 little Nigerian girls for sexual slavery. (“Boko Haram” means “education is forbidden”.)

2. This video of a Syrian elder surrounding himself with five little children, right next to a mortar firing shells.

3. This ISIS propaganda video showing mass murder by decapitaton of captured Iraqi soldiers.

4. This article by Alan Dershowitz, a leftist, about the tiny tribal regime of Qatar financing Hamas and other killers. (The Saudis, Egyptians and other Arab regimes are currently fighting Qatar for fear of the greater enemy, Iran.)

5. This heroic Saudi blogger, mercilessly whipped and imprisoned for founding a Saudi human rights organization.

6. This Dutch woman, severely beaten for flying the Israeli flag from her balcony -- in the Netherlands.

7. This Canadian lawsuit accusing Pamela Geller of racial incitement for ads aimed at abused and threatened women in Muslim families.

7. This lovely group photo of five black-clad women demanding harsher persecutions by ISIS (an Al Qaida offshoot) in Iraq.

8. This Australian jihadist, surrounded by severed heads of his victims in Syria.

9. This Muslim child-rape gang in England.

10. This Pakistani mob, killing a mother and two little girls for their Ahmadiyya faith.

I know that American Thinker’s readers are aware of these things. My constant question is: Why do Obama and our political-media elite pretend they don’t know? Obama lived four years in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the aftermath of exactly this kind of jihadist civil war. He knows, he knows.

The answer has to be that our ruling left has simply chosen to appease or support the Dark Side.

Whether they are bribed by the oil regimes, or whether they have utterly immoral beliefs, they are no longer interested in fighting evil. In fact, in all cases listed above, the United States under Obama and his crowd has actively supported the worst side.

When all is said and done, the answer is simple.

This administration, and our political-media elites, no longer supports good against evil.

That is why they must be fired and discredited as soon as possible.

Even the American left is finally realizing that this is the strangest administration in living memory. Obama simply has no real precedents, which is why he seems so utterly foreign. American presidents tend to be pragmatists, but Obama is locked into a simpleminded ideology of Good vs. Evil. Obama is Good, and anybody who disagrees with him is Evil.

Much of this oddity stems from the president’s personality, which many people have described as a mix of major narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Personality disordered people can be very functional in their jobs. But they are very destructive to others. People with such disorders rarely admit they can be wrong. Narcissism is almost defined by that feature: someone who knows with godlike certainty that he is right all the time, who cannot admit a fault, and who therefore needs to blame others every time something goes wrong. Obama does this with almost robotic regularity.