10 Tipping Points Which Could Potentially Plunge the World Into a Horrific Economic Nightmare
The global economy has become so incredibly unstable at this point that it is not going to take much to plunge the world into a horrific economic nightmare. The foundations of the world economic system are so decayed and so corrupted that even a stiff breeze could potentially topple the entire structure over. Over the past couple of months a constant parade of bad economic news has come streaming in from Europe, Asia and the United States. Signs of an impending economic slowdown are everywhere. So what “tipping point” will trigger the next global economic downturn? Nobody knows for sure, but potential tipping points are all around us.
Today, the global economic system is even more vulnerable than it was back in 2008. Virtually none of the systemic problems that contributed to the 2008 collapse have been fixed.
Mark Mobius, the head of the emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management, was recently was quoted in Forbes as saying the following…
“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”
The “financial reform” law that Barack Obama and the Congress passed a while back was a complete and total joke. They might as well have written the law on toilet paper for all the good that it is doing.
We did not learn from our mistakes and our future economic lessons are going to be even more painful.
The world is drowning in a mountain of debt, the global financial system is packed to the gills with toxic derivatives, everyone is leveraged to the hilt and the dominoes could start falling at any time.
I am not the only one that is warning that another financial collapse is coming. In fact, a whole lot of people have been warning about the next financial collapse lately.
So what will the tipping point for the next collapse be?
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The following is a brief excerpt from a recent interview with Dmitry Orlov about the coming economic collapse that was posted on shtfplan.com…
First you have financial collapse, which is basically the volume of debt that has to be taken on in order for the economy to continue functioning, cannot continue. We’re seeing that right now in Greece, we’re probably going to see that in Japan, we’re definitely at a point now in the United States where even if you raised the income tax to 100 percent, there’s absolutely no way of covering the liabilities of the U.S. federal government. So, we’re at that point now but the workout of the financial collapse is not all quite there. We don’t quite have a worthless currency but that’s in the works.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Says European Debt is a Threat
(AGI) Washington — After meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House, President Barack Obama has said that Europe’s debt crisis is a threat and must be contained. They both agreed that the problems encountered by Greece, Portugal and Ireland, “must not put at risk the revival of the global economy.” President Obama described the European crisis as the wind slowing down USA economic growth .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor Resigning
Austan Goolsbee, head of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, is returning to his University of Chicago post. His departure shakes up the White House team as the nation’s recovery sputters.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Government Rejects EU Over Lowering of Taxes
(ANSAmed) — MADRID, JUNE 7 — The Spanish government has rejected the European Commission’s recommendations over the “short-term” lowering of national insurance tax, followed by the increase of VAT and other consumer taxes in order to boost competition among businesses and reduce work costs. This is according to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Elena Salgado, who told the press assembled at the Spanish Senate that the Madrid government had no plans to review its budget forecast for 2012.
In its analysis of next year’s projected budget, the European executive suggested that the government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero should consider reducing social contributions, increasing other taxes elsewhere. It was also recommended that wage increases should be linked to output by workers rather than inflation.
The European Commission also insisted on the need for the Autonomous Communities to exert greater control over public spending and not to put state accounts at risk. Greater reforms of the employment market and pensions were also demanded. Brussels says that the Spanish government’s growth estimates and those relative to cuts in public deficit are too optimistic. The European Commission’s calculations show that Spain would not reach its deficit reduction targets in either 2011 or 2012, with the figure closing in on 6.3% and 5.3% of GDP respectively, three tenths of a percent above this year’s target, and a whole percentage point higher than next year’s objective, both of which have been fixed in concordance with the EU. The European Commission, however, does consider the “rhythm of the budget bill” to be “adequate”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Coming Economic Hell for American Families
Tens of millions of American families are about to go through economic hell and most of them don’t even realize it. Most Americans don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about things like “monetary policy” or “economic cycles”. The vast majority of people just want to be able to get up in the morning, go to work and provide for their families. Most Americans realize that things seem “harder” these days, but most of them also have faith that things will eventually get better. Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get any better. The number of good jobs continues to decline, the number of Americans losing their homes continues to go up, people are having a much more difficult time paying their bills and our federal government is drowning in debt. Sadly, this is only just the beginning.
Since the financial collapse of 2008, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government have taken unprecedented steps to stimulate the economy. But even with all of those efforts, we are still living in an economic wasteland.
So what is going to happen when the next wave of the economic crisis hits?
During one recent interview, Peter Schiff made the following statement…
If you look at the economic relapse that’s going on right now, look at Friday’s abysmal job numbers, look at the housing numbers, understand that all of this is taking place with record monetary and fiscal stimulus. What happens if we remove those supports?
At the end of June, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program is slated to end. The U.S. Congress and state legislatures from coast to coast are talking about budget cuts. The amount of borrowing and spending that has been going on is clearly unsustainable, but will the U.S. economy start shrinking again once the current “financial sugar high” has worn off?
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Funding for Future Promises Lags by Trillions
The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
[…]
The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $534,000 per household. That’s more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.
“The (federal) debt only tells us what the government owes to the public. It doesn’t take into account what’s owed to seniors, veterans and retired employees,” says accountant Sheila Weinberg, founder of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, a Chicago-based group that advocates better financial reporting. “Without accurate accounting, we can’t make good decisions.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A River of Race Runs Through It
We have discovered that just about anything you can say about Obama, besides ‘Messiah’ is some sort of racist code word. Two years it was revealed that calling him a socialist is racist. This week we learned that calling him European is also a slur. Calling him a ‘European Socialist’ might just qualify as a hate crime.
This isn’t really about racism. If it were, much more overtly racist comments made in private by top Democrats like Harry ‘light-skinned with no negro dialect’ Reid or Bill ‘Obama would be getting us coffee’ Clinton, would have lasted for more than a 5 minute news cycle of outrage. It’s about the political uses of race. The bigotry farming that makes racism into a constant part of the political landscape.
To Democrats, racism isn’t a problem. It’s a solution. Their speeches about looking forward to the end of racism, are as genuine as oil executives talking about the day when we get all our energy from the sun. Sure it sounds good in theory, but it would also put them out of business. One day we’ll all join hands and sing about brotherhood. But today we’ve got to go on MSNBC and explain how objecting to higher taxes is coded racism.
The Democrats have played both sides of the racial divide going on a century and a half. They have been the Klansmen and the civil rights activists. The bully club boys and the reformers. If you can think of a position on race, you can find a Democrat hiding behind it. In politics they call that ‘divide and conquer’. And from segregation to desegregation, that has been their game. Create and exploit divisions. Then promise to heal them.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Are Ridiculous Airport Security Measures Killing Airline Profits?
Over the past couple of years, the attitude of U.S. consumers towards flying has shifted dramatically. Once upon a time most Americans looked forward to flying, but thanks to rising airfares, horrific fees and ridiculous airport security measures that has changed. In particular, the new airport security scanners that can look underneath our clothing and the new “enhanced pat-downs” have caused many Americans to decide to give up air traveling for good. It is being projected that airline profits are going to be way down in 2011. Could this partially be due to the fact that these ridiculous airport security measures are chasing Americans away from the airports?
According to the International Air Transport Association, profits for the global airline industry will only be about $4 billion this year. Last year, the airline industry made $18 billion. Things look particularly bleak in the North American region.
Of course rising oil prices and global economic turmoil are contributing factors, but there are also millions of Americans out there today that have now decided that they simply are not going to fly unless they absolutely have to.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Berkeley Lab Researchers Create Nanoscale Waveguide for Future Photonics
The creation of a new quasiparticle called the “hybrid plasmon polariton” may throw open the doors to integrated photonic circuits and optical computing for the 21st century. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have demonstrated the first true nanoscale waveguides for next generation on-chip optical communication systems.
“We have directly demonstrated the nanoscale waveguiding of light at visible and near infrared frequencies in a metal-insulator-semiconductor device featuring low loss and broadband operation,” says Xiang Zhang, the leader of this research. “The novel mode design of our nanoscale waveguide holds great potential for nanoscale photonic applications, such as intra-chip optical communication, signal modulation, nanoscale lasers and bio-medical sensing.”
Zhang, a principal investigator with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and director of the University of California at Berkeley’s Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (SINAM), is the corresponding author of a paper published by Nature Communications that describes this work titled “Experimental Demonstration of Low-Loss Optical Waveguiding at Deep Sub-wavelength Scales.” Co-authoring the paper with Zhang were Volker Sorger, Ziliang Ye, Rupert Oulton, Yuan Wang, Guy Bartal and Xiaobo Yin.
In this paper, Zhang and his co-authors describe the use of the hybrid plasmon polariton, a quasi-particle they conceptualized and created, in a nanoscale waveguide system that is capable of shepherding light waves along a metal-dielectric nanostructure interface over sufficient distances for the routing of optical communication signals in photonic devices. The key is the insertion of a thin low-dielectric layer between the metal and a semiconductor strip.
“We reveal mode sizes down to 50-by-60 square nanometers using Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) at optical wavelengths,” says Volker Sorger a graduate student in Zhang’s research group and one of the two lead authors on the Nature Communications paper. “The propagation lengths were 10 times the vacuum wavelength of visible light and 20 times that of near infrared.” The high-technology world is eagerly anticipating the replacement of today’s electronic circuits in microprocessors and other devices with circuits based on the transmission of light and other forms of electromagnetic waves. Photonic technology, or “photonics,” promises to be superfast and ultrasensitive in comparison to electronic technology.
“To meet the ever-growing demand for higher data bandwidth and lower power consumption, we need to reduce the energy required to create, transmit and detect each bit of information,” says Sorger. “This requires reducing physical photonic component sizes down beyond the diffraction limit of light while still providing integrated functionality.”
Until recently, the size and performance of photonic devices was constrained by the interference that arises between closely spaced light waves. This diffraction limit results in weak photonic-electronic interactions that can only be avoided through the use of devices much larger in size than today’s electronic circuits. A breakthrough came with the discovery that it is possible to couple photons with electrons by squeezing light waves through the interface between a metal/dielectric nanostructure whose dimensions are smaller than half the wavelengths of the incident photons in free space.
Directing waves of light across the surface of a metal nanostructure generates electronic surface waves — called plasmons — that roll through the metal’s conduction electrons (those loosely attached to molecules and atoms). The resulting interaction between plasmons and photons creates a quasi-particle called a surface plasmon polariton(SPP) that can serve as a carrier of information. Hopes were high for SPPs in nanoscale photonic devices because their wavelengths can be scaled down below the diffraction limit, but problems arose because any light signal loses strength as it passes through the metal portion of a metal-dielectric interface.
“Until now, the direct experimental demonstration of low-loss propagation of deep sub-wavelength optical modes was not realized due to the huge propagation loss in the optical mode that resulted from the electromagnetic field being pushed into the metal,” Zhang says. “With this trade-off between optical confinement and metallic losses, the use of plasmonics for integrated photonics, in particular for optical interconnects, has remained uncertain.”
To solve the problem of optical signal loss, Zhang and his group proposed the hybrid plasmon polariton (HPP) concept. A semiconductor (high-dielectric) strip is placed on a metal interface, just barely separated by a thin oxide (low-dielectric) layer. This new metal-oxide-semiconductor design results in a redistribution of an incoming light wave’s energy. Instead of being concentrated in the metal, where optical losses are high, some of the light wave’s energy is squeezed into the low dielectric gap where optical losses are substantially less compared to the plasmonic metal.
“With this design, we create an HPP mode, a hybrid of the photonic and plasmonic modes that takes the best from both systems and gives us high confinement with low signal loss,” says Ziliang Ye, the other lead authors of the Nature Communications paper who is also a graduate student in Zhang’s research group. “The HPP mode is not only advantageous for down-scaling physical device sizes, but also for delivering novel physical effects at the device level that pave the way for nanolasers, as well as for quantum photonics and single-photon all-optical switches.”
The HPP waveguide system is fully compatible with current semiconductor/CMOS processing techniques, as well as with the Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) platform used today for photonic integration. This should make it easier to incorporate the technology into low-cost, large-scale integration and manufacturing schemes. Sorger believes that prototypes based on this technology could be ready within the next two years and the first actual products could be on the market within five years.
“We are already working on demonstrating an all-optical transistor and electro-optical modulator based on the HPP waveguide system,” Sorger says. “We’re also now looking into bio-medical applications, such as using the HPP waveguide to make a molecular sensor.”
[Note: Optical computing is one of the few potential candidates that could provide the massive data rates and processing speeds necessary for supremely demanding applications like artificial intelligence, autonomously piloted fighter jet military aircraft, large-scale freeway speed traffic control of driverless vehicles, and even “hands off” autopilot control of personal automotive transportation.
Ordinary silicon-based integrated circuits are rapidly reaching all sorts of physical barriers. Constant miniaturization has finally surpassed the dielectric potential of silicon oxide gate insulators and forced adoption of high K dielectrics like zirconium or hafnium oxides that are being deposited in layers that are sometimes several dozen atoms thick.
Here are some notes from another posting of mine about silicon-based optical computing:
Optical computers promise operational speeds that will be orders of magnitude beyond what current solid state systems offer. One example of an application ideally suited to light-based computing is the optical image comparator. Such a system could accept a frame sequence of high density (very complex) images and almost instantaneously detect any discrepancies between them. Motion detection, monitoring of cellular and biological processes or surface reactions, air traffic control and analysis of satellite reconnaissance are among just a few of the uses for an optical image comparator.
Ordinary digitally-based machine vision systems typically rely upon a relatively large array of software macro routines to detect frame-to-frame shifts in position or appearance. Along with edge detection and foreground or background subtraction, these systems use bulk quantity high order calculations to extract useful imaging data. Once analog to digital conversion of CCD (Charge Coupled Device) image detector signals are added into the system’s cycle time, the overall processing speed is compromised quite severely.
Optical image comparators would eliminate the crucial data processing bottlenecks involved for time-critical applications like real-time vehicle guidance that is required for “hands off” automotive navigation and other high speed image processing applications.
At present, entirely optical component computers have yet to be realized. Eliminating all electrical signals within a computing system presents challenges that exceed existing technological capability. Therefore, current approaches center upon hybrid systems that use both electronic and optical subsystems within a single computing mainframe.
A vital advance in this area has been the development of silicon-based lasers. The vast majority of solid state lasers, known as Laser Light Emitting Diodes (Laser LEDs), are based upon III-V compounds typically involving various combinations of arsenic doped gallium-indium alloys. The term III-V (“three five”), refers to the location of these compounds on the periodic table of the elements. While this technology provides relatively inexpensive electro-optic devices, III-V compounds do not lend themselves well to the fabrication of low-cost digital circuitry. Computational electronics based on III-V compounds can provide exceptional processing speeds but are difficult to construct in the dense format required for microelectronics and exhibit elevated thermal dissipation due to high power consumption.
Silicon-based lasers will integrate directly into existing microcircuit designs and provide a critical “bridge” technology as computational systems slowly evolve over towards having a majority of optical components. Another recent development is “black silicon”. By using laser surface-implantation of sulfur dopants the usually poor light sensitivity of silicon has been overcome and this has opened up the promise of low-cost solid state imaging and detection systems that are directly integrated into their data processing devices.
These two advances will open the door to VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) silicon-based circuits that have laser outputs and “black silicon” photo-detector inputs which transmit chip-to-chip information via fiberoptic connections at very high speeds with high immunity to noise and other forms of electrical interference. Not only will these optical transmission systems consume less power but, due to the multi-mode properties of fiberoptics, a number of signals at different wavelengths of light can be simultaneously transmitted and received using a single cable. All of this promises very fast high reliability computing systems that are more power efficient at the same time.
This set of breakthrough technologies represent fundamental advances without which high speed applications like artificial intelligence, mobile robotics, machine vision and other computation intensive systems simply are not cost effective or feasible. — Z]
| — Hat tip: Zenster | [Return to headlines] |
China Wants to Construct a 50 Square Mile Self-Sustaining City South of Boise, Idaho
Thanks to the trillions of dollars that the Chinese have made flooding our shores with cheap products, China is now in a position of tremendous economic power. So what is China going to do with all of that money? One thing that they have decided to do is to buy up pieces of the United States and set up “special economic zones” inside our country from which they can continue to extend their economic domination. One of these “special economic zones” would be just south of Boise, Idaho and the Idaho government is eager to give it to them. China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach for short) plans to construct a “technology zone” south of Boise Airport which would ultimately be up to 50 square miles in size. The Chinese Communist Party is the majority owner of Sinomach, so the 10,000 to 30,000 acre “self-sustaining city” that is being planned would essentially belong to the Chinese government. The planned “self-sustaining city” in Idaho would include manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail centers and large numbers of homes for Chinese workers. Basically it would be a slice of communist China dropped right into the middle of the United States.
According to the Idaho Statesman, the idea would be to build a self-contained city with all services included. It would be modeled after the “special economic zones” that currently exist in China.
Perhaps the most famous of these “special economic zones” is Shenzhen. Back in the 1970s, Shenzhen was just a very small fishing village. Today it is a sprawling metropolis of over 14 million people.
If the Chinese have their way, we will soon be seeing these “special economic zones” pop up all over the United States.
So exactly who is “Sinomach”?
The following description of the company comes directly from the website of Sinomach…
With approval of the State Council, China National Machinery Industry Corporation (SINOMACH) was established in January 1997. SINO-MACH is a large scale, state-owned enterprise group under the supervision of the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
As you can see, Sinomach is basically an arm of the Chinese government.
The borrower is always the servant of the lender, and now China is buying up America.
[…]
In 2010, China had a “current account balance” of over 272 billion dollars, which was the largest in the world.
In 2010, the United States had a “current account balance” of negative 561 billion dollars. According to the CIA world factbook, that put us in last place in the entire world. In fact, our negative current account balance was more than 9 times larger than anyone else in the world. If you go check out this chart it will give you a really good idea of how nightmarish our trade situation has become.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Evidence Broadens Obama Natural Born Conspiracy
Evidence that we have a fraud and a usurper currently residing in the people’s White House is overwhelming, despite the overt lack of journalistic investigating on the part of the American press. But now new evidence indicates that the conspiracy to carry out that fraud was much broader than originally thought.
The story of whom and what Barack Hussein Obama II really is — is a forty-year story that requires a book, not a column, to tell. Strong evidence suggests that he was being groomed from a very young age for the moment in history that would end American supremacy in the world, and usher in a new era of Global Marxist Governance.
But there was a major hurdle that had to be overcome — the U.S. Constitution, in this case, Article II — Section I — Clause V specifically, which requires that “no person except a natural-born citizen of the United States” can hold the office of President. — Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States…and may not even be a legal citizen of the United States. So, how can he be President?
This column focuses upon the period 2003-2008 and the political maneuvers that took place in order to make way for America’s first unconstitutional resident of the White House.
Efforts to Eliminate the Natural Born Requirement (2003-2005)
Proving that the players involved knew the correct definition of natural born citizen borrowed from the Law of Nations by our founders — 1) those born in the country, of parents who are citizens; 2) those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights; 3) The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; 4) in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen. — that they knew Barack Hussein Obama II did not meet that definition as a foreign or dual citizen via his father’s British citizenship and that they worked feverishly to find a way around this constitutional requirement for office, as Obama was about to become president…
The effort to remove the natural-born citizen requirement from the U.S. Constitution actually began in 1975 — when Democrat House Rep. Jonathon B. Bingham, [NY-22] introduced a constitutional amendment under H.J.R. 33 which called for the outright removal of the natural-born requirement for president found in Article II of the U.S. Constitution — “Provides that a citizen of the United States otherwise eligible to hold the Office of President shall not be ineligible because such citizen is not a natural born citizen.”
Bingham’s first attempt failed and he resurrected H.J.R. 33 in 1977 under H.J.R. 38, again failing to gain support from members of congress. Bingham was a Yale Law grad and member of the secret society Skull and Bones, later a lecturer at Columbia Law and thick as thieves with the United Nations via his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations.
Bingham’s work lay dormant for twenty-six years when it was resurrected again in 2003 as Democrat members of Congress made no less than eight (8) attempts in twenty-two (22) months, to either eliminate the natural-born requirement, or redefine natural-born to accommodate Barack Hussein Obama II in advance of his rise to power. The evidence is right in the congressional record…
[…]
From June 11, 2003 to February 28, 2008, there had been eight (8) different congressional attempts to alter Article II — Section I — Clause V — natural born citizen requirements for president in the U.S. Constitution, all of them failing in committee — All of it taking placing during Barack Obama’s rise to political power and preceding the November 2008 presidential election.
In politics, there are no coincidences… not of this magnitude.
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However, in the McCain resolution is also this language — “Whereas the Constitution of the United States requires that, to be eligible for the Office of the President, a person must be a ‘natural born Citizen’ of the United States; — Whereas the term ‘natural born Citizen’, as that term appears in Article II, Section 1, is not defined in the Constitution of the United States;”
The U.S. Constitution is not a dictionary. The definition of “is” is not in the constitution either. Yet this is the text that would later be issued in Congressional Research Service talking points memos distributed to members of congress, to protect an individual that all members of congress know and understand to be an “unconstitutional” resident of the people’s White House — Barack Hussein Obama II.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Expert: Obama Doc is ‘Proof’ — of Fraud
Typeface analysis shows images come from different machines
The online image of a Hawaiian “Certificate of Live Birth” was trumpeted by the White House when it was released on April 27 as “proof positive” that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
Now an expert in typefaces and typography says it sure was “proof,” but not of what the White House would have wanted.
Paul Irey, a retired professional typographer with 50 years experience in his business, says an analysis of the typefaces used in the Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate that the White House released on April 27 reveals it absolutely to be a forgery.
“My analysis proves beyond a doubt that it would be impossible for the different letters that appear in the Obama birth certificate to have been typed by one typewriter,” Irey told WND.
“Typewriters in 1961 could not change the size and shape of a letter on the fly like that,” he said. “This document is definitely a forgery.”
Irey acknowledges that an IBM Selectric typewriter could have produced different typefaces in a given document, but only if the Selectric ball was changed every time a different typeface letter was struck which would be unlikely to have been done to produce the word “Student,” for example, that had two different styles of the lower case “t.”
“This would have been a cumbersome procedure and the average hospital clerk typist would have no reason to change typeface with each individual letter in preparing a birth certificate,” he noted.
Additionally, he argued, IBM only introduced the Selectric in July 1961.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Neighbors of Proposed West Boynton Mosque Express Outrage
Some neighbors of a proposed mosque west of Boynton Beach said in a meeting on Tuesday that they were outraged that the house of worship would be built without their input.
About 40 residents attended the informational meeting held at the Lantana Road Branch Library and hosted by the Coalition of Boynton West Residential Associations, which represents about 90 housing developments in the area.
However, Gateway Palms, the community most affected by the project at 8101 S. Military Trail, is not a COBWRA member. Those residents came out in droves and were upset.
The proposed 2.78-acre site, just north of Le Chalet Boulevard, will be home to the Al-Amin Center of Florida. No representatives from the congregation were present at the meeting.
The congregation’s architect, Saleh Elroweny, of the Innovative Group, said construction could begin within six months. His firm has built about 10 mosques in South Florida, he said.
“How is it that all these plans have been approved without one notice of public hearing from the county?” Gateway Palms resident Sharon Vatter said. “I feel this has been rammed down our throats and we’ve had no say in the process.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NJ Supreme Court: Online Posters Don’t Have Same Source Protections as Mainstream Journalists
No shield law for message boards posters
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The New Jersey Supreme Court says people posting in online message boards don’t have the same protections for sources as mainstream journalists.
The court ruled Tuesday that New Jersey’s shield law for journalists does not apply to such message boards.
The case involved a New Jersey-based software company named Too Much Media. It sued a Washington state blogger for defamation and wanted her to reveal sources she cited on message board posts.
Shellee Hale claimed customer information was compromised and that she should be protected from revealing her sources.
New Jersey’s highest court says online message boards are little more than forums for discussion and don’t fit the definition of news media as described by the law.
| — Hat tip: heroyalwhyness | [Return to headlines] |
Police Raid Home Where ‘Bodies of Thirty Children Are Buried’
Police have found the bodies of up to 30 children buried in a mass grave at a home in Texas, it has been reported.
Officers from Liberty County, in Texas, were tipped off about the alleged mass grave, located in a rural county east of Houston.
Up to 30 dismembered bodies are thought to have been discovered at the home by authorities, with the majority thought to be the corpses of children.
The FBI are investigating and about 15 police cars and sniffer dogs are on the scene, at an intersection of two roads between Hardin and Daisetta.
According to law enforcement agents at least 20 bodies have already been dug up by authorities.
A federal source told CNN at least 20 had been retrieved while a CBS source said police had found ‘a lot of bodies’.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Russian Television Host Closes Down Jefferson Memorial
An employee of Moscow-funded Russia Today and a camera crew from the channel were part of an effort last Saturday that closed down the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. in the name of free speech. One can guess at the reaction by Moscow authorities if employees of the Voice of America had disrupted access to Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square.
The incident demonstrates that the Cold War is back, and that Vladimir Putin’s Russia has become increasingly aggressive in using a state-funded TV channel as a weapon of the information war. What is unique is Russia Today television’s brazen use of a disgruntled U.S. Marine veteran, Adam Kokesh, as a front man in this assault on America’s history and founding fathers. Caught on camera, Kokesh candidly admitted that he indeed is a Russian agent of influence and a member of the Moscow-funded “resistance” to the U.S. Government on American soil. A camera crew from Russia Today or “RT,” as it now likes to call itself, was there to record his anticipated confrontation with the police.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Terrorist: What Happens When Allah Doesn’t Answer
‘I was so blind that the good things looked dark and the bad things looked light’
Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series about Kamal Saleem, a onetime terrorist who abandoned violence for Christianity.
Trained from childhood to fight in jihad for the cause of Allah, former terrorist Kamal Saleem says he learned early to hate Christians and Jews. The response he got from Christians, however, changed his life.
The former soldier for Allah says in his biography that he was recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood for jihad and completed his first terrorist assignment when he was 7 years old.
Saleem says that with his upbringing, it was only natural that he would grow up with a desire to bring the West under the control of Shariah law, and, in fact, he was dispatched to Europe, then to the U.S., on that mission.
But a 1985 traffic accident created a detour.
“My car was very small and it has a T-top, so when the 18-wheeler broad-sided me, I ejected from car and landed on my head in a mud hole upside down,” Saleem related.
[…]
Saleem admits the doctors and hospital staff were introducing him to something he had never seen. He says he was being shown the unconditional love of God, something that is foreign to Islam.
“In Islam, everything is conditional. For example, in the Quran, there is not one place where Allah says ‘I love my people,’ not once. The word love is not mentioned in the Quran,” Saleem said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up in Arms
Have no doubt that this plan is very real, with strong Obama administration support.
It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted — our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.
What, exactly, does the intended agreement entail?
While the terms have yet to be made public, if passed by the U.N. and ratified by our Senate, it will almost certainly force the U.S. to:
1. Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership.
2. Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government of course).
3. Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull — one single “bang” manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp).
4. Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.
5. In short, overriding our national sovereignty, and in the process, providing license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Belgian Jewish Community Surprised by Israeli Deputy Minister’s Visit to Flemish Extreme-Right Politician
ANTWERP (EJP)—-Belgian Jews reacted with surprise at news that a member of the Israeli government met this week with a leader of the Flemish extreme-right party Vlaams Belang in Antwerp.
Ayoob Kara, a Druze who is Deputy Minister for the Development of Galilee and the Negev, met with Filip Dewinter who hosted him in the Flemish parliament followed by a meeting with other European extreme-rightist politicians and a visit to the heavily Muslim populated area of Antwerp North.
According to the Flemish party, the visit came several months after a visit of Dewinter in Israel.
At a joint press conference Dewinter explained the need to warn against the growing Islamization of the West.
The Israeli embassy reacted with surprise and embarrassment.
An embassy spokesperson told the Joods Actueel weekly magazine published in Antwerp: “We have learned about the visit through the press, we were not aware of this visit.”
He insisted that this was a private visit by Ayoob Kara Kara, which was later confirmed by Mark Regev, spokesman of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Deputy Kara is in Belgium in his personal capacity and his visit does not reflect government policy,” said Regev.
But the local Jewish community says the visit risks to severely embarrass the community and Israel. “This visit is very damaging for us,” said Michael Freilich, editor in chief of Joods Actueel.
He said: “Israel and the Jewish community are not at war with Islam, we are at war with extremists, and that’s a quite a different thing. Singling out a religion, as the Vlaams Belang does, inevitably brings back dark memories of a not too distant past where it was Jews who were persecuted because of their religion. Is this the message we want to send to Europe? That Israel follows the racist ideology of Europe’s most notorious bigots?”
The Jewish community also stressed that it was precisely the Vlaams Belang party that proposed last month a bill in the Belgian Senate calling for amnesty for Belgian collaborators of the Nazis during WWII.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Bans Michael Savage — Welcomes Castroite Butchers
In today’s Britain what’s left of the Magna Carta only work s in favor of actual Islamic terrorists.
After two years of legal wrangling radio-host Michael Savage is still banned from setting foot in Britain. The original ban handed down in May 2009 was explained by former Labor Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. “Coming to the U.K. is a privilege,” she said, “and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values and who foster extremist views, as I want them to know that they are not welcome here. Mr. Savage engages in unacceptable behavior by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred.”
The current “Conservative” British administration of David Cameron holds fast to the ban. “Your client has not provided any evidence to show that he did not commit the unacceptable behaviour that caused the decision to exclude him,” recently wrote British Gov. spokesman Michael Atkins to Michael Savage’s attorney.
Instead of the false contrition, groveling and confessions that Stalin, Mao and Che Guevara demanded from the subjects they accused of “thought crimes,” (before murdering them) Michael Savage had sought to repudiate his listing alongside terrorists and Nazis by resorting to the tenets of Western jurisprudence and presenting evidence to the contrary.
“His bad” some might quip regarding the strategy. In today’s Britain, what’s left of the Magna Carta only works in favor of actual Islamic terrorists.
One month after insulting and banning Michael Savage in 2009, Britain opened her arms to Che Guevara’s daughter, Aleida. The occasion was a celebration in London titled Cuba50, billed as “the biggest European celebration in the 50th anniversary year of the Cuban Revolution. “In London’s expansive Barbican Centre, Britain threw the continent’s biggest party commemorating fifty years of Castro’s Stalinist regime, which jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s, murdered political prisoners at a higher rate than pre-war Hitler’s, and came closest of anyone to plunging the world into nuclear war. Che’s daughter was there to promote, in her own words: “my father’s ideals, his concerns, and his ambitions. I believe that my father is a banner to the world.”
Fine. Let’s have a look at Aleida’s father’s “ambitions,” mindful that what got Michael Savage banned from Britain was his purported “fostering of extremist views” and his “hate speech.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese IT Firm ‘Bullies’ Swedish Workers: Report
Employees at the Swedish branch of Chinese electronics giant Huawei have been subjected to threats, harassment and public punishment from senior staff, according to a report from Sveriges Radio (SR).
“Public humiliation was part of the working day,” said one interviewee to SR.
Huawei is one of the largest telecom companies in the world. It established its Sweden branch a few years ago and today employs 500 staff in Sweden.
It is often described as the largest competitor to Sweden’s telecommunications behemoth Ericsson.
But according to 20 anonymous current and former employees who spoke with SR, it is very much a Chinese company in Sweden.
Workers who met Chinese board’s disproval could be transferred without warning to a different department or a different country in what one interviewee viewed as a ploy to “get rid” of workers that didn’t meet expectations.
“Two sales people were told off in front of the entire staff for leaving early one day to pick up the kids from day care. The manager told them that they should prepare a Power Point presentation for the next day to show why they should get to keep their jobs,” another said to SR.
But the Managing Director of Huawei Nordic Office, James Chen, does not agree that there is a problem at the company, and told SR that out of the 500, only 15 have left the company in the last two and a half years.
This indicates employees are happy with their workplace, according to Chen, defending the transfers as a way to give workers “a new chance”.
But Swedish trade union Unionen confirms the image presented by the employees at Huawei.
The union has been trying to get the company to sign a collective agreement for some time and has been asked by the Huawei employees for help.
“There is a pecking order. The board of directors is completely Chinese, the middle management is mainly Swedish and the workers mainly Chinese,” said Kari Anderson at Unionen to The Local.
According to Andersson, the punishments vary from harassment to threats.
“if you are seen as ‘uncomfortable’ you get transferred. One Chinese girl told us that when she had come with a suggestion she had been told that if she isn’t a blonde they didn’t care about what she thought” Andersson said.
Andersson thinks that the problems originate in a culture clash between the Chinese way of managing a company to the Swedish way.
“Chinese leadership looks entirely different to the Swedish model. Here we value dialogue and mutual respect between managers and more junior employees,” she said.
The question, according to Andersson, is whether it is acceptable that a foreign company that establishes itself in Sweden and is in competition with Swedish companies, doesn’t follow Swedish work ethics.
“Perhaps we need to put our foot down and show that this is not the way we want companies to act here,” she said to The Local.
The union will continue to support its members and work for a collective agreement between the members and the company.
But according to James Chen there are no threats or harassment at Huawei Sweden.
“That simply doesn’t happen. The staff is the most important asset of the company. Why should I threaten them?” Chen asked SR.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Spends Millions a Year to Teach Americans the Virtues of Socialism
Governments — and all the menagerie of quasi- and supra-governmental organizations such as the European Union — will not bite the hand that feeds them. One may expect these organizations to support statism and its ideologies — such as socialism.
So when a cause with the noble-sounding name of European Union Human Rights Fund — whose stated goal is helping promote Western values in developing countries — spends nearly £20 million ($32.8 million) a year supposedly to advance the ideals of Western liberty, it is not surprising to find the money being used to indoctrinate Americans on the virtues of socialism and related causes of the left: the dangers of the fancied “manmade global warming,” the need for “green” energy, the promotion of the International Criminal Court, and the morality of abolishing the death penalty, among other things.
The Heritage Foundation has discovered that an additional £4 million ($6.5 million) has been spent in the United States on publicity promoting the European Union; £3 million has been given to American universities to extol the virtues of European integration; and an equal amount to think tanks to study European Union affairs. Some of this money has gone to undisclosed “individual opinion formers” in America. Says the Heritage Foundation, “In other words, money from the European Union’s human rights budget is spent in the United States, one of the freest countries in the world.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Forensic Evidence Emerges That European E.Coli Superbug Was Bioengineered to Produce Human Fatalities
(NaturalNews) Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply.
This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the “mutation pressure” that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.
So if you’re curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. This step has now been done (see below), and when you look at the genetic decoding of this O104 strain now threatening food consumers across the EU, a fascinating picture emerges of how it must have come into existence.
The genetic code reveals the history
When scientists at Germany’s Robert Koch Institute decoded the genetic makeup of the O104 strain, they found it to be resistant to all the following classes and combinations of antibiotics:
In addition, this O104 strain posses an ability to produce special enzymes that give it what might be called “bacteria superpowers” known technically as ESBLs:
“Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamases (ESBLs) are enzymes that can be produced by bacteria making them resistant to cephalosporins e.g. cefuroxime, cefotaxime and ceftazidime — which are the most widely used antibiotics in many hospitals,” explains the Health Protection Agency in the UK (www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/Infect…).
On top of that, this O104 strain possesses two genes — TEM-1 and CTX-M-15 — that “have been making doctors shudder since the 1990s,” reports The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk/commentis…). And why do they make doctors shudder? Because they’re so deadly that many people infected with such bacteria experience critical organ failure and simply die.
Bioengineering a deadly superbug
So how, exactly, does a bacterial strain come into existence that’s resistant to over a dozen antibiotics in eight different drug classes and features two deadly gene mutations plus ESBL enzyme capabilities?
There’s really only one way this happens (and only one way) — you have to expose this strain of e.coli to all eight classes of antibiotics drugs. Usually this isn’t done at the same time, of course: You first expose it to penicillin and find the surviving colonies which are resistant to penicillin. You then take those surviving colonies and expose them to tetracycline. The surviving colonies are now resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. You then expose them to a sulfa drug and collect the surviving colonies from that, and so on. It is a process of genetic selection done in a laboratory with a desired outcome. This is essentially how some bioweapons are engineered by the U.S. Army in its laboratory facility in Ft. Detrick, Maryland (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation…).
Although the actual process is more complicated than this, the upshot is that creating a strain of e.coli that’s resistant to eight classes of antibiotics requires repeated, sustained expose to those antibiotics. It is virtually impossible to imagine how this could happen all by itself in the natural world. For example, if this bacteria originated in the food (as we’ve been told), then where did it acquire all this antibiotic resistance given the fact that antibiotics are not used in vegetables?
When considering the genetic evidence that now confronts us, it is difficult to imagine how this could happen “in the wild.” While resistance to a single antibiotic is common, the creation of a strain of e.coli that’s resistant to eight different classes of antibiotics — in combination — simply defies the laws of genetic permutation and combination in the wild. Simply put, this superbug e.coli strain could not have been created in the wild. And that leaves only one explanation for where it really came from: the lab.
Engineered and then released into the wild
The evidence now points to this deadly strain of e.coli being engineered and then either being released into the food supply or somehow escaping from a lab and entering the food supply inadvertently. If you disagree with that conclusion — and you’re certainly welcome to — then you are forced to conclude that this octobiotic superbug (immune to eight classes of antibiotics) developed randomly on its own… and that conclusion is far scarier than the “bioengineered” explanation because it means octobiotic superbugs can simply appear anywhere at any time without cause. That would be quite an exotic theory indeed.
My conclusion actually makes more sense: This strain of e.coli was almost certainly engineered and then released into the food supply for a specific purpose. What would that purpose be? It’s obvious, I hope.
It’s all problem, reaction, solution at work here. First cause a PROBLEM (a deadly strain of e.coli in the food supply). Then wait for the public REACTION (huge outcry as the population is terrorized by e.coli). In response to that, enact your desired SOLUTION (total control over the global food supply and the outlawing of raw sprouts, raw milk and raw vegetables).
That’s what this is all about, of course. The FDA relied on the same phenomenon in the USA when pushing for its recent “Food Safety Modernization Act” which essentially outlaws small family organic farms unless they lick the boots of FDA regulators. The FDA was able to crush farm freedom in America by piggybacking on the widespread fear that followed e.coli outbreaks in the U.S. food supply. When people are afraid, remember, it’s not difficult to get them to agree to almost any level of regulatory tyranny. And making people afraid of their food is a simple matter… a few government press releases emailed to the mainstream media news affiliates is all it takes…
| — Hat tip: MT | [Return to headlines] |
Germany’s Nuclear Panic
The endless blather about “alternative” or “renewable” energy sources has led to the waste of billions on wind and solar power.
The likelihood of a major earthquake in Germany is slim. The possibility that it would be followed by a catastrophic tsunami is unlikely. These are the events that caused the failure of the Fukushima plant in Japan, but that has not deterred Germany from its recent announcement that it would close all 17 of its nuclear reactors by 2022.
This is pure panic and not something one would expect from Germans who have always excelled at the development and use of new technologies. Other than Japan that has good reason to close Fukushima and reconsider its use of nuclear energy, few other nations have indicated any change in their policies regarding it.
The world is in desperate need of real grownups to run its various nations and, instead, the only growth industry to which one can reliably point is stupidity.
The endless blather about “alternative” or “renewable” energy sources has led to the waste of billions on wind and solar power, neither of which would exist if governments did not lavish subsidies or issue mandates for its unpredictable and unproductive delivery of electricity.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Secretary of State Visiting Vlaams Belang
Israeli Vice Minister for developing the Negev and the Galilee, Ayoob Kara, is visiting our country at the invitation of Filip Dewinter of the Vlaams Belang. Kara by VB party leader Dewinter around in the Flemish Parliament then a meeting followed with the European far-right Alliance for the Freedom in which the Austrian FPÖ, the Italian Lega Nord, the Swedish Democrats, UKIP and the British sit.
Kara is next parliament in Israel a figurehead of the Druze community and is therefore non-Jewish. According to a press release of the interest would amount to a return visit after Dewinter trip to Israel a few months ago.
On Friday a joint press conference is scheduled in the Vlaams Belang-Secretariat in Antwerp. After that place a stroll through the neighborhoods of Antwerp geïslamineerde North “to the continued Islamization of the West on such matters.
The Israeli embassy does not amused in a reaction to Jewish News and says surprised by the news. “We have now heard only through the press, we are not informed and can therefore say that this is a private visit,” said embassy spokesman Laurent Reichman.
Claude Marinower (OpenVld) and prominent member of the Jewish community responds sharply: “Where are they now doing,” he asks. “Are they all gone mad over there? This is totally distasteful, just a few days ago was the Vlaams Belang a bill to give amnesty to all collaborators, and now this? “
Andre Gantman a flagship project within the Jewish community sees no problem with the visit. “It’s an Israeli minister: if there is any problem occur, this must politics in the lap of the Israeli government discussed or sometimes in the Knesset. The Jewish Community of Flanders is not involved in an affair with both a sovereign state in this case concerns Israel and other Flemish elected. “
According to Eli Ringer of the Jewish Forum’s private visit Kara shows the degree of Israeli democracy. It is clear to him that the Israeli state does not maintain contacts with the Vlaams Belang. “Where else in the Middle East can be a minister to visit that goes against the official policy of his country, you see a Syrian minister that already exist?”.
Jewish News also asked to respond to the Cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, once we receive will be added to this article.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Israeli Government Distanced Itself From Minister to Visit VB + Video
The Israeli government has distanced itself from the visit of the Israeli State, Ayoob Kara, the Vlaams Belang. Read the story “Israeli Minister visiting Vlaams Belang” Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mr.. Mark Regev, said on Jewish News: “Kara Minister in Belgium on private initiative, his visit does not reflect the position of the government. “
Our editor was present at the press conference and asked a few probing questions.
YouTube: Israeli deputy minister embarrasses Belgian Jewish community
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q3lpD2xe8k4
YouTube: Interview Radio2
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7dt7g6ULtg
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Basim Elkarra of CAIR: Mini-Dossier
On June 2nd Tower Hamlets council will launch a new “Youth Council” at an event at the Water Lily Centre.1
One of the scheduled speakers is Basim Elkarra. He is the executive director of the Sacramento, California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He joined CAIR in 2004. He is a first generation Palestinian-American from San Francisco who was educated at Berkeley.
CAIR is an Islamic lobby group. It is notorious in the United States for its close links to American funders of Hamas, as revealed in the Holy Land Foundation case, and its defiance of the FBI’s counterterrorism operations. The FBI severed relations with the group in 2008. A detailed
independent study of CAIR and its terrorist ties is available at this internet link: www.investigativeproject.org/profile/172.
A poster published by CAIR’s San Francisco office earlier this year summarises the group’s attitude. It shows a shadowy FBI agent being shut out by a neighbourhood in the name of “resistance”.
The poster was a response to FBI investigations of alleged US supporters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Both have been designated terrorist groups by the United States. The poster was part of a CAIR
event announcement which said “This type of investigation is a tool to repress our movements for social justice and divide our communities”.2
The rest of this note profiles episodes in Basim Elkarra’s record. They are typical of CAIR and show why he and CAIR should never be considered legitimate partners by Tower Hamlets council, especially in youth work.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Downsize Your Home to Pay for Old-Age Care, Says the Man Brought in to Ease Burden on Middle Classes
Pensioners may have to consider selling up and moving to a smaller home to help pay for their care even after the system is reformed, the Government’s long-term care czar has warned.
Andrew Dilnot, brought in to reform England’s crumbling care system, said the elderly may also be called upon to raid pension funds to meet the cost of home helps or care home fees.
The economist’s comments will enrage those who believe hard-working couples who have paid taxes all their lives should not have to make extra contributions just when they become frail.
Mr Dilnot has pledged that the amount should be capped at a certain amount, expected to be around £50,000, so the elderly they are not landed with the ‘catastrophic risk’ of unlimited bills.
This should mean no one is forced to sell their homes to pay for care, losing everything, he said.
But in ‘the new world’, after his reforms are implemented, pensioners would be expected to think about how they could afford care bills.
Last night Neil Duncan-Jordan, of the National Pensioners Convention, said: ‘What Dilnot is suggesting is the status quo. If he’s telling people they may have to downsize to pay for care, that’s something that is happening now. People are already selling their homes.
‘People are already raiding their savings. Dilnot has spent a year on this and has not come up with anything new. His report is not going to fix the problem — it’s going to perpetuate it.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Finally, A Judge Who Gets it: He Jails Stunned Burglar for 15 Years to Protect ‘Dignity of Elderly’
Judge Sean Morris imposed a series of consecutive jail sentences on Leonard Johnston for a series of house burglaries in Lincolnshire and a violent assault.
A violent burglar who raided the homes of a string of elderly women has been jailed for more than the usual maximum sentence of 14 years.
Judge Sean Morris imposed a series of consecutive jail sentences on Leonard Johnston for a series of house burglaries and a violent assault.
Even if he is released early it means that Johnston, who has a previous record, will not be free until the beginning of 2019.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Melanie Phillips: I Warned About This Years Ago. Now Ministers Admit I Was Right
Now they tell us. Ministers have finally admitted what I revealed in my book, Londonistan, back in 2006 and have written many times since then — that, incredible as it may seem, hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money that was supposed to be spent on countering Islamic extremism has gone to groups or individuals actually promoting Islamic extremism.
Paralysed by political correctness, the previous Labour government, the intelligence agencies, police, universities and other institutions decided to try to promote ‘moderate’ Muslim groups to tackle the extremists.
As a result of refusing to listen to the many warnings that such a policy would not work because of doubts about how ‘moderate’ these groups actually were, they got it terribly wrong.
Here are just a few of the extremist Islamist groups the Government has been funding:
Muslim Council of Britain
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and related groups were handed £550,985 over a period of three years by the Department of Communities and Local Government. In March 2009 the Government suspended links with the MCB and demanded one of its leaders should be sacked for allegedly supporting violence against Israel.
The Cordoba Foundation
The Cordoba Foundation, an independent research organisation which advises leading Muslim groups and which was founded by Anas al-Tikriti, former president of the Muslim Association of Britain, has received ‘anti-extremist’ funding.
The group, which David Cameron once described as a front for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, was given £38,000 by Tower Hamlets council in East London in 2007 for two projects: A Muslim media project and a Muslim debating society which held a debate entitled ‘Has Political Participation Failed British Muslims?’…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Smile, You’re on Bincam! The Snooping Device That Can Record Everything You Throw Away
They have hired bin police forces, stuck microchips in the wheelie bins and dragged their residents to court for disobedience to strict rubbish rules.
Now there is a new option for local councils anxious to ensure that families follow instructions about rubbish — in-bin cameras.
The in-bin camera automatically records what someone has thrown away every time they use their kitchen bin.
It sends the pictures to a social networking site so that their rubbish can be monitored and neighbours can comment on their recycling habits.
Academics at Newcastle University who have pioneered bin-TV say it could be used to ‘change the behaviour’ of people who refuse to recycle or who throw away too much food and packaging.
But critics of the methods councils have used both to spy on their residents and to enforce their compulsory recycling schemes warned that bin cameras have menacing implications.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Theresa May Admits £63m From Terror Fighting Fund Was Given to Extremist Groups
Home Secretary Theresa May has admitted money from the £63million-a-year anti-radicalisation project was given to extremist organisations it should have confronted.
She said that Prevent, launched in 2007 to stop the growth of home-grown terrorism, ‘failed to tackle the extremist ideology that not only undermines the cohesion of our society, but also inspires would be terrorists to seek to bring death and destruction to our towns and cities’.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Tolerating a Libel
by Martin Bright
It’s always unpleasant to be libelled and particularly nasty to be defamed by supporters of totalitarian Islam. Journalists really shouldn’t sue, but sometimes it can get very frustrating, especially when the libel is obviously malign and ill informed. Over the past couple of weeks I have been examining the close relationship between London Citizens, the “community organisers” so beloved of the political class and the Islamists of East London Mosque and Islamic Forum Europe. In week one, we looked at London Citizens’ Deputy Chair Junaid Ahmed, who is a supporter of Hamas. Then last week we examined the reaction of Jewish leaders who have signed up to London Citizens. This is a relatively straightforward story of the left making common cause with radical Islam, an all-too-familiar story over the past decade. The IFE is not very happy about being rumbled. Azad Ali, an Islamist civil servant who regularly writes on the IFE blog, has now come up with the following deranged conspiracy theory:
“Martin Bright the ‘self-confessed Islamophobe’ is the editor of the paper which published an article, under the headline “This Was No Peace Activist” by Geoffrey Alderman, glorifying the killing of an innocent peace activist Vittorio Arrigon “
There is no more truth in the assertion that I am a “self-confessed Islamophobe” than that I am the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. The “evidence” for the first assertion comes from the self-styled Islamophobia Watch blog and its absurd “amir” Bob Pitt, who claims to have seen me admit as much at a City Hall event. I remember this occasion well just as I remember explicitly saying that I was not Islamophobic (in fact I consider myself more open to the diversity and contradictions of the Muslim world than the IFE) but that I thought fear of Islam was completely understandable. Indeed, fear and public criticism of organised religion must be open to citizens in an open and democratic society. However, Azad Ali does provide a useful service in flushing out Junaid Ahmed’s real views on Hamas and the controversial speech he gave praising it leaders:…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The US Government Sends an Islamic Extremist to Tower Hamlets
The day after the Government’s Prevent policy decisively rejected the notion that “non violent Islamists” should not be promoted and funded, supposedly as a bulwark against Al Qaeda, we discover that the US Government is actively undermining that policy.
“Non-violent Islamists” is a misnomer. “Non-violent Islamists” are, almost invariably, supporters of terrorism, against civilians, in other countries.
Here is the story, in today’s Times [8 June 2011]:
US sends ‘radical’ Islam activist to meet British Muslim youths
The United States Embassy has caused uproar by flying an outspoken American Islamic campaigner to meet young British Muslims as part of a strategy to help them to reject terrorism. Basim Elkarra is a senior figure in an organisation that has been accused on Capitol Hill of radicalising Muslims and obstructing co-operation with the forces of law and order.
British anti-extremism experts said they were shocked that the US Government was introducing teenagers to an organisation that promotes Islamic political activism.
Mr Elkarra was due to be sent last month into the London borough of Tower Hamlets, which has a worsening reputation for intimidation by Muslim extremists.
A religion teacher was horrifically beaten in the borough by a gang because he was a non-Muslim; posters have declared a gay-free zone; and a chemist was threatened with death for not wearing a veil.
Tower Hamlets, home to a fast-growing Bangladeshi community, last year voted in Britain’s first directly elected Muslim mayor, who had been expelled from Labour after claims of Islamist links. After The Times raised questions, the borough postponed Mr Elkarra’s visit because of “logistical difficulties”. The local authority made clear that the embassy had proposed the visit by the Islamic activist to the local youth council.
Mr Elkarra nonetheless made his second official visit to Britain last month to meet other Muslim youth and community groups as a guest of the embassy. [Harry’s Place emphasis]
The Americans’ proposal to bring Mr Elkarra to a hotbed of tension is part of a little-known strategy attributed to one of President Obama’s high-flying experts on terrorism. Quintan Wiktorowicz, an academic formerly at the embassy in London and now promoted to the US National Security Council, interviewed hundreds of British Islamists for research.. He concluded that the highly religious were the most resistant to becoming terrorists and he set about encouraging engagement with a broad range of non-violent Muslims.
Mr Elkarra, an executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was chosen to meet Britain’s Muslim youth. His invitation came despite CAIR being severely criticised at a hearing on Muslim radicalisation held by the House of Representatives homeland security committee in March. Speaking from California, Mr Elkarra denounced what he called lies about CAIR, telling The Times: “The community here is very active. It was very vocal against the war in Iraq but through the proper channels.
“Quintan brought together American and British Muslims to share civic engagement best practices. My visit is strictly about civic engagement, not counter-terrorism. This is about UK Muslims and US Muslims leveraging and sharing our experiences to empower our communities.” James Brandon, of the counterextremism think-tank, Quilliam, said: “If you look at how CAIR operates, it’s very much that Muslims have to take on their Muslim identity, vote for Muslim causes, for the pro-Muslim candidate. That’s obviously not what Tower Hamlets needs more of.” Haras Rafiq, of Centri, the antiextremism organisation, said: “Why are the Americans shoving their extremists on to our youngsters?” Paul Goodman, of Conservative Home, said: “There are clearly elements of the [Obama] Administration who believe that the best way of combating terrorism is to use the bad against the worst.” The US Embassy said Mr Elkarra was invited as part of a global programme of bringing speakers who share American values to meet groups vulnerable to violence in other countries. A spokeswoman gave examples of figures from the US who go to the Middle East to speak about non-violence, or to Latin America to meet young people vulnerable to violent street gangs. She said: “Basim Elkarra is an experienced community activist who works in the US to uphold the values of tolerance, mutual respect and inter-religious dialogue.”
Four points to note here.
First of all, CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, which uncovered a network of Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front organisations that had been assembled to fundraise for Hamas, promote the Ikhwan’s politics within Muslim communities in the United States, and build resistance among American Muslims to a peace deal with Israel, based on two states.
Secondly, the FBI has cut off relations with CAIR, because it recognises that it is closely connected with the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood network.
Thirdly, Elkarra and CAIR have a disturbing record of issuing scaremongering statements in relation to arrests of Islamist terrorists, and of encouraging suspicion and non cooperation with the police, when investigating these crimes. Here is a poster which was displayed by the San Francisco branch, which illustrates CAIR’s message to Muslims.
Fourthly, the villain of the piece is almost certainly Quintan Wiktorowicz, who encouraged and pursued the same policy, of promoting and forging links with extreme Islamist groups while he was based in London. His reward was promotion by Obama to the National Security Council.
So, in summary, the US Embassy tried to send an agitator who works for a Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood front organisation that discourages cooperation with the FBI in relation to terrorism to help launch a youth project in Tower Hamlets, which has a serious and significant problem with Islamist political groups and hate preachers, some of whom also encourage non-cooperation with the police. Quintan Wiktorowicz believes that this will help Britain combat Islamist terrorism, and so this man was sent to the United Kingdom, despite the Government’s own opposition to this strategy.
Correct me if I’m wrong: but isn’t this absolutely outrageous?
Here is a dossier with more details on Mr Elkarra.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Ultimate NHS Indignity: Body of Hospital Patient Left to Die in Corridor is Ignored for Hours… Before Staff Simply Drag Him Away
Two heartbroken parents have slammed ‘inhumane’ nurses who left their dead son lying in the middle of a hospital corridor and stepped over his corpse for more than ten hours thinking he was asleep.
CCTV captured staff pulling the lifeless body of Peter Thompson along the floor like they were ‘dragging the body of a dead animal’.
Today a coroner said his death was ‘wholly preventable’ and believes he could have survived but for the neglect of nursing staff, three of whom now face disciplinary proceedings.
41-year-old Mr Thompson had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs but instead of taking him to accident and emergency, staff at the Edale House unit at the Manchester Royal Infirmary left him sprawled on the floor, where he eventually died.
[…]
‘He went to them for help and they left him out in the corridor to die cold, wet and lonely with nothing. I’m disgusted at their treatment of him.’
The incident occurred between April 3 and 4 last year after Mr Thompson, a voluntary in-patient with alcohol and drug problems, was stopped from entering his ward after he turned up with a bottle of vodka and refused to surrender it.
He then fell asleep in the corridor at around 8.10pm after nurses decided to let him ‘sleep off’ the effects of the alcohol.
But rather than wake him up or move him, a member of staff just placed a towel next to the patient and he was not given a blanket or a pillow.
[…]
Expert Dr Alan Fletcher a consultant in emergency medicine concluded the victim would have lived had he been taken to an A&E during the night.
A pathologist report concluded he died from fatal levels of alcohol and anti-psychotic drugs, with liver cirrhosis as a contributing factor.
He was four times over the drink-drive limit.
After hearing the jury’s verdict, Manchester coroner Nigel Meadows told the inquest: ‘It seems to me undeniable that the jury came to a conclusion the death was wholly preventable.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Kosovo: Tadic: UN Must Look Into Illegal Organ-Trafficking
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, JUNE 7 — “All war crimes must be investigated, this is a key issue for the region. The UN Security Council must authorise an independent inquiry into the European Council’s shocking accusations of illegal organ-trafficking in Kosovo”. This is according to the Serbian President, Boris Tadic, who has been speaking at a conference organised in Brussels today by the think tank European Policy Centre.
A report by the Swiss Euro MP, Dick Marty, which was approved at the end of January by the European Council’s Parliamentary Assembly, featured serious accusations of human organ-trafficking in Kosovo and Albania in the late 1990s, which involved Kosovo’s current Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, the then leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) . In his speech, Tadic focussed in particular on the significance for Serbia and the Balkans of the capture of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of genocide and crimes against humanity during the war in Bosnia. Tadic said that this “was a moral obligation for Serbia as well as a condition for drawing closer to EU integration”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Shades of Grey: The Record of Archbishop Stepinac
by Srdja Trifkovic
As a long-time upholder of friendship and alliance between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditionalists, I am disheartened by Pope Benedict XVI’s uncritical portrayal of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960) as a saintly figure during his visit to Croatia earlier this week.
In a homily at the Zagreb Cathedral the Pontiff called Stepinac “a fearless pastor and an example of apostolic zeal and Christian fortitude, whose heroic life continues today to illuminate the faithful of the Dioceses of Croatia, sustaining the faith and life of the Church in this land”:
The merits of this unforgettable bishop are derived essentially from his faith: in his life, he always had his gaze fixed on Jesus, to whom he was always conformed, to the point of becoming a living image of Christ, and of Christ suffering. Precisely because of his strong Christian conscience, he knew how to resist every form of totalitarianism, becoming, in a time of Nazi and Fascist dictatorship, a defender of the Jews, the Orthodox, and of all the persecuted, and then, in the age of communism, an advocate for his own faithful, especially for the many persecuted and murdered priests.
The historical record presents a more nuanced and ambivalent picture of Stepinac. The leading American historian of the Balkans, H. James Burgwyn, notes that, as “a vocal nationalist Croat,” Stepinac “conferred respectability on the Ustasha regime by his immediate approval of the new government… Without the urging of prelates and priests, many Croats, who otherwise would have turned their backs on the Ustasha atrocities, allowed themselves to be co-opted by Paveliæ’s regime” (H. James Burgwyn. Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini’s Conquest of Yugoslavia, 1941-1943. New York: Enigma Books, 2005, pp. 52-53)…
| — Hat tip: Srdja Trifkovic | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Oxford Students Warned Not to Go Out Alone at Night as ‘Albanian’ Pervert Strikes Five Times in Ten Days
Female students in Oxford are being warned to avoid going out unaccompanied after five sex attacks in the city in just ten days.
Detectives fear the serial pervert will strike again and have released this e-fit, complied by his victims.
The attacker is believed to be in his early 20s and possibly Albanian.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Algeria: Victims’ Families Against Possible Amnesty
(ANSAmed) — ALGIERS, JUNE 7 — The families of the victims of acts of terrorism protested today in Algiers and peacefully demonstrated their objection to the chance of an amnesty. The promoters of the demonstration, held in front of the Senate, instead asked that those killed be granted the status of terrorism “victims”.
The demonstrators, mainly women who lost their sons or husbands to terrorists, blocked traffic for some 20 minutes before spontaneously interrupting their protest. The families of the victims never accepted the Law on peace and reconciliation issued by the Algerian government to recompose national harmony after the long and bloody years of terrorism.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: HRW: Army Committed to End Virginity Tests
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, JUNE 7 — Egyptian armed forces have said that they will strive to forbid virginity tests from being carried out on arrested women, though they stopped short of admitting that they had carried out such tests, which caused outcry and protests in the country, following complaints made by a number of women arrested in Tahrir Square on March 9 in the aftermath of the revolution that led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.
This is according to Kenneth Roth, the executive director Human Rights Watch (HRW), who was speaking in a press conference after meeting the Egyptian Prime Minister, Essam Sharaf, the Justice Minister, Abdelaziz El Guindi and a senior member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The representative of the human rights organisation based in New York said that the Council of Armed Forces had justified the tests by indicating that they acted as protection from accusations of rape in prisons and showed the women to be virgins. “As if only they could be raped and not the other women,” Roth commented, adding that the organisation would closely monitor the armed forces, to check their commitment to their promises.
In a statement, HRW also said that the transition in Egypt towards democracy, with the creation of a system respecting human rights, is “in danger” unless the military council carries out immediate reforms, putting an end to military trials, revoking the emergency law and bringing to justice all people guilty of breaching human rights.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Thousands Flee From War Moving to Tunisia
(ANSAmed) — TUNIS, JUNE 7 — The number of Libyans who are passing through the Ras Jedir border pass to escape the war is still very high. Between yesterday and today approximately six thousand crossed through the border post (more specifically, 4,000 on Monday alone). Then again, through Ras Jedir, other refugees fleeing from Libya are still moving into Tunisia in an attempt to return home. The largest groups comprise people from Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria and people from other Countries of the Maghreb. They too have been sent towards local camps, where their individual conditions will be assessed by Tunisian authorities and by international organisations to determine their destination.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Obama: More Pressure on Gaddafi, Must Leave
(ANSAmed) — NEW YORK, JUNE 7 — Pressure on the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will increase until he leaves power, according to the US President, Barack Obama, who has been speaking in a joint press conference with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, at the White House today.
Gaddafi’s departure is only a matter of time, Obama explained, adding that “there is an inexorable trend in which we see the regime’s forces backtracking and being obstructed”.
The President pointed out that the operation ongoing in Libya is being led by NATO and is geared towards protecting the civil population under threat from the regime. Positive results have already been achieved in Benghazi, “where the threat of the regime has been ended,” as well as in Misrata, “where Gaddafi’s forces have been pushed back”.
New explosions, meanwhile, have shaken the capital Tripoli after Muammar Gaddafi’s audio message, witnesses report.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Libya: Gaddafi on TV, Alive or Dead I’ll Stay in Tripoli
(ANSAmed) — TRIPOLI, JUNE 7 — “I will remain in Tripoli, alive or dead”. These are the words of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in an audio message broadcast today on Libyan state television.
“The battle has been imposed upon us but we do not fear death and will continue to fight our enemies,” Gaddafi added, as state television showed footage of traffic on a roundabout in the Libyan capital with smoke rising in the background.
Addressing western leaders and NATO, Gaddafi asked: “What do you want? What do you want from us? Do you think that you will win? For us death and martyrdom are welcome (.) and I will remain in Tripoli, alive or dead!” “We are not afraid. We are stronger than your missiles,” the Libyan leader continued, before calling on citizens to gather close outside his Bab Aziziya compound, which has been the subject of NATO air strikes today and in previous days, to “show the courage of the Libyan people”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Obama: Pressure on Gaddafi to Increase Until He Leaves
(AGI) Washington — In a joint press conference at the White House with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Barack Obama said pressure on Muammar Gaddafi will “increase” until the Libyan leader leaves.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
23 Organizations Are Expected to Participate in the Upcoming Flotilla
Like the previous flotilla, its preparations are being led by three organizations and umbrella networks with organizational capabilities and financial resources
So far, 23 organizations are expected to participate in the upcoming flotilla to the Gaza Strip, similar to the heterogeneous coalition which organized the Mavi Marmara flotilla. Its three core organizations are IHH (Turkey), the ECESG (Europe) and the FGM (America), affiliated with radical Islam, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood, and/or the radical left.
The others are global anti-Israeli organizations, some of them human- and social-rights groups.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Evil Again Wears a Savile Row Suit
Brian of London again.
The UK Foreign Secretary, channeling the spirt of Neville Chamberlain (though I have less hope he will, as Chamberlin did in the end, see the error of his ways):
Foreign Secretary William Hague said he is deeply concerned by reports that protesters have been killed in the Golan Heights on 5 June.
The Foreign Secretary said:”I am deeply concerned by reports that a number of protesters have been killed and others injured following protests in the Golan Heights yesterday. We recognise Israel’s right to defend herself. It is vital that any response is proportionate, avoiding lethal use of force unless absolutely necessary, and that the right to protest is respected. I continue to call on all parties, including the Governments of Israel and Syria, to do everything they can to protect the lives of civilians and to avoid provocative acts.”
The remarks came after Israeli troops fired at protesters from Syria in the occupied Golan Heights.
How about ending with “The remarks came after the murderous Syrian regime bussed cannon fodder to the border and bribed them to attack Israel”.
Yesterday the world’s media gleefully parroted the Syrian State media’s LIES without a moment’s thought or hesitation. Not one serious outlet reported what I wrote here yesterday afternoon:
On the Syrian border the IDF had a three step process:
Verbal warnings in Arabic
Firing in the air
Shoot specific protesters who touch the Israeli border fence in the FEET
The other thing revealed was that when the IDF responded to a request from the Red Cross (Red Crescent?) for a cease fire to remove casualties (send in the chiropodists) some of the rioters took this as a great opportunity to attack again. Typical.
Last night, upon the invitation of the UK’s Embassy, I attended a brilliant lecture by the historian Sir Martin Gilbert about the behaviour of the British between the end of WWII and Israel’s recreation. It was a devastating tale of the abhorrent treatment of 100,000 (that’s all that were left) of the most persecuted and tortured people on the planet.
This is directed at William Hague and the team at the UK in Israel: Amazing. You didn’t take the time to find out that the IDF did not shoot to kill, like the Syrian forces who indiscriminately murder their own people. The IDF shot at FEET and only after multiple warnings. You and your helicopter gun ships are far more indiscriminate in Libya than the IDF ever is and you’re not even defending your own borders! What give you the RIGHT to tell Israel how to stop an invasion?
Why not commend Israel for its restraint? You know that an unrestrained Arab dictator would have shot hundreds. Oh, wait, Syria did that last week and the world snoozed because the Internet was cut off.
The UK is doing again what Sir Martin Gilbert explained last night: backing the Muslim and Arab horse against the JEW because of sordid internal interests in getting elected again. Only this time you don’t have 80 million Muslims as constituents in India, you have 2 or 3 million at home.
After listening to Sir Martin last night, I would hope the updater of the UK in Israel Facebook page is feeling a little self doubt: perhaps you’ll have the courage to resist your government’s revolting policies like the few brave UK ambassadors across Europe who did try to help destitute Jews reach their promised land after the nightmare of the Holocaust.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Refugees Are Palestinian Authority’s ‘Nuke Weapon,’ Says PA
Foreign Arabs who are classified by the United Nations as refugees are the “nuclear weapon” of the Palestinian Authority, according to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s information technology advisor. He is quoted in an article on the official PA website WAFA.
The “nuclear weapon” refers to Arab plans to stage a massive march of hundreds of thousands of foreign Arabs on Israel’s borders. Sunday’s “Naksa Day” border demonstrations were generally considered a failure, and only several hundred Syrian Arabs, reportedly paid to appear at the Golan Heights border, showed up. Lebanon declared its border a closed military a zone, effectively preventing an attempt to cross into Israel.
The article in WAFA, reported and translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), was written by Sabri Saidam, who is the secretary-general of the Fatah Revolution Council. The Fatah movement is headed by Abbas.
The term “refugees” refers to approximately five million Arabs, most of them living in Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and who are children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of 550,000 Arabs who left Israel in the War for Independence in 1948 and the Six Day War in 1967.
Most of them fled with the encouragement of Arab armies, whose leaders assured them they would return quickly after the expected annihilation of Israel.
Abbas has demanded that any future Palestinian Authority state be established on condition that all of the foreign Arabs be allowed to immigrate to Israel, a move that would in effect reduce Jews to a small minority and eliminate Israel as a “Jewish state.”
Abbas’ has refused to accept Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” Doing so would create a built-in obstacle to the logic of Israel’s allowing foreign Arabs to flood the country.
Saidam wrote that the march of May 15, the secular date of Israel’s Independence Day that Arabs called the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” revealed the “new Palestinian ‘nuclear weapon,’ more powerful than Israel’s entire arsenal.”
The May 15 marches also were relatively small, but Saidam claimed, “The Palestinians have begun moving their new, quality ‘nuclear weapon’ across the borders — while the massive arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, cluster and phosphorous [bombs], and the entire spectrum of WMDs rests in Israel’s storage facilities, nuclear reactors, and laboratories, paralyzed by the footfall of a Palestinian youth..
“The new Palestinian nuclear weapon is the refugees outside and inside the homeland — [who seek] a just peace but who will not turn to it until the occupation is gone — as well as others whom the occupation has made miserable, whose hopes and dreams are hobbled by the occupation, and who have been filled with the stories of the homeland [told them by their] grandmothers and grandfathers.”
The expression “nuclear weapon” is out of place in the context of a” just peace” until it is realized that this peace eliminates Israel.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Revealed: The Untold Story of the Deal That Shocked the Middle East
Secret meetings between Palestinian intermediaries, Egyptian intelligence officials, the Turkish foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal — the latter requiring a covert journey to Damascus with a detour round the rebellious city of Deraa — brought about the Palestinian unity which has so disturbed both Israelis and the American government. Fatah and Hamas ended four years of conflict in May with an agreement that is crucial to the Paslestinian demand for a state.
[…]
The secret story of Palestinian unity is now revealed. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s reaction to the news — having originally refused to negotiate with Palestinians because they were divided — was to say that he would not talk to Abbas if Hamas came into the Palestinian government. President Obama virtually dismissed the Palestinian unity initiative. But 1967 borders means that Hamas is accepting Israel and the ‘resistance’ initiative means an end to Gaza rockets on Israel. International law and UN resolutions mean peace can be completed and a Palestinian state brought into being. That, at least, is the opinion of both Palestinian sides. The world will wait to see if Israel will reject it all again.
| — Hat tip: Egghead | [Return to headlines] |
Shalit Supporters to Call: Block Money to Gaza
by Elad Benari
A demonstration is expected to be held on Friday near Israel’s border with Gaza, during which protesters will call on the Israeli government to stop transferring funds to the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
The demonstration is being organized by Orna Shimoni, a founder of the Four Mothers movement that helped bring about the IDF’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. She explained during an interview on Monday with Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew website what led her to organize the protest.
Shimoni explained that the main purpose of her struggle is to stop the transfer of funds into Gaza, since these funds enable the Hamas leadership to purchase weapons that can then be used against Israelis. She noted that in the past, these weapons were purchased and smuggled into the Strip through the underground tunnels, but that today it is much easier for Hamas to bring the weapons into Gaza openly (through the recently reopened Rafiah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt).
She reminded that every month, Israel allows for the entry of $13.5 million into the Gaza Strip, and that the money comes out of accounts belonging to the Bank of Israel.
“Eighty percent of the dollars transferred to Gaza are used to smuggle weapons which then return to us in the form of missiles fired at buses and towns, and twenty percent of the funds are used to pay the wages for Hamas leaders, including the captors of Gilad Shalit,” said Shimoni, adding that no one disputes these figures. “At least until the day Gilad Shalit is released, we should not transfer money to Gaza through the State of Israel.”
She said she does not accept the official claim that the money, which sometimes comes from countries belonging to the European Union and sometimes comes from the Palestinian Authority itself, belongs to the PA Arab residents of Gaza. She added that she sees this as a matter of principle, just as Israel would not enable the transfer of money to a Nazi organization or to the Hizbullah terror group. She emphasized that the funds are not intended to benefit local residents and that the residents do not see any of the money. “The money goes to the Hamas leadership in Gaza and is streamlined towards salaries and weapons, and we must stop this money from going through, even if we are only used as a pipeline.”
Shimoni said that the original idea was to hold the demonstration in front of the home of Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, as he is the one responsible for transfers of funds from the Bank of Israel. She added, however, that the plan was dropped at the request of Gilad’s father, Noam Shalit, who believes that the focus of the pressure to release his son should be the decision-makers, i.e. the Prime Minister, government ministers, and other members of Knesset. As such, the location of the protest was changed, though she said she herself believes Fischer, as the one who pressured Israel to transfer the funds to Gaza, should also stand up to public pressure to cancel the move.
Shimoni noted that she believes the motive behind Fishcher’s move may have been his longtime friendship with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The two had met when both had worked for the World Bank. She also brought up the possibility that Fischer wanted to please the European Union and the World Bank and for this reason decided to push for money to be transferred to Hamas. She said, however, that despite her deep appreciation for Fischer, his move cannot be accepted when it leads to attacks on Israel’s security.
According to Shimoni, if Hamas knows that Israel is serious and would actually stop the transfer of funds, it will be frightened and will drop the price it is requesting for Shalit’s release.
“Without the money, there is no Hamas,” she said, adding that during Friday’s demonstration she plans to bring up the issue in public and thus interrupt the silence over the transfer of funds to Gaza.
Meanwhile, Shalit’s parents were in France Monday to file a lawsuit in a Paris court regarding their son being held hostage. They say he may have “suffered acts of torture or of barbarism.”
Shalit is a French citizen and the legal action is intended to put more pressure on the French government to work for his release.
Last week, French first lady Carla Bruni responded to a personal letter from Sara Netanyahu on the subject of Shalit, with a note of her own in which she said that France was sparing no effort in its attempts to mediate Shalit’s release.
“Like you, I wish with all my heart that this episode will be over soon,” Bruni wrote.
The issue of the price that Israel should pay for Shalit’s release has been one of controversy in the country. Hamas has demanded that Israel release thousands of Arab prisoners being held in Israeli prisons, some of whom were involved in deadly suicide terror attacks and are behind the deaths of hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians.
Some groups, mostly from the left, are saying Israel should pay any price for Shalit, including releasing potentially dangerous terrorists. Those who oppose such deals are saying that Israel cannot release prisoners who are likely to go back to terror, and thus endanger the lives of hundreds of more Israelis.
Click here to view one such debate, which took place this week between Meir Indor of the Almagor Terror Victims Association and Shimshon Liebman, Chairman of the Gilad Shalit Action Committee.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
25 Killed in Northern Syria Clashes
At least 25 Syrians were reported killed on Sunday during a government security crackdown in a northern Syrian town. According to the AP, Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deaths in the town of Jisr al-Shughour included four policemen.
The report said 19 civilians and six members of the security forces were killed.
Human rights groups claim more than 1,200 people have died in the crackdown against anti-government protesters since March.
On its part Syria’s news agency SANA said “armed terrorist groups” have attacked state buildings, police centers and the police stations complex in Jisr al-Shogour since Saturday, which resulted in the killing of four policemen and security forces.
“The terrorists also wounded more than 20 others, among them director of the region and an officer, as well as a number of citizens,” the news agency added.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Confessions of a Trained Islamic Terrorist
Onetime jihad mercenary describes goals, strategies of Muslim Brotherhood
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series about Kamal Saleem, a onetime terrorist who abandoned violence for Christianity.
He was trained in terror starting at age 7 at a PLO assault camp, learning to know and hate his enemies, was indoctrinated in radical Islam on his mother’s knee and studied with his father how to despise Christians and Jews.
He later dined with Moammar Gadhafi, his website says he served under Yasser Arafat and has Arab royalty in his family tree and he worked as a career mercenary, taking his terror activities worldwide. Ultimately, he was recruited by the Saudi royal family to infiltrate the United States with a campaign of radical Islam.
But Kamal Saleem now has renounced terrorism, adopted a home in America, found Christ and has spoken against terror and radical Islam at universities across the nation.
How could this change happen?
Actually, as he explains of his own life and its changes, it was a severe accident that broke his back and the love of a Jewish man, Jesus, that ultimately put him on the right course.
He’s told his story in the book, “The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist’s Memoir of Death and Redemption,” as well as a DVD called “In the Red Chair,” where he describes how he used to use his power — all of it — to change the world for Islam.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Reform Party of Syria (RPS) Statement Concerning the Assad Stompers of the Golan Heights
RPS Syrian Opposition
For Immediate Release
Washington DC, June 5, 2011. The Reform Party of Syria has learned today, from intelligence sources close to the Assad regime in Lebanon, that Syrians storming through the Golan Height next to the Quneitra crossing are Syrian farmers who have migrated in recent years from the drought-stricken northeast Syria to the south. Estimates put the number at 250,000 impoverished migrants.
Information received cite the regime has paid hundreds of these farmers $1,000 each to show-up and $10,000 to their families should any of them succumb to Israeli fire. In Syria, an average salary is about $200 a month and to these impoverished farmers, such a one-time sum can keep them economically afloat for six months.
Such tactic was used in the past by another defunct Ba’ath Party in Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, to pay Intifada-driven Palestinians the sum of $25,000 to their next-of-kin should they die throwing stones. That measure had a worldwide impact and it seems the Assad regime is using the same play from a twin playbook.
It is obvious, with this action, Assad wants to divert the attention of the world away from his own massacres and brutality that resulted in some 70 deaths yesterday and about 30 today in Jisr al-Shoghour. RPS expects, on the basis of today’s success, for these operations of incursions to multiply in scope in the near future for two reasons: 1) Divert the attention away from Assad’s barbarism and savageries, and 2) Stand tall again in the eyes of the regime’s supporters whose morale has taken quite a beating the last 3 months because of the violence perpetrated by Assad against unarmed civilians.
On this day of Naksa, RPS strongly believes in ownership and title of its Golan Heights. But unlike a regime bred on the use of violence, the Syrian people, demonstrating how peaceful they are as they endure one massacre after another, believe in peaceful negotiations to repatriate our lands. If Assad really wanted the Golan Heights, he would walk the same peaceful path Anwar Sadat walked long before him. But then, if he does, how can he justify his own existence as the “Commandant de la Résistance”. For Assad, winning through peace means also losing the war against his own people.
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Robert Fisk: The Dumping Ground for Despots Welcomes Another
Yes, we’re all grateful to the House of Saud when they take these rogues off our hands — when, of course, they have outrun their uses to us — especially when our demand for democracy fits rather uneasily with our continued sympathy for the local dictatorships. Ergo Syria — but let’s not go into that right now.
[…]
No, still we haven’t weaned ourselves off the little Hitlers of the Middle East — which is why we go on supporting the greatest of all repositories for bad guys, Saudi Arabia itself.
[…]
As for Gaddafi, you can see why he fights on. He could go to Burkino Faso, I guess, but he’ll cling on to prove what a bunch of wombats Nato are — even if he ends up on the end of a rope. Three down, three to go (alas, I am referring to Bahrain). Then there’s a seventh. No, of course I didn’t say Saudi Arabia.
| — Hat tip: Egghead | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi House Backs Women Voting Right — In 2015
RIYADH — Saudi Arabia’s consultative Shura council has recommended allowing women to vote in the next local polls, in at least four years, without being permitted to run for office, a member said Tuesday.
Saudi men in the ultra-conservative kingdom will vote in September to elect half the members of municipal councils across the country, but Saudi women who are deprived of many basic rights, remain banned from voting.
The all-appointed consultative council, which serves as an advisory body with no legislative authority, “agreed to allow women to take part as a voters only and in the next elections” expected in 2015, the council member told AFP requesting anonymity.
He said that the decision was taken as “registration for voters in the coming elections (in September) has been closed,” 18 days ago.
The recommendation will need to be agreed by King Abdullah to find its way to implementation.
More than 60 Saudi intellectuals and activists called last month for a boycott of the ballot, because municipal councils lack authority and as women remained banned from participating.
The municipal election in Saudi Arabia, the only form of public vote in the conservative kingdom, is to be held on September 22.
In May 2009, the government extended the term of municipal councils by two years. The kingdom’s first vote was held in 2005, when half the members of 178 municipal councils were elected while the rest were named by the government.
In addition to the vote ban, women are not allowed at all to drive, while they cannot travel without authorisation from their male guardian. When in public, they have to cover from head to toe.
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Is Intensifying a Secret Campaign of Yemen Airstrikes
The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials.
The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few options to keep the militants from consolidating power.
| [Return to headlines] |
Report: Poverty Does Not Breed Extremism
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN
Since 9/11, a decade ago, Washington has given the government of Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid. Two- thirds of that has gone to the military to fight the war on terror. The other third, about $6 billion, has gone for development of Pakistan’s civilian economy and society.
The theory behind many of those billions of dollars is that by bringing Pakistan’s poorest out of poverty and despair, fewer young men will be seduced by radical Islam.
As President Obama said, “We must stand with those who want to build Pakistan.” And Secretary Clinton adds, “Providing this assistance is not only the right thing to do, but we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States.”
This is an admirable approach for sure; it’s a strategy the U.S. uses all over the world, from Baghdad to Bali and back.
But what if you discover that aid money does not necessarily make Pakistanis less likely to turn to terror? What if you learn that there’s actually no correlation between being poor and supporting Islamic extremism?
Well, that’s what a new serious academic study seems to prove. It’s a robust survey by four academics from Princeton, Georgetown and the University of Pennsylvania that conducted extensive field research in Pakistan, interviewing 6,000 people across a broad spectrum of income groups and geography. Their findings could challenge the way we approach fighting terror, not just in Pakistan but around the world.
First, they find that in general Pakistanis don’t like militant groups. Not just al Qaeda, but the other ones like the Pakistani or Afghan Taliban.
Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, poor Pakistanis dislike militant groups more than the middle classes.
Third, the people who hate militants the most are the urban poor, probably because more than any other group they’re the ones who are affected by terror attacks — bombs in subways or cafes or whatever.
It’s an interesting conclusion. The people we’ve long considered the likeliest candidates for extremism are actually the ones most against it.
The study points out that this goes against most of the existing policy literature on the subject.
It cites both the U.S. State Department and the UK’s Department for International Development as saying poverty motivates people to extreme violence.
Now, giving aid to poor people is good in and of itself. But if we’ve been doing that to prevent them from becoming Islamic fundamentalists, then this study suggests we’ve been aiming at the wrong target. Perhaps our focus should be on the middle classes or on secular education.
Research shows that members of the IRA in Northern Ireland or Hezbollah’s militant ring are more likely to come from economically advantaged families and with a relatively high level of schooling.
These are important issues for Washington to consider. Who does it want to give economic aid to? What exactly is the best way to create a climate less conducive to extremism? Those are long-term issues.
For now, what I want to say in the short term is: Let’s at least focus on accountability for this aid — for both hard and soft aid. We need to demand results. What is the money achieving?
A CNN poll from last week shows that nearly half of all Americans think all aid to Pakistan should be stopped. Another quarter thinks it should be reduced.
It seems like 10 years and $20 billion later, the American people understand basic lessons in accounting that Washington has been learning the hard way. Pentagon documents now show that we are rejecting nearly half of Islamabad’s claims for expenses over the last two years.
But the more important question is: Will the Pakistani military in return for all this money, finally move against the terror organizations like the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba that they claim to be willing to battle?
It’s long delayed, but it is the right message that we should be sending.
American purse strings are important and necessary from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, but they don’t have to remain open at all costs.
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
40 Signs the Chinese Economy is Beating the Living Daylights Out of the U.S. Economy
It is time to face the truth. The Chinese economy is simply beating the living daylights out of the U.S. economy. Whether you want to call it a rout, a slaughter or a thrashing, the reality is that the Chinese are absolutely embarrassing America on the global economic stage. At this point, the Chinese are playing economic chess while the Americans are playing economic checkers. China is poised to blow past the United States and become the largest economy in the world. Not only that, some economists are projecting that the Chinese economy could be three times larger than the U.S. economy by mid-century. The age of U.S. economic dominance is ending, and most Americans still don’t even understand what is happening.
Several decades ago, big corporations started figuring out that they could make a lot more money if they sold goods that were made overseas. At the time the United States was so dominant economically that it didn’t even matter who was in second place. We started shipping in lots of products that were made somewhere else and the American people loved it because the prices were lower and they could buy more stuff. U.S. corporations loved it because profit margins were higher. Foreign nations loved it because we were helping to develop their economies and they were getting richer. Everyone seemed to be winning and it was a lot of fun while it lasted.
But then the trickle of jobs and factories leaving the country started to become a flood. Then it became an overwhelming torrent. The number of “middle class jobs” in the United States began to shrink continually. Suddenly it seemed like most of the jobs that were available were low paying “service jobs”. The prices of the goods in the stores were still low, but average American families were feeling increasingly squeezed so they started to borrow massive amounts of money in order to maintain the same standard of living.
Most Americans were willing to go into constantly increasing amounts of debt in order to buy cheap products that were made overseas. This seemed to work well for everyone involved and so the consumer debt bubble just kept growing and growing and growing.
As businesses and jobs fled the country, the U.S. tax base just wasn’t as robust as it was before either. The federal government, state governments and local governments all started borrowing gigantic amounts of cash from the countries we were sending all of our money to.
In particular, China really started to emerge as an economic powerhouse over the last couple of decades. Once China joined the WTO they aggressively started to flood our shores with really cheap products. When you have hundreds of millions of workers willing to work for about a dollar an hour that is not that hard to do.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Early Americans Helped Colonise Easter Island
South Americans helped colonise Easter Island centuries before Europeans reached it. Clear genetic evidence has, for the first time, given support to elements of this controversial theory showing that while the remote island was mostly colonised from the west, there was also some influx of people from the Americas.
Easter Island is the easternmost island of Polynesia, the scattering of islands that stretches across the Pacific. It is also one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world.
So how did it come to be inhabited in the first place? Genetics, archaeology and linguistics all show that as a whole, Polynesia was colonised from Asia, probably from around Taiwan. The various lines of evidence suggest people began migrating east around 5500 years ago, reached Polynesia 2500 years later, before finally gaining Easter Island after another 1500 years.
But the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl thought otherwise. In the mid-20th century, he claimed that the famous Easter Island statues were similar to those at Tiahuanaco at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, so people from South America must have travelled west across the Pacific to Polynesia. His famous Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed a balsa wood raft from Peru to the Tuamotu islands of French Polynesia, showed that the trip could have been made. But if it was made, no trace remained.
Now Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo in Norway has found clear evidence to support elements of Heyerdahl’s hypothesis. In 1971 and 2008 he collected blood samples from Easter Islanders whose ancestors had not interbred with Europeans and other visitors to the island.
Thorsby looked at the HLA genes, which vary greatly from person to person. Most of the islanders’ HLA genes were Polynesian, but a few of them also carried HLA genes only previously found in Native American populations…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Thousands of Sub-Saharan Africans Remain Stranded in Libya
Many sub-Saharan migrants remain stranded in Libya as the conflict there continues. Most are from Ghana, Togo, Sudan, Nigeria and Cameroon, but many Malian and Egyptian migrants are also unable to return home.
The International Organization for Migration [IOM] says the migrants, often unskilled and undocumented, have been without jobs since the crisis began.
Only estimates
“What we know prior to the crisis in Libya is that there were literally hundreds of thousands of African migrant workers in Libya,” said IOM spokesman Jean Philippe Chauzy.
A more accurate estimate has been hard to come by because so many are undocumented and not registered with their embassies.
“Over the past four months, we’ve seen an exodus of migrant workers out of Libya. In excess of 900,000 people have left the country, have fled the country. That being said, there are probably tens of thousands of stranded migrant workers…that are still in Libya and cannot leave the country for security reasons or simply because they can’t afford to leave the country,” he said.
IOM teams are trying to locate the migrants in Tripoli and elsewhere and determine their humanitarian needs. After that, arrangements would be made to evacuate them, most likely to Tunisia or Egypt.
“We are also concerned about the plight of African workers, who are fleeing Libya, and arriving in very, very difficult and desperate circumstances in countries like Chad and in Niger,” he said.
IOM is working with both Libyan authorities and diplomatic missions to determine just how many migrant workers remain in the country.
“That’s quite a difficult job,” Chauzy said, “Many of those nationals from sub-Saharan Africa…were smuggled into Libya and were employed in the informal sector of the Libyan economy and therefore were totally invisible to the diplomatic missions and to the humanitarian community inside Libya.
Many migrants are also trying to make their way to neighboring Egypt.
“We’ve now had an outflow of migrant workers, mostly from eastern Libya into Egypt. The outflow continues and includes obviously migrant workers from African countries, but also from Asia. We also have migrant workers that are still continuing to come out through the Tunisian border. But our concern and our focus remains also very much on northern Niger and northern Chad,” he said.
He described the journey to Niger and Chad as “incredibly dangerous,” taking them across the desert in southern Libya. Once they cross the border, they face another long journey to find towns capable of providing humanitarian assistance.
“People who are arriving in those localities are usually completely exhausted simply because of the sheer difficulty they have faced,” Chauzy said.
Misrata
IOM has used the port of Misrata to evacuate migrants and others from Libya. Boats carry them to Benghazi.
“To date, we’ve evacuated about 7,200 stranded migrant workers out of Misrata. We’ve also managed every single time the boat went into Misrata to bring in hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to the population of Misrata, including medical assistance. We’ve evacuated wounded people out of Misrata. Obviously, the needs in Misrata remain enormous,” he said.
IOM has helped evacuate about 31,000 people from Libya so far, including its Misrata operations.
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
Australia: Boat People ‘Deterred’ By Shipwreck
Tony Abbott claims the horror of last year’s Christmas Island boat disaster is responsible for a fall in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia.
The Opposition Leader conceded fewer boat people were travelling to Australia as he tried to exploit Labor unease over the proposed refugee swap with Malaysia.
“There is no doubt the flow of boats has somewhat diminished,” Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB.
“I suspect a lot of it would be boat people would be deterred by the terrible tragedy on Christmas Island, and I guess some people . . . are thinking it’s all getting too hard.”
So far this year, 26 boats have reached Australia, including five since the Malaysian solution was announced on May 7, compared with 65 for same period last year.
As Immigration Minister Chris Bowen rejected calls by refugee advocate Marion Le to revive the Howard-era policy of sending boat people to Nauru, instead of Malaysia, 16 refugee groups condemned both options. “The Australian debate about asylum policy has now degenerated to the point where the central argument seems to be about which inhumane policy will cause the least suffering,” the Refugee Council said.
A day after Fremantle MP Melissa Parke became the first Federal Labor figure to speak out against the Malaysian solution, key independent Andrew Wilkie accused the Government of losing its “moral compass”, but stopped short of withdrawing his support.
Mr Bowen said talks with Kuala Lumpur were well advanced, with the final deal to ensure proper treatment of asylum seekers, as he again ruled out Nauru.
Federal politicians investigating the December Christmas Island shipwreck in which up to 50 people died visited the island yesterday to take evidence from government officials and inspect the site of the tragedy.
The Government yesterday rejected the United Nations’ latest call to abandon mandatory detention after the latest review of Australia’s human rights record.
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
Chuck Norris: Deport California’s Illegal Immigrant Prisoners
In the classic movie, “The Great Escape,” a cluster of Hollywood manly men from yesteryear (including my friend Steve McQueen) played Allied POWs who escape from a German camp during World War II.
Today, the great escape may be played out by more than 33,000 incarcerated inmates in California who don’t escape the state’s 33 prisons but are released by a computer error and the U.S. Supreme Court itself.
Many today say prisoners have too many rights and too many creature comforts while doing time and paying the penalty for their crimes. But the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the ruling of a district court panel that California prisons are sub-par environments for inmates. A 5-4 majority demanded that Golden State officials grant 33,000 of its 143,335 prisoners golden tickets to freedom because severe overcrowding has led to inadequate medical care.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “This extensive and ongoing constitutional violation requires a remedy, and a remedy will not be achieved without a reduction in overcrowding.”
Really?? No remedy is possible without letting prisoners go free? No solution is possible without essentially expunging incarcerated criminals’ crimes and penalties and releasing them into society?
It must be great to be an inmate in California, not only because the U.S. Supreme Court will fight for your medical welfare but essentially also pardon you from your crimes!
On the flipside, the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices were concerned that forcing the state to release 33,000 inmates could endanger the public.
You think?
Justice Alito was correct when he warned that the mass release of inmates would be “gambling with the safety of the people of California. … I fear that today’s decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years we will see.” Alito added, “The prisoner release ordered in this case is unprecedented, improvident, and contrary” to federal law.”
The fact is that, while five U.S. justices fight for the constitutional rights of California inmates, they abandon theirs and the states’ governmental responsibility, as outlined even in both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, to protect the life, liberty and property of its citizens.
Does the U.S. Supreme court really believe that California officials can discern 33,000 non-violent, non-repeat offenders? And shall we assume California’s liberal judicial system and sanctuary cities won’t further coddle these criminals?
[…]
Here are a couple statistics that should be entered into this debate:
In 2005, Heather Mac Donald, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims that nearly 25 percent of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally. If that’s true, that number alone exceeds 30,000 illegals in our California prison system.
Moreover, a 2004 report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, concluded that the education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens cost Californians $10.5 billion per year (that’s $1183 annually for every household).
(And who can doubt that all these figures have significantly increased in the last seven years since these reports originated?)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
European Governments Blamed for African Drownings
There was a need to radically increase air surveillance along the Libyan coast and further out to spot any fragile vessels at sea and safely prepare a rescue, The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg said.
In his latest human rights comment published today, Mr Hammarberg said that the imperative principle of “rescue at sea” must not only be respected for those close to a sinking ship;
“In view of the ongoing military operations it would be difficult to argue that there are no resources for such reconnaissance activity.
“Indeed, the escalation of the armed conflict has contributed to the acute situation of the sub-Saharan migrants.”
Mr Hammarberg said that European governments and institutions have more responsibility for this crisis than they have demonstrated so far.
“Their silence and passivity are difficult to accept.
“When preventing migrants from coming has become more important than saving lives, something has gone dramatically wrong,” he said.
The commissioner pointed out that least another 150 persons drowned, while others were saved this week. In a similar tragedy in May, about 600 persons lost their lives and there were other reports about missing vessels with migrants on board.
It likely that the death toll for this year has now reached 1 400, or perhaps even more.
Mr Hammarberg said that the drowning tragedies in the Mediterranean were not a new phenomenon; there have been many such incidents over recent years.
“While coast guards and fishermen from Italy and other countries have rescued many, European governments have tried to discourage the arrivals through push-backs and other strong deterrent measures.
“This has not prevented people from trying to reach Europe, but it has made the journey more dangerous and given the smugglers a reason to increase their prices.
“The boats have become more and more overcrowded and more of them have capsized.”
Mr Hammarberg wrote that smugglers took on board too many migrants in unsuitable boats — putting lives at risk. They did not accompany the boats, but asked some of the migrants to be in charge of the journey.
“Those who have drowned were mainly from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and other sub-Saharan countries.
“Many of them had grounds for seeking international protection. A number of them were trapped in Libya, sometimes as a result of European agreement with Gaddafi aimed at preventing migrants from fleeing Libya and returning them to that country when intercepted.
“Some of them were in prison when the armed conflict started; others were in hiding.
“The war made them even more vulnerable as the Gaddafi regime recruited mercenaries from sub-Saharan countries and the opposition tended to see black Africans as enemies.
“It has also been reported that Gaddafi loyalists are now forcing migrants on to these ramshackle vessels in retaliation for the international military intervention in Libya.
“Gone are the days when Gaddafi co-operated with European governments — in exchange for generous aid and investments — to prevent even the most desperate asylum seekers from reaching Europe,” Mr Hammarberg said.
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
France: Entire African Football Team Being Hunted by Immigration Officials After They Disappear
They disappeared from their hotel in Le Havre, on the Channel coast, during a friendly tournament designed to foster ‘international cooperation and harmony’.
An entire football team of Africans is on the run from French immigration officials after vanishing without trace.
They disappeared from their hotel in Le Havre, on the Channel coast, during a friendly tournament designed to foster ‘international cooperation and harmony’.
The players, who are from the west African state of Senegal, are likely to want to claim asylum or else disappear into the black economy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Malta ‘Just a Spectator’ In Migrant Exodus — Frattini
Italy yesterday lambasted Malta for being “just a spectator” to the exodus of immigrants from Libya seeking refuge in Europe, further stoking the simmering dispute between the two countries.
The Italian government also claimed it was gathering evidence that the Libyan government was behind the current crossings of irregular migration towards Europe.
The latest accusations against Malta were made by Italy’s Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini during an interview published in the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.
He said Italy had to report Malta to the EU as he claimed the island was not doing its part to save the lives of hundreds of immigrants crossing its vast search and rescue area (SAR).
“We had to report Malta as in many instances the Maltese authorities are just looking at the problem and not giving any help when immigrants are in Malta’s SAR waters,” Mr Frattini charged.
Insisting Italy was prepared to do all it could to save lives, Mr Frattini said the Italian government had ordered its rescue services to intervene and save lives in all circumstances, even in faraway seas and in areas which were not directly in its responsibility.
Brussels has not reacted to Italy’s accusations against Malta, saying only that the two countries should continue to collaborate on rescue missions in the Mediterranean.
Malta and Italy have been at loggerheads in the past years over the interpretation of international maritime rules connected with SAR operations.
While Malta maintains it is only responsible for coordinating search and rescue missions in its vast area — which spreads across the Mediterranean from Crete to just a few kilometres from Lampedusa — Italy contests this and says the island is responsible for taking all immigrants rescued in its SAR region.
Just a few days ago, an Italian NGO, Codacons, officially filed reports with the International Criminal Court and the International Court for Human Rights in The Hague asking them to investigate Malta’s alleged breach of international maritime rules. The Maltese government has already dismissed these allegations.
In his interview, Mr Frattini — a former European Commissioner responsible for Home Affairs — also upped his ante against Libya saying the Libyan regime was behind the current migration flow.
“We are gathering evidence that the Libyan regime is behind this wave of illegal immigration as a reaction against Europe on the Nato intervention. People arriving in Lampedusa from Libya are saying they were forced onto boats and that they had not paid anything to cross over to Europe,” he said.
According to Mr Frattini, if these allegations are true, there could be a case against Libya before the ICC for crimes against humanity.
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
Malta Replies to Frattini Over Migrant Rescue Row
Home affairs and justice minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici has hit back at Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini who accused Malta of ‘not doing its part’ to save the lives of migrants fleeing Libya.
Mifsud Bonnici stressed that Malta always adhered to its international obligations and coordinated search and rescue operations.
Frattini — who was interviewed by Corriere della Sera — echoed his home affairs colleague Roberto Maroni who has previously hit out at Malta and also reported the alleged omission of rescue of migrant boats by the AFM to the European Commission, while Italian consumer rights association has referred the case before the International Criminal Court.
In his reply, Carm Mifsud Bonnici said that Frattini had not been factual in his statements.
“Had he been so, the Armed Forces of Malta would not have rescued 1,530 people since the Libyan crisis started, including a group of 76 persons who escaped from Misurata on a fishing trawler last week.”
While stressing that Malta had “taken note” of Frattini’s comments, he insisted that the Maltese government “serenely awaited” any communication from Rome or other relevant authorities to prove the above by answering in full and stating the facts.
Issues between Malta and Italy over migrant rescues in the Mediterranean have continued over the past hours, with the Northern League Venetian governor and fisheries minister Luca Zaia stressing that “Catholic Malta cannot afford to leave migrants die at sea.”
Speaking in Venice, Zaia said that “Malta was historically right in driving battles in virtue of its Christian roots, but the island must prove to all that it can still do the same.”
In another development, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg appealed for more air surveillance over the Mediterranean and along the Libyan coast in a bid to spot “fragile boats” and prepare for rescue.
Hammarberg stressed that the principle of “rescue at sea” must not only be respected for those close to a sinking ship;
“While coast guards and fishermen from Italy and other countries have rescued many, European governments have tried to discourage the arrivals through push-backs and other strong deterrent measures,” Hammarberg said, adding that even these tough and controversial methods of tackling immigration did not prevented people from trying to reach Europe, “but it has made the journey more dangerous and given the smugglers a reason to increase their prices.”
| — Hat tip: AC | [Return to headlines] |
Dim Sun Helped Send Earth Into Little Ice Age, Study Suggests
A dearth of bright spots on the sun might have contributed to a frigid period known as the “little ice age” in the middle of the past millennium, researchers suggest.
From the 1500s to the 1800s, much of Europe and North America were plunged into what came to be called the little ice age. The coolest part of this cold spell coincided with a 75-year period beginning in 1645 when astronomers detected almost no sunspots on the sun, a time now referred to as the Maunder Minimum.
Past studies had mulled over whether the decreased solar activity seen during the Maunder Minimum might have helped cause the little ice age. Although sunspots are cool, dark regions on the sun, their absence suggests there was less solar activity in general. Now scientists suggest there might have been fewer intensely bright spots known as faculae on the sun as well during that time, potentially reducing its brightness enough to cool the Earth…
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Facebook Now Knows What You Look Like as it Rolls Out Face Recognition by Stealth
Facebook has eroded the online privacy of millions of its users by switching on facial recognition technology without telling them, a technology expert said today.
The leading social networking website has ‘enabled’ a function that automatically identifies people in photos without their knowledge.
The feature has been expanded from the United States to ‘most countries’, Facebook said on its official blog yesterday.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Rise of the Post-American Empires
Obama was the globalist messiah of the Utopians, the Post-American Third Culture president who was meant to bridge the old America with the new global order.
When the Utopians of the left talk about a Post-American world, they mean a great borderless globe ruled over by international law, where there are no more citizens or nations, just people who happen to enjoy working and living in New York, Shanghai or Islamabad. This digital jet setting globocratic version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is their envisioned outcome of globalization. No more governments. Only one single world girdling government.
But what the Utopians have never realized is that this vision is not universal, it springs from a Western liberal messianism that is big on faith in progressive government, and disdains national and tribal identities. And that means it is a vision that most of the globe does not share. And is never likely to share. The Utopians want an end to national power and cultural imperialism, but their globalist vision is cultural imperialism backed by national power.
The United Nations is a potemkin village backed up by the armies of the United States and Europe. If the United States should fall, then its nemesis ensconced in a modernist skyscraper on Turtle Bay will fall with it. The United Nations has built itself around gathering a consensus of support for American policy or gathering an opposing consensus to restrain it. But either way it turns in response to a world power. It has no potency of its own.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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