What to expect now that New York City is ‘sinking’

“I think New York City most represents what it is that America in general aspires to. It's big; it's dense. I've known this city from all of its social arcs. The best that's in America is yet to come. The worst that's in America is yet to come.”

— Harry Belafonte

 

By Alex P. Vidal

WHO escapes and who is left behind? No one knows actually.

But in the event New York City will continue to “sink” (reports said NYC is “sinking”), as feared in a recent study by the US Geological Survey and the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, most of us alive today and who live here will no longer be around, for sure.

We doubt, however, if the “City That Never Sleeps” will really follow the fate of the controversial City of Atlantis on the Greek island of Santorini, the Italian island of Sardinia or Cyprus, which disappeared after being destroyed by an earthquake and flood.

Unless it is sinking fast like the Titanic after hitting the iceberg, or like the P680-million Iloilo flyover project, NYC won’t be swallowed by the Hudson River yet and disappear from the map.

Just like the fear of a cometary impact and the catastrophic consequences of the climate change when the ozone layer deteriorates, the fear of New York City sinking as sea level rises are the same but people aren’t taking it seriously.

Not much in our lifetimes -- perhaps 1 in 10,000 -- but over thousands or millions of years, major impacts become pretty likely. Ancient craters on Earth's surface prove that large objects have hit Earth in the past, and there's no reason to think this won't continue in the future.

 

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As of this writing, most New Yorkers worry more about the debt ceiling talks between the White House and the GOP, which remained in limbo, rather than “the NYC is sinking” shocker that circulated in mainstream news.

Failing to increase the debt limit is a current event that would have catastrophic economic consequences all over the world, not just in the United States.

It would cause the government to default on its legal obligations–an unprecedented event in American history that will be felt by many people, while “the NYC is sinking” story is a future event in as far as consequences are concerned.

The “sinking” story spread even in the internet and social media after researchers found that the Big Apple’s 1,084,954 buildings have a combined mass of 760 billion kilograms (or 1.68 trillion pounds) distributed over an area of 778.2 kilometers and with an average building mass of 704,000 kilograms (1.55 million pounds).

In areas of soft, clay-rich soil and artificial fill, they found the greatest potential subsidence, ranging from 75 to 600 millimeters, with a median of 294 millimeters.

The lowest impact is in areas where all the foundations are anchored to bedrock, bringing subsidence close to zero.

Quoting the researchers, Rima Sabina Aouf of Dezeen said this subsidence adds to flood risk, which is already heightened in New York City due to sea level rise and increasing storm intensity.

"As coastal cities grow globally, the combination of construction densification and sea level rise imply increasing inundation hazard," they wrote.

"The point of the paper is to raise awareness that every additional high-rise building constructed at coastal, river, or lakefront settings could contribute to future flood risk, and that mitigation strategies may need to be included."

Titled The Weight of New York City: Possible Contributions to Subsidence From Anthropogenic Sources, the paper was published in the journal Earth's Future and authored by US Geological Survey geophysicist Tom Parsons and University of Rhode Island researchers Pei-Chin Wu, Meng (Matt) Wei and Steven D'Hondt.

 

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SEXUAL ABUSE. A child who was sexually and emotionally abused will develop eating disorders like bulimia, minus the countervailing purging behavior, and compulsive overeating, according to David M. Dunkley, a psychiatric researcher and clinical psychologist at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.

MAIN CULPRITS OF HEADACHE. If we're having frequent headaches and can't figure out what's causing them, let's take a peek into our fridge and pantry, says Brian Grosberg, M.D. The main culprits to avoid: Hot dogs, salami, bacon and other processed meats. They contain nitrates, a preservative that may cause headaches, perhaps by disrupting the amount of oxygen in our bloodstream.

FOR SENIORS. Study after study shows that  seniors who are most socially connected live longer and have a lower risk of Alzheimer's. Facebook is a great way to link up with old friends and find new ones.

VERY GOOD NEWS! A "magic pill" was expected to be out in the market. The pill is being developed by scientists that would allow people to live beyond 100 and be fit and healthy. Researchers have identified genes that extend life and prevent diseases including Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer, it was reported.

TREACHERY. Treacherous characters strike and implement their aggression when their targets are not prepared to deal with their savagery. These are the cowards that should be dealt with accordingly and blown to bits. Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander The Great were among the famous titans who baffled their adversaries and beat them to the pulp.

 

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Ernest Hemingway’s 7 Tips for Writing:

1: To get started, write one true sentence. “Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.’”

2: Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next. “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”

3: Never think about the story when you’re not working. “I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

4: When it’s time to work again, always start by reading what you’ve written so far. “When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start.”

5: Don’t describe an emotion—make it. “In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me...”

6: Use a pencil. “If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof.”

7: Be Brief. “It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.” (Source: History Cool Kids)

 

Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony charges

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THE wait was finally over May 30 afternoon when the New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump of all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records.

He is the first president in US history to be convicted of a felony.

Sentencing is scheduled on July 11, according to Judge Juan Merchan.

As a convicted felon, can Trump still run for president?

According to CNN, the US Constitution lays out just three requirements for presidential candidates. They must:

Be a natural born citizen.

Be at least 35 years old.

Have been a US resident for at least 14 years.

Trump meets all three requirements. There is, arguably, another criterion laid out in the 14th Amendment, where it states that no one who has previously taken an oath of office who engages in insurrection can be an officer of the US, CNN reported.

The US Supreme Court reportedly ruled earlier this year that Congress would have to pass a special law invoking this prohibition. That’s not happening any time soon.

“Can Trump still vote?” asked CNN.

It depends. Each state makes its own rules. Trump is now a Florida resident – and Florida voters, in 2018, overwhelmingly backed a referendum to reenfranchise convicted felons.

Neil Volz, deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an organization that works to help reenfranchise formerly incarcerated people, predicted Trump will have little problem voting since Florida actually defers to the jurisdiction of a felony conviction as to whether a felon can vote.

In New York, after a law passed in 2021, any convicted felon who is not incarcerated is eligible to register to vote.

PRISON TIME

CNN said even if the judge ultimately tried to give Trump prison time, it is highly unlikely that Trump’s right to appeal his conviction would be exhausted before Election Day. If, somehow, Trump was convicted in one of the two federal criminal cases against him before Election Day, that might be another story.

Each of the 34 counts was brought in connection with Trump’s role in reimbursing his former attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep her quiet about an extramarital affair she says she had with Trump a decade earlier.

Prosecutors say that payment was part of a wider conspiracy enacted by Trump and his allies from 2015 to 2017 to suppress negative stories about then-candidate Trump in a bid to boost his candidacy and keep damaging information from voters.

Trump, who is a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, pleaded not guilty to all counts during a roughly 45-minute arraignment at the Manhattan criminal courthouse Tuesday afternoon, during which he appeared somber and contemplative, declining to speak to cameras in the hallway outside of the courtroom. The former president was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury but the exact charges were unknown until the indictment was unsealed during the proceedings.

The charges have upended the American political landscape, and the ensuing court proceedings could last well into next year – affecting the race for the White House. Trump is reportedly next due in court in December for a pretrial hearing.

“From August 2015 to December 2017, the Defendant orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the Defendant’s electoral prospects,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a court filing.

“In order to execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. The participants also took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme,” the filing says.

BUSINESS RECORDS

In New York, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor but can be elevated to a felony if the act is committed with the intention of committing, aiding or concealing a second crime.

Bragg said during a news conference that the scheme was a bid to conceal violations of New York’s election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to illegally promote a candidate. Bragg also noted that the $130,000 payment exceeded the federal campaign contribution limit.

Cohen – who is identified in court filings as “Lawyer A” – pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2018 for his role in the payments and was sentenced to prison.

But the legal theory behind the elevation from misdemeanor to felony charges is untested, and Trump’s attorneys say they plan to move to dismiss all the charges against the former client.

Bragg has also been the target of blanket attacks by Republicans accusing him of punching up the charges and of prosecuting Trump with a political motivation.

Bragg defended his office against those allegations in a statement Tuesday and later during a press conference.

“Manhattan is home to the country’s most significant business market. We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct,” Bragg said in the statement. “As the Statement of Facts describes, the trail of money and lies exposes a pattern that, the People allege, violates one of New York’s basic and fundamental business laws. As this office has done time and time again, we today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.”

Prosecutors say Trump was part of a complicated effort to illegally disguise reimbursement checks made out to Cohen for the Daniels payment.

BRAG

On Oct. 26, 2016 – just days before the election and in the wake of the dissemination of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump was caught on film crassly bragging about sexual harassment – Cohen set up a shell corporation in New York after speaking with Trump on the phone, according to court document. Cohen then transferred money from his personal home equity line account into the shell company's account, which was subsequently transferred to an account belonging to Daniels’ lawyer.

After Trump’s election, Cohen and the then-chief financial officer of the Trump Organization agreed that Cohen would be reimbursed $420,000 – the original payment plus $50,000, which was then doubled so Cohen could claim the payment as income rather than reimbursement, according to the filing.

Trump, the chief financial officer and Cohen then agreed that the payment would be split up into monthly installments. Cohen would invoice the Trump Organization for legal services rendered in each month of 2017, as stipulated by a legal retainer agreement. But that would be a lie, according to documents – there never was a retainer agreement in place.

Trump and Cohen met in the Oval Office in February to finalize this plan, according to filings.

Over the rest of the year, Cohen was paid according to the plan. In total, 11 checks were issued, the first two of which were issued by a Trump Organization employee, falsely recorded and drawn from a trust that held the company’s assets while he was president.

The remaining nine checks were signed by Trump himself and drew directly from his bank account, prosecutors say. Each of the checks and stubs was accompanied by a false invoice.

The 34 felony counts Trump was charged with each represent a business record that Bragg says was falsified illegally in order to pay Cohen back.

‘CATCH-AND-KILL’

But the payment to Daniels was only one of three prosecutors listed as part of a wider, illegal catch-and-kill scheme that started in 2015.

In August of that year, just after Trump had announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump, Cohen and American Media Inc. Chief Executive David Pecker had a meeting at Trump Tower, during which Pecker agreed to be Trump’s “eyes and ears” and alert Cohen about any possible negative stories that could materialize about Trump.

Just months later, Pecker learned that a doorman was trying to sell a false story about a child he says Trump had out of wedlock. Pecker’s company bought the exclusive rights to the story for $50,000 in order to spike it, and, even when the story was revealed to be fake, did not release the doorman from the agreement at Cohen’s urging, according to filings. Pecker falsely recorded the payment in the company's business records.

The following year, another woman – listed as “Woman 1” in Tuesday’s court filings but widely assumed to be Playboy Model Karen McDougal – alleged an extramarital affair with Trump. Trump, Cohen and Pecker discussed the situation, and Pecker’s company paid McDougal $150,000 to silence her. American Media Inc. falsely recorded the payment in its ledgers, and Pecker was operating under the assumption that Trump would pay the company back, according to prosecutors.

Cohen and Trump discussed the reimbursement – Trump, at one point, asked Cohen, “So what do we got to pay for this? One fifty?” and suggested paying by cash, according to documents – but the reimbursement ultimately never took place.

GUILTY

Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violence for his role in both the Daniels and McDougal payments in 2018 and stated that he had committed the crime at Trump’s direction. Separately, American Media Inc. admitted its role in the payment to McDougal in a non-prosecution agreement.

According to prosecutors, Trump met with Pecker after his election but before the inauguration and thanked the media tycoon for his role in paying off the doorman and McDougal.

The next summer, in 2017, Trump invited Pecker to dinner at the White House as a sign of gratitude.

(With reports from Claire Hansen, USNews)

 

 

Harry is wrong

“If you want to understand today you have to search yesterday.”

—Pearl S. Buck

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

WHILE watching news on Youtube, I caught former presidential spokesman Harry Roque making a false allusion of two separate historical events that occurred nearly 60 years ago while he was delivering a spiel on SMNI, fugitive pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s TV network recently.

Roque said “we must learn a lesson from the ‘Invasion of Pigs’” when the event he claimed nearly triggered a third world war.

The defeated senatorial candidate was criticizing the Balikatan Exercises, an annual exercise between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and U.S. military designed to strengthen bilateral interoperability, capabilities, trust and cooperation built over decades of shared experiences.

Roque warned that the Philippines could be targeted by China in case a full-scale war erupted because the Americans had stationed a missile launcher in the Philippine soil for the Balikatan.

The same missile launcher issue nearly sparked a third world war, Roque said, in the “invasion of pigs” when the Soviet Union sent it to Cuba.

Was the missile launcher delivered to Havana really the cause of enmity that nearly sparked a third world war? The answer is yes.

Was it an “invasion of pigs” as what Roque had declared? The answer is no.

 

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ERROR NO. 1: There is no such animal as “invasion of pigs.” What Roque probably meant was the “Bay of Pigs Invasion” which occurred on April 17-20, 1961.

It was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba by Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, clandestinely financed and directed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

It had nothing to do whatsoever with the missile launcher crisis that nearly triggered a third world war that Roque was commenting.

ERROR NO. 2: The event related to that controversial missile launcher was known as “Cuban Missile Crisis” which occurred October 16-29, 1962, or more than a year after the “Bay of Pigs Invasion.”

It was not an “Invasion of Pigs” as Roque had claimed.

The United States and the Soviet Union came as close as they ever would to global nuclear war in the fall of 1962. Hoping to correct what he saw as a strategic imbalance with the United States, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev began secretly deploying medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles to Fidel Castro's Cuba.

 

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Once operational, these nuclear-armed weapons could have been used on cities and military targets in most of the continental United States. Before this happened, however, U.S. intelligence discovered Khrushchev's brash maneuver.

In what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy and an alerted and aroused American government, military, and public compelled the Soviets to remove not only their missiles, but also all of their offensive weapons, from Cuba.

Khrushchev, faced with the armed might of the United States and its allies, had little choice but to find some way out of the difficult situation in which he had placed himself and his country. President Kennedy did not press the advantage that the strength of U.S. and allied naval and military forces gave him.

Thus, the Soviet leader was able to peacefully disengage his nation from this most serious of Cold War confrontations.

A missile launcher, also known as a rocket launcher or warhead launcher, is a weapon that fires a high-speed projectile with an explosive warhead.

Missile launchers can be small enough for a single person to use, or large enough to be built into starships. They can be handheld and portable, or mounted on a vehicle.

 

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WE CAN'T DEPEND ON LEADERS WITH WEAK CHARACTER. Man's permanent value rests upon his dependability.

The first question asked is, "Can we depend upon this person?"

A man may be clever, capable and agreeable, but if you cannot depend upon him, you do not want him around.

To be dependable, we must be dependable in all things—little and big—at all times, in all places, under all circumstances.

We cannot be dependable if we have weak character and a weak will.

The dependable man keeps as straight in the dark as in the light. We know that wherever he is put, he will not lie, he will not steal, he will not cheat, he will not do any mean or contemptible thing.

LOVE THY SELF. The secret of attraction is to love yourself. Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others. They are open to gestures of love. They think about love and express their love in every action. They know that love is not a mere sentiment, but the ultimate truth at the heart of the universe—Dr. Deepak Chopra.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)