Saturday, February 25, 2017

The Supernova 1987A occurred within the Milky Way galaxy.The galaxy that contains our solar system. Energy release that large near Earth interests me.

February 24, 2017
By Donna Weaver

Three decades ago, (click here) astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987....

It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs (168,000 ly) from Earth. This was close enough that it was easily visible to the naked eye and it could be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the closest observed supernova since SN 1604, which occurred in the Milky Way itself

Trump's comments about France can be viewed as inflammatory politics in the USA, but, it could equate to be more or less a battle in Europe.

December 6, 2016
By Peter Allen and Linda Willgress

France's far-right (click here) National Front topped the country's regional election vote on Sunday in a breakthrough that shakes up the country's political landscape. Above, National Front leader leader Marine Le Pen casts her vote at a polling station during the first round of votes on Sunday in Henin-Beaumont, northern France

February 25, 2017
By Rebecca Flood

Marine Le Pen, (click here) the leader of France's National Front (FN), is fighting to achieve a similar earthquake in France in the presidential elections in 2017.

But with her increasing appeal to the centre and the left of French politics, how much can she really be characterised as far-right?

Voters' perceptions and a toxic past

Marine Le Pen is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, former leader of the FN and a convicted racist, who last year repeated an old anti-Semitic slur that the Nazi gas chambers were "a detail of history".

Having grown up in a political home, accompanying him to meetings from the age of 13, Marine Le Pen was always going to struggle to shake off the far-right labell.

But she did denounce her father's comments in 2015, and effectively expelled him from the party. While her father was leader, the FN was the party that wanted to deport three million foreigners, the party of Holocaust denial and xenophobia. But under Marine Le Pen the FN began to distance itself from such controversial issues.      

"...We do not discriminate in this country based on religion." WE DO NOW.

There is a dynamic to this that can't be ignored and that is loyalty. This is the first time there has been a White Supremacist in the White House to the point of having his staff reflect those values. 

White Supremacists have been organized for a long time. There was no President or Congress for them, they simply are loyal to their ideology. That is partly what carried Trump into the White House. They blindly followed the ideology without regard to any other reality. That could occur in the country, with the ideology unleashed with an obvious figure head in Bannon, that is a fantastic realization for them.

So, in the case of Muhammad Ali, Jr. was this loyalty or simply lack of knowledge to the issue of the Trump ban?

February 24, 2017
By Chuck Strouse and Jerry Ianneli

Muhammad Ali Jr., (click here) the son of Muhammad Ali, was on his way back from Montego Bay, Jamaica, with his mother and Ali's first wife, Khalilah, when immigration officers detained him. Khalilah showed officers a picture of herself with her ex-husband, who died last June 3, so she was not detained. Ali Jr. had no such photo.

"This is an outrage," says Chris Mancini, a former federal prosecutor and friend of the family. "I don't know what is going on with Mr. Trump's claim that his ban is not religion-based. We do not discriminate in this country based on religion."

Ali Jr., age 44, had no criminal record and carries a United States passport, Mancini says. He recently moved to Deerfield Beach to live with his mother. Last year, Ali Jr. received a large share of his father's multimillion-dollar fortune....

...Mancini says the detention is an instance where a ban proposed by the Trump administration and overturned by both a trial court and an appeals court is nevertheless being enforced.