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September 2017

Wait a second. I thought big banks are bad. Back in 2009, President Barack Obama called those on Wall Street "fat cats," which helped establish an uneasy relationship between banks and the White House. But less than a year out of office, Obama has had NO problem taking money from said "fat cats" for his speeches. Obama cannot run for president again, but remains an influence and just how will this affect a party that's already in shambles?

Bruce Gilley of Portland State University (image above) published an article titled “The Case for Colonialism” in the decidedly anti-Colonial journal Third World Quarterly (home of the Edward Said Award). In its self-description, Third World Quarterly writes:
TWQ examines all the issues that affect the many Third Worlds and is not averse to publishing provocative and exploratory articles, especially if they have the merit of opening up emerging areas of research that have not been given sufficient attention.
Gilley is no newcomer to controversy.

A joint report released last week by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (JPR), a London-based think tank, and the Community Security Trust (CST), the communal Jewish defense body in the UK, found an “unambiguous association” between antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes in Britain. The report—an in-depth investigation and analysis of animus toward Jews, the role of hatred directed toward Israel, and the prevalence of bigotry across the political spectrum in Britain today—makes for a sobering read.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that closing the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, is under review after numerous diplomats have suffered health problems due to possible sonic attacks. From The Associated Press:
"We have it under evaluation," Tillerson said of a possible embassy closure. "It's a very serious issue with respect to the harm that certain individuals have suffered. We've brought some of those people home. It's under review."

On Friday morning, a bomb was detonated in the London Underground near Parsons Green.  Two men have since been arrested, Prime Minister Teresa May has downgraded the UK threat level from critical to severe, and British police are searching the Surrey home of an elderly couple who fostered "refugee children."  The two men arrested are reportedly aged 18 and 21. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Investigators probing a bomb blast that injured more than two dozen people in London’s subway last week on Sunday combed through a house in this suburban town owned by elderly foster parents that neighbors said had recently been caring for two “refugees.”

Four U.S. female tourists were attacked with acid in France's Marseille main train station on Sunday. Authorities arrested a woman afterwards. From The Associated Press:
Two of the tourists were injured in the face in the attack in the city’s main Saint Charles train station and one of them has a possible eye injury, a spokeswoman for the Marseille prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press in a phone call.

NASA scientists and fans of space science said their goodbyes to the Cassini spacecraft Friday, as it plunged into Saturn and concluded a successful 20-year mission to Earth's spectacular sister planet.
...One of the last pieces of data captured by Cassini was an infrared image of the place into which it took its final plunge. The image, taken 15 hours before the spacecraft's demise, reveals a spot on Saturn's dark side just north of the planet's equator where the spacecraft disintegrated shortly after losing contact with Earth.

In August, we covered a report that a statue of Father Junipero Serra in a park across from Mission San Fernando had been vandalized, as it was spray-painted red and the word “murder” written on the Serra in white. Now, Old Mission Santa Barbara's Serra statue has been beheaded and coated in red paint:
The towering statue of St. Junipero Serra had stood at the foot of a staircase leading into the Old Mission Santa Barbara for years.