Mediaboss Marketing

Hillary Clinton returned to her alma mater, Wellesley College, Friday to deliver a fiery commencement address that attacked President Donald Trump and his policies but it was her implicit comparisons between Nixon's resignation and the current administration that drew the loudest cheers.

Clinton lashed out at what she described as the "unimaginable cruelty" of Trump's budget proposal and the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories and internet trolls. But when she talked about the mood on campus in 1969, the year she graduated, she got her biggest reception.

"We were furious about the past presidential election, of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with impeachment for obstruction of justice after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice!" she said.

"But here's what I want you to know: We got through that tumultuous time."

Clinton was referring to President Richard Nixon, who left office after resigning while facing the threat of impeachment in August 1974. The FBI is currently probing whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential contest. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was heading up the investigation, earlier this month.

The steady rain and overcast skies didn't dampen the spirits of the graduating class of 2017, who greeted the former secretary of state and graduate with a long, loud ovation. And while her speech frequently needled her former rival and criticized the divisive political climate, Clinton also urged students to stand up for their values, and above all the truth.

Related: Ex-Clinton Aide Blasts Russia Over Reports It Falsely Used Her Name

"You are graduating at a time when there is a full-fledged assault on truth and reason," she said. "The future of America depends on brave, thoughtful people insisting on truth and integrity right now, every day."

"You didn't create these circumstances, but you have the power to change them."

She had words of encouragement for the women about to enter the next phase of their lives, telling them, "Don't let anyone tell you your voice doesn't matter."

"In the years to come, there will be trolls galore online and in person, eager to tell you that you don't have anything worthwhile to say or anything meaningful to contribute. They may even call you a nasty woman," she said, referring to an insult Trump hurled at her during one of the presidential debates.

"Some may take a slightly more sophisticated approach and say your elite education means you are out of teach with real people. In other words, sit down and shut up. Now, in my experience, that's the last thing you should ever tell a Wellesley graduate," she said.

In many ways, Friday's speech was reminiscent of Clinton's graduation speech Wellesley's first-ever student address which historians say helped brand 22-year-old Hillary Rodham as a political force.

Before delivering her prepared speech at that ceremony, Clinton paused to criticize remarks made by Edward Brooke, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, who discouraged students from getting involved in the anti-Vietnam protests.

Related: Hillary Clinton: Trump Budget Shows 'Unimaginable' Cruelty

"We feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible," she said. "And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible."

Clinton told this year's graduates that she's launching the grassroots organization "Onward, Together," to create a new generation of political activists. And despite her loss last year to Trump, Clinton still wholeheartedly believes in graduates' ability to make change.

"You may have heard that things didn't exactly go the way I planned. But you know what? I'm doing OK. I've gotten to spend time with my family, especially my amazing grandchildren. I was going to give the entire commencement speech about them but was talked out of it. Long walks in the woods. Organizing my closets, right? I won't lie: Chardonnay helped a little too," she said.

She went on to add: "It's often during the darkest times when you can do the most good," she said. "I'm very optimistic about the future because I think after we've tried a lot of other things we get back to the business of America."

Wellesley College is a private all-female liberal arts college located outside of Boston.

See the original post here:
Hillary Clinton Attacks Donald Trump at Wellesley College Graduation - NBCNews.com

President Trump called the terrorist attack on Christians in Egypt Friday a merciless slaughter that would strengthen the resolve of the U.S. and its allies to crush extremist groups.

Terrorists are engaged in a war against civilization, and it is up to all who value life to confront and defeat this evil, Mr. Trump said in a statement. This merciless slaughter of Christians in Egypt tears at our hearts and grieves our souls.

He said the attack steels our resolve to bring nations together for the righteous purpose of crushing the evil organizations of terror, and exposing their depraved, twisted, and thuggish ideology.

Masked gunmen killed at least 28 people in Egypt by opening fire on a bus carrying Coptic Christians in what officials are calling a terror attack.

The Christians were traveling to a monastery.

Mr. Trump said the U.S. also makes clear to its friends, allies, and partners that the treasured and historic Christian Communities of the Middle East must be defended and protected.

The bloodletting of Christians must end, and all who aid their killers must be punished, he said. Civilization is at a precipiceand whether we climb or fall will be decided by our ability to join together to protect all faiths, all religions, and all innocent life. No matter what, America will do what it must to protect its people.

Read more:
Donald Trump grieves over 'slaughter' of Christians in Egypt terror attack - Washington Times

President Trump resisted some intense lobbying by leaders of other industrialized nations Friday to back the Paris climate-change agreement at a G-7 summit in Sicily, Italy.

After hours of discussions, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni told reporters that the U.S. position on the Paris accord remains an open question.

All others have confirmed their total agreement on the accord, he said of the leaders of Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, France and Canada. Former President Barack Obama signed the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions in 2015, but Mr. Trump is weighing a move to pull the U.S. out of the deal. He promised to do so during the campaign last year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the groups discussions with Mr. Trump Friday on the climate-change deal were controversial and very intensive.

The president has said hell make up his mind about the Paris accord after returning home from the G-7 Summit. White House national economic council Director Gary Cohn said Friday that timetable hasnt changed.

The leaders did want to know what his time frame was, and [Mr. Trump] said, look, This is something where I want to get to the right decision. Id rather take my time, Id rather understand the issues, and Id rather get to right decision on that, Mr. Cohn said.

Mr. Cohn said the presidents views are evolving.

He came here to learn. He came here to get smarter. He came here to hear world leaders views, Mr. Cohn said.

But White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster emphasized that Mr. Trump will ultimately base his decision on what he thinks is best for the American economy.

Read more from the original source:
Donald Trump not swayed by G-7 leaders on Paris climate deal - Washington Times

The franchises claim to fame, dating back to the days of Lieutenant Uhura and Captain Kirk, is its advocacy for science, non-belligerence, and multiculturalism.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY CBS VIA GETTY

This being the United States in 2017, Internet trolls are accusing Star Trek: Discovery, the newest incarnation of the sci-fi franchise, due to dbut on television in the fall, of white genocide. The commotion began last week, when theshows trailerfirst appeared on YouTube. It opens with a conversation between the two lead characters, a starship captain and her first officer, played by Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green, both women of color. Very quickly, the comments section was filled with garden-variety Trekkie gripesthe Klingons looked weird, there was too much lens flare, the dialogue was hammy, the uniforms were non-canonical. Many commenters, though, were clearly appalled by the absence of white men in command positions. Where is the alpha male that has balls and doesnt take crap from anyone? one asked. Is everything going to have to have females in every fucking thing? another asked. A third person called Yeoh a reject from a overseas customer-support line. A fourth dubbed the show Star Trek: Feminist Lesbian Edition.

Two and a half years ago, in the very same corners of the Internet, there was a similar campaign against Star Wars: The Force Awakens, whose trailer featured a female protagonist and a black man wearing the iconic white carapace of a Storm Trooper. That incident was absurd enough, but in the case of Star Trek the outrage is even more confounding than usual. The franchises claim to fame,its central premise, is its advocacy for science, non-belligerence, and, above all, multiculturalism. In its fifty-year history, Star Trek has cornered the market on tolerance and cosmopolitanism. Even those who have never watched the original series, which aired in the late nineteen-sixties, likely know that it featured the first interracial kiss on network televisionbetween William Shatners Captain Kirk and Nichelle Nicholss Lieutenant Uhura.

And intergalactic office romance is really the least of it. Each successive Star Trek cast has been like a model United Nations. Nicholss black communications specialist worked alongside George Takeis Japanese helmsman and Walter Koenigs (admittedly campy) Russian navigator. Leonard Nimoys Spock was half-human, half-Vulcan, and he bore traces of the actors own upbringing in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Boston. The Vulcan hand greeting, for instance, which Nimoy invented, is the Hebrew letter shin, the symbol for the Shekhinah, a feminine aspect of the divine. The original series aired only a few years after the Cuban missile crisis, at the height of the Vietnam War and the space race, and its vision of a reconciled humanity was bold. Nichols, who considered leaving the show after the first season, has said thatshe was persuaded to stay onby Martin Luther King, Jr., who told her that he watched Star Trek with his wife and daughters.

Later manifestations of the franchise continued the tradition. The captain of the Enterprise in The Next Generation was a Frenchman from Bordeaux (though he spoke impeccable Oxbridge English). The chief engineer, Geordi La Forge, was black, and his colleagues on the bridge included an alien and an android. For seven seasons, T.N.G. explored much more than space: itsketched the contours of a modern utopiain which people, freed from material want, could pursue knowledge, justice, and the greater good. The series early-nineties spinoff, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, went even further. It was a sort of Casablanca in space, with characters from all races and worlds and cultures mingling, not always harmoniously, on a lonely outpost. Benjamin Sisko, the stations commanding officer, was a black man and a single father. His deputy was a female alien and former resistance fighter. And then there was Voyager, whose captain, played by Kate Mulgrew, was the only woman to serve as a central character in any of the Star Trek seriesuntil Yeoh and Martin-Green.

It is neither surprising nor especially interesting that Discovery has caused a conniption among the Bannonite mob. It is, however, a little ironic, because in many ways Star Trek falls short of the social-justice-warrior label. In the original series, for example, no one seemed bothered by the fact that short-skirted female crew brought the male senior officers their lunches, or that Captain Kirk seemed barely able to contain his sexual appetites. In T.N.G., La Forge kissesa white engineer, but only in holographic form. The series bartender, maternal and full of folksy alien wisdom, is played by a black woman, Whoopi Goldberg. Throughout the franchise, there is a complete absence of gay or even mildly gender-fluid characters in Starfleet uniforms. (That erasure was repaired, but only in passing, in the last movie, Star Trek Beyond.)

Indeed, Star Trek can often be seen as patronizing, if not conveniently delusional. The United Federation of Planets, despite its vaunted tolerance and inclusiveness, is mostly led by older white men. The explorers motives are represented as pure, unencumbered by cultural chauvinism, yet their science always prevails over aliens indigenous superstitions. By a strange and circuitous logic, the trolls who scream, White genocide! have espoused this very argument against the show. In effect, they are pining for the least appealing aspects of Star Trek, those that arise from unconscious slips and lingering prejudices, despite the writers best intentions. But it seems clear that they are fighting a losing battle. As the franchise continues to evolve to better reflect the tastes and the diversity of a global audience, the trolls will find it increasingly difficult to locate a safe space for their nativist fantasies, on Earth or among the stars.

See the rest here:
For Alt-Right Trolls, Star Trek: Discovery Is an Unsafe Space - The New Yorker

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Trumps Syria strike, while widely praised in the mainstream media, drewsignificant backlash from the presidents populist base. Now, five weeks later, Trumps first foreign trip has ushered in a new wave of criticism from his core group of supporters.

One week after the military action, British Infowars vlogger Paul Joseph Watson was joined on his Infowars show by Jack Posobiec, director at Citizens for Trump, where he explained why hed jumped Off the Trump train the week prior.

400,000 Syrians had died in this civil war over the past six years before the chemical weapons attack, he told Posobiec.Assad had been killing his own people for six years. . .its a civil war; thats what happens.

Watson also noted that at a news conference in the Turkish capital, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asserted on March 30 that the Syrian people would determineAssads fate.

What changed one week later? Watson asked. The only thing I can see is Bannon beingdemoted.

Posobiecs answer: A fundamental shift within the administration.

Its a fundamental shift basically with him out of the picture, and with [National Security Adviser] H.R. McMaster now there,he explained. H.R. McMaster is tied to [former director of the Central Intelligence Agency] David Petraeus . . . [and] a lot of people that were involved with the Obama administration and the Bush administration, so having these people in there allows for them to create a way where they can feed Trump any assessments, any intel they want without any conflicting views.

According to Mike Cernovich, Trump isnt draining the swamp, hes drowning in it. And the Pizzagate-pushing conspiracy theorist also attributes Trumps shift to McMaster.

More war is coming, and I dont know how to tell you the swamp is drowning Trump, he lamented.

On the other hand, theres been no shortage of ominous moments from Trumps first foreign trip, which kicked off with a record arms dealwith Saudi Arabia ($110 billion) on Saturday.

I think it was a bad idea to go to Saudi Arabia, Infowars commentator David Knight announced Monday. He then drew on some of the eerie symbolism viewers may have missed.

President Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi were all standing there holding this orb with our hands on it, Knight explained. Everybodys having a lot of fun with that picture, because they look pretty bad when theyre lit from the bottom . . . but what nobody is paying attention to is that that was all part of a ceremony about setting up a global organization.

Of course, the symbolism was not lost on everyone. As Vox summed up:

Think about it for a second: This is Donald Trump the guy who campaigned on banning Muslim immigration to the United States and replacing globalism in foreign policy with America First literally holding a globe surrounded by Muslims. Thats absurd!

I think hes not being very well served by the people who planned this trip,Knight added, turning to what he believed was the worst photo-op; a sword dance with the Saudis and administration officials.

I hope that. . .when they take these swords for the photo opportunities, that theyve wiped the blood off of them, Knight said, referencing beheadings. When you shake hands with people like that, sometimes you get blood on your hands, and we may wind up with blood on our hands in terms of this big arm deal, but of course [Trumps son-in-law] Jared Kushner was at the center of that.

Continued here:
The alt-right is furious at Trump for his foreign trip An error occurred. - Salon