Job Creation Under Barack Obama: Less Than Meets the Eye?
In the aftermath of yesterday’s better than expected jobs number there have been many analyses in the media on both sides of the aisle, either attacking or defending Obama’s track record in creating jobs. All have come up with arguments which according to their authors, are solid and defensible. There is one analysis, however, which is missing, and that is a follow up of what we showed yesterday in “Chart Of The Day: America’s Geriatric Work F(a)rce.”
In it we demonstrated the very much “under the radar” schism of America’s workforce since the NBER-defined official end of the recession in June 2009 into the “haves”, or those above 55, who have been able to get a job since the end of the recession, and the “have nots”, or all those in the labor force who have not been able to find a job. So how does this data look when extended to the beginning of Obama’s term, or the 46 full months starting with his inauguration in January 2009, and continuing through the latest, October 2012 data point. The chart is presented below; you decide.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
4 Toledo Men Arrested for Stealing Romney Signs
Criminal quartet was driving truck belonging to sheet-metal union
(Cleveland Plain Dealer) Perrysburg police arrested four Toledo area men early Friday morning on charges of stealing Mitt Romney campaign signs in Wood and Lucas counties in Northwest Ohio.
The signs were found in a pickup truck owned by Sheet Metal Workers International, Union Local 33 in Parma, according to the police report.
Many of the signs — some measuring as large as 4 feet by 8 feet — were believed to have been put up by members of Northwest Ohio Conservative Coalition, said John McAvoy, the group’s president.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A Note to a Stiff-Necked People
By David Mamet
To those Jews planning to vote for Obama:
Are you prepared to explain to your children not the principles upon which your vote is cast, but its probable effects upon them?
Irrespective of your endorsement of liberal sentiments, of fairness and “more equal distribution,” will you explain to your children that top-down economic policies will increasingly limit their ability to find challenging and well-paid work, and that the diminution in employment and income will decrease their opportunity to marry and raise children?
Will you explain (as you have observed) that a large part of their incomes will be used to fund programs that they may find immoral, wasteful and/or indeed absurd? And that the bulk of their taxes go to no programs at all, but merely service the debt you entailed on them?
Will you tell your children that a liberal government will increasingly marginalize, dismiss and weaken the support for and the safety of the Jewish state?
[…]
Please remember that we have the secret ballot and, should you, on reflection, vote in secret for a candidate you would not endorse in public, you will not be alone.
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Active Service Members Upset Over Removal From Voting Rolls
TAMPA BAY, Florida — Local service members who have spent years serving the country are discovering this fall that they aren’t allowed to vote in the presidential election.
Valrico resident and Navy Captain Peter Kehrig, who has been abroad for five years tells 10 News he feels cheated by a system that removed him from the rolls.
Florida State Law requires county supervisor of elections offices to perform regular “maintenance” on its voter rolls to eliminate voters who have been convicted of felonies, moved out of the county, or may have died.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Airport Security Checks Are Vulnerable to Fake Boarding Passes, Experts Warn
More than 11 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it remains possible to use fake boarding passes to get through airport security checks, according to new evidence from security researchers and official documents.
The security vulnerabilities could allow terrorists or others on “no-fly” lists to pass through airport checkpoints with fraudulent passes and proceed through expedited screening. They could even allow them to board planes, security analysts warn.
The Washington Post was alerted to the vulnerabilities by concerned passengers and verified them through independent security experts. At the request of U.S. officials, The Post is withholding details that would make it easier for the vulnerabilities to be exploited.
The security gaps center on airline boarding passes, which can be issued up to 24 hours before a flight’s departure. According to security researchers, the bar codes on those passes can be manipulated with widely available technology to change the information they contain: passenger identification, flight data, and codes indicating whether a passenger has qualified for expedited screening.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Jimmy Carter established the Department of Energy in 1079 to ‘make America energy independent’. At that time we were importing 15% of our oil. Today the DoE has a budget of $26 billion dollars and we import 70% of our oil. Talk about a total waste of $26 billion. All the federal government has done since 1979 is restrict America’s access to it oil reserves. I really don’t think that you can get any dumber than that. With proven reserves totally more than most of the Middle East combined, why are we importing 70% of our oil? Why are we financing nations that hate America? Why are we not using those resources to create jobs for Americans and making the US dollar the strongest monetary form in the world.
I will take the opportunity here to state that these policies are primarily the policies of the Democrat Party. In the last year of the Bush administration there were several permits issued for shale oil development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. When Secretary Salazar, a former Colorado Senator, was installed as Secretary of the Interior, he revoked all the permits. As a Senator he was asked at what price he would vote to allow access to the massive oil reserves in ANWAR and at $10.00 a gallon he still would not allow access to those resources. Is this the type of person that we want in that position? No!
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bill Maher Warns Romney Supporters: ‘Black People Know Who You Are and They Will Come After You’
“If you’re thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, I would like to make this one plea: black people know who you are and they will come after you” (video follows with commentary):
That would be the end of that person’s career. Period. No questions asked. Done!
But Maher who’s adored by the Obama-loving media can say this with total impunity.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: HBO should be ashamed to have this disgusting man as one of its on air personalities.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Black Activist: Blacks Lost Cause, Must Get Out White Vote!
I received a “Happy Birthday” email from a cousin. She signed it, “Love, The Obama kids.” My beloved cousin’s closing line means despite all the info and articles I have sent educating them to why black Christians should not vote for Obama, she and her four siblings are still voting for Obama.
Unfortunately, my black cousins are voting skin-color over principles. So that is a done deal. No amount of logic, information or truth will change their minds. My cousins are racists.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Crisis at NJ Nuclear Plant Barely Avoided in Wake of Hurricane Sandy’s Destruction
The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)’s official alert for the Oyster Creek nuclear power facility in Forked River, New Jersey, has been lifted. The narrowly-averted crisis was first triggered as an “unusual event” on Monday as flood waters from Hurricane Sandy rose to 4.7 feet around the plant, but was later upgraded to an actual “event,” which is the second point on the NRC’s four-point scale, after waters reached 7.4 feet just after midnight.
As was widely reported after the storm first made landfall, Oyster Creek’s reactor had already been offline for fueling and maintenance, a fact that was apparently intended to quell public fears that the reactor might be severely compromised. But individuals with knowledge about how nuclear power plants work were still gravely concerned, as such reactors still need electricity in order to power the cooling pools responsible for preventing fuel rods from overheating and causing a meltdown, which is was occurred during the Fukushima crisis.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Daniel Pipes: Why I Am Voting Republican
Note the title is not “Why I am voting for Mitt Romney.” That’s because the two major American parties, Democratic and Republican, represent contrasting outlooks and you vote for the one or other of them, not for a personality. The presidential candidate is captain of the team but its many other players act autonomously. The past half-century has seen a sharpening of the divide between the parties’ philosophical consistency which I (unlike most observers) see as a positive development; who needs Rockefeller Republicans, wets, or RINOs? And ticket-splitting increases gridlock.
I vote Republican because I support the party’s core message of individualism, patriotism, and respect for tradition, in contrast to the core Democratic message of dependence, self-criticism, and “progress.” I am inspired by the original reading of the U.S. Constitution, by ideals of personal freedom and American exceptionalism. I vote for small government, for a return of power to the states, for a strong military, and an assertive pursuit of national interests.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Environmental Swindle by Obama Exposed
In yet another allegation of a serious lack of transparency on the part of the Obama White House, lawmakers this week delved into evidence of misuse of taxpayer dollars for green technology programs that were run by supporters and friends of the current President and that ended up throwing millions upon millions of dollars down the proverbial black hole, according to lawmakers.
[…]
DOE obligated $14.5 billion to 26 projects before the loan program’s termination in September 2011. Three of those projects (Solyndra, Beacon, and Abound) have already declared bankruptcy, and several others are facing serious financial difficulties. Twenty-two of these projects were rated below investment grade (junk) because of their bad credit quality.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Feds Let Mexican Cartel Hit Men Kill in U.S., Senior Lawman Told Stratfor
The U.S. government allowed Mexican drug cartel hit men working as “confidential informants” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to murder people inside the United States, an American federal law enforcement supervisor told the private intelligence firm Stratfor in e-mails released by WikiLeaks. ICE neither confirmed nor denied the allegations when contacted by The New American.
The explosive leaked documents containing the claims were part of a massive batch of e-mails stolen by hackers from the Texas-based intelligence-gathering firm. Among other startling allegations, official sources in the Mexican and U.S. governments told the company that American special-operations forces were in Mexico under the guise of fighting the drug war.
Additionally, a U.S.-based Mexican diplomat and other sources claimed that Washington, D.C., was working with certain favored drug cartels — especially Sinaloa — in an effort to put smaller criminal organizations out of business. The e-mails echoed allegations made in numerous reports and statements by officials, drug-cartel operatives, and other sources, indicating that the U.S. government was deeply involved in the narcotics trade.
Perhaps the most astounding information, however, had to do with the U.S. government allegedly allowing Mexican cartel hit men across the border into the United States to murder targets. A Stratfor source identified in the documents as “US714,” whom the firm described as a “US law enforcement officer with direct oversight of border investigations,” made that explosive accusation in an e-mail dated April of last year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New York Faces Long-Term Housing Concerns After the Storm
With many residents left homeless after the devastation from last week’s storm, New York-area officials began focusing on Sunday on another weather-related factor that might make the problems even worse: colder weather that is moving into the region.
In New York, 30,000 to 40,000 people, mainly residents of public housing, will have to find new homes, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Sunday. Mr. Bloomberg compared it to the situation after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
“I don’t know that anybody has ever taken this number of people and found housing for them overnight,” the mayor said.
Many residents in New Jersey, on Long Island and in Connecticut face a similar problem.
“This is going to be a massive, massive housing problem,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.
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Obama Asks Supporters to Vote for Revenge, Romney for Love
(AGI) Washington, Nov. 3 — The U.S. presidential campaign’s latest signature remarks have been about revenge and love of country, as Republican candidate Mitt Romney has tried to overcome the president’s lead in recent polls. Three days ahead of the elections for the next president of the United States, the two candidates have continued their disputes at a distance in the country’s crucial swing-states. While Obama received clear endorsements for the excellent way he handled the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation, Romney rallied the crowd at the airport outside Portsmouth, New Hampshire. With its four electoral votes, New Hampshire may be essential to Romney in the finale to the White House. “I will not represent one party, I will represent one nation,” he said. Censuring Obama for urging supporters in Ohio to vote out of “revenge”, Romney pounced on the president’s remark in a TV ad. The short commercial shows Romney in front of a crowd in Ohio saying, “Obama asked his supporters to vote out of revenge. Instead, I ask the American people to vote for love of country.” President Obama followed up on the lavish praise he received in the past few days for his pragmatic response to Sandy by visiting the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Agency. He said,”We still have a lot to do.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Obama Executive Order Expands Homeland Security Big-Brother Reach Into Local Law Enforcement
President Barack Obama signed an executive order Friday that expanded the Department of Homeland Security’s ties to local law enforcement. The executive order creates a White House Homeland Security Partnership Council and Steering Committee, aimed at fostering local partnerships between federal and private institutions “to address homeland security challenges.”
The council will be chaired by “the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (Chair), or a designee from the National Security Staff.” The Council chair will also chair the Steering Committee. The executive order comes weeks after a damning Senate report on Homeland Security’s 77 fusion centers, which the Washington Post called “pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Violent Agenda Hits Home
Exclusive: Anita Crane becomes target of leftists when home is vandalized
In two WND articles, “America’s salvation depends on Catholics” and “Did Catholics forget about Obama’s record?,” I explain the necessity for Catholic integrity during this election. Instead of arguing with this couple, I taped a Romney/Ryan sign to the inside of our glass storm door.
I also taped a homemade sign beneath it: “Choose Life, Not Death.” Under that headline, I placed the words of Moses from Deuteronomy 30:19-20: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and clinging to him …”
Within minutes of closing the door, someone shattered the glass in broad daylight. As I was on the phone with police, I saw someone steal our American flag.
So there it was: a striking example of Obama supporters’ tolerance.
White conservatives and adults aren’t the only targets of leftists. After black conservative Ron Miller published his Christian memoir, “Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch,” which I edited, his home property was vandalized.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Tip of the Communist Iceberg in the Oval Office
“America, and indeed the entire Western World, faces destruction if communist sympathizer Barack Obama is returned to office.”
As Tuesday is Election Day, it is extremely important that we get as many voters as humanly possible to the polls to vote for Romney—or against Obama.
We Americans are far more insular than we like to admit. We have, all along, felt more that this election is for—and about—America and the people of America. But that is only half of the story.
You see, without a free America, the western world is F I N I S H E D !
[…]
There is a video (Trevor Loudon: An Urgent Message for America[url] ) I’d like to recommend to you. It runs about thirty minutes and it is well worth your time. Please watch it and recommend it to your friends, especially those who may have the intention of voting for Obama or, as yet, remain undecided.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The grand show of the American government with its presidents and senators, its elegant domes and assorted rituals, is a facade for the true power of a shadow government of committee meetings and think tanks who shape an agenda and then inject into organizations and associations of government workers who turn it into institutional policy long before the legislatures, governors and presidents have taken a single step.
This is where the true power lies and it is far more pervasive and potent than most people realize. But it is a power that is wholly dependent on our investment in its infrastructure. As long as the majority of the people want the order of working post offices, schools, health care programs, advisories and law enforcement, then the bureaucracy will wield its power until a strong chief executive backed by a united legislature confronts them. And meanwhile what we face are not troops in the streets, but a few million unionized public employees following policy as determined by think tanks, campaigned for by activists and enacted by courts. This is how we are ruled. This is where the danger lies.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Elections: Will the Dead Vote and Voting Machines be Hacked?
“He who casts a vote decides nothing. He who counts the vote decides everything.” -Joseph Stalin
Whether or not he said it, Stalin’s quote has entered into folklore. For a vote to mean anything, those counting the ballots must have a greater respect for the integrity of democracy than they have lust for power.
Since Stalin’s time, the technology has changed. With electronic voting machines, which leave no paper trail and are programmed with proprietary software, the count can be decided before the vote. Those who control the electronics can simply program voting machines to elect the candidate they want to win. Electronic voting is not transparent. When you vote electronically, you do not know for whom you are voting. Only the machine knows.
According to most polls, the race for the White House is too-close-to-call. History has shown that when an election is close and there’s no expectation for a clear winner, these are the easiest ones to steal. Even more important, the divergence between exit polls, perhaps indicating the real winner, and the stolen result, if not overdone, can be very small. Those who stole the election can easily put on TV enough experts to explain that the divergence between the exit polls and the vote count is not statistically significant or is because women or racial minorities or members of one party were disproportionately questioned in exit polls.
There have been recent reports that, because of costs, exit polls in the 2012 presidential election will no longer be conducted on the usual comprehensive basis in order to save money. If the reports are correct, no check remains on election theft.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Election: Obama’s Ad Targets Latinos
(AGI) Miami — Knowing well the importance of the Hispanic vote, Barack Obama issued an ad in Spanish, asking for his Latinos supporters’ vote and urging them to involve family and friends .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Glenn Beck to Media Outlets Sitting on Damning Benghazi Emails: Release Them or be Exposed
During his Wednesday evening broadcast, Glenn Beck revealed that he and his network, TheBlaze, are absolutely certain based on “very well-sourced information” that two media outlets — one a network — do indeed have emails proving the Obama White House gave orders to “stand down” during the terror attack in Benghazi.
Beck said it is incumbent upon those media outlets to release the information and provide Americans with the truth, rather than shield the president. If they refrain from doing so, Beck said he will “expose them.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Vote Fraud Underway — What Candidates Must Do
Already we’re seeing problems with early voting which should be done away with altogether. Up until the time when Americans were brain washed with the idea of ‘fast food’ election results, no one had a problem waiting a few days or even a week for the outcome of elections, including president. Honest elections came first — except in cities like Chicago where vote fraud in all forms has been a mainstay for nearly a century. Doesn’t seem to bother the people who live there because nothing has been done to effectively clean it up.
America got all the whiz bang new technology. The result: Our elections for candidates from county to state to federal have been stolen now for nearly a half century. These are just a drop in the bucket. More will come to light by Tuesday and for many days afterwards:
[…]
“Now a new book — “Who’s Counting?” by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky — charges that Al Franken’s 2008 defeat of incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman may be directly attributable to felons voting illegally. Coleman led on election night, but a series of recounts lasting eight months eventually gave the seat to the former Saturday Night Live star. Later, a conservative watchdog group matched criminal records with the voting rolls and discovered that 1,099 felons had illegally cast ballots. State law mandates prosecutions in such cases; 177 have been convicted so far, with 66 more awaiting trial.
“The Minnesota win gave the Democrats their 60th Senate seat, creating the filibuster-proof majority that helped shovel ObamaCare into law.“
[…]
Romney has a well oiled machine, but whether it’s the presidential race, congressional, county clerk or sheriff — the alleged losing candidate must audit the vote. Every state has a set time in which you can challenge the vote, so the candidate must make their intention known immediately, not three weeks after the election. Once the vote is officially certified, game over. Volunteers need to line up and be prepared to:
1. Obtain copies of signature books for every precinct in your county or district. That will tell you who and how many people voted. 2. Compare those names and addresses against voter registration forms at the county clerk’s office. In past columns, I’ve covered things like 930 registered voters, but votes cast for a winning candidate was 1,500 votes. 3. It’s not easy, but you have to get access to every ballot even if you have to go to court for an emergency order. Don’t let the ballots get destroyed.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Washington Post Says: Yes, We Need to Give Up Liberty for Security
By now you’ve probably seen the paraphrase of a Ben Franklin quote that those who give up liberty for security, deserve neither (he said similar things a few different ways, but the standard actual quote is: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”)
Whatever the actual quote is, there is quite a lot of truth to it. Giving up liberty for the sake of security rarely works out as planned. Either way, it appears that the editorial board of the Washington Post is either wholly unfamiliar with the quote, or believes it to be untrue. It has come out with an editorial arguing in favor of extending the FISA Amendments Act (and against an ACLU/EFF challenge to the law, to be heard today at the Supreme Court, even with the crazy weather) saying that it is perfectly fine to “give up liberty” for security.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Why Obama Doesn’t Deserve to Win
(THE GLOBE AND MAIL) — If Barack Obama loses the election, my friend Jim will be one reason why.
Four years ago, Jim voted enthusiastically for hope and change. This year, he’s voting for Mitt Romney. “I like Romney,” he says. “When folks saw and listened to him right next to Obama, he looked and spoke more like a president than Obama did.”
Up here in Canada, a large majority of us still belong to the Obama tribe. If Americans were smart enough to think like us, Barack Obama would win by a margin of at least three to one. We can’t fathom why fair-minded people would vote for Mitt Romney. Most of my Canadian friends believe that Romney voters are either callous capitalists or dupes and fools — mouth-breathing Tea Partiers, country-club Republicans, closet racists, or working-class types who’ve been tricked into voting against their own interests.
Jim is none of these. He was thrilled to help elect the first black president. He choked up at the inauguration. He believes that universal health care is a moral imperative. He thinks the Bush regime’s reckless misadventures in foreign lands were total disasters. He believes in a decent safety net and sensible business regulation. But President Obama isn’t the postpartisan, centrist bridge-builder he told us he would be. “Obama is, in fact, a lefty, and given a free hand we really would become a debt-laden, sinking, entitlement-heavy, socialist basket case,” Jim says.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wyoming: Secret Agenda (21) At City Hall?
CHEYENNE — Most people don’t instinctively cringe when they hear of concepts like bike lanes, smart meters and high-speed rail.
But in recent years, a small but vocal contingent of citizens across the country — including here in Cheyenne — has begun to see a sinister side to those very ideas.
To them, terms like “smart growth” are really code for the eventual erosion of private property rights. They fear people in positions of power are colluding — some knowingly, some unwittingly — to convert America into a dystopian society: a land where private property is abolished, where people are forced into prescribed habitation zones, and where all natural resources are under the exclusive control of the government.
And they believe the lynchpin of this grotesque transformation of society is a little-known United Nations document called Agenda 21.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Flu Vaccines to be Forced on Healthcare Workers? Citing Patient Harm
Senior Associate Editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Ken Flegel, advocates compulsory flu vaccination for all healthcare personnel, citing patient harm.
One of the first concepts anyone pursuing a career in medicine learns is primum non nocere, Latin for “first, do no harm. Flegel wrote on October 30th that because healthcare workers may contract the flu and spread it to patients, particularly those in fragile states or with compromised immune systems, “It is time that all people who work in a health care institution be vaccinated.”
By Flegel’s logic, everyone benefits from his idea. He claims that vaccines are effective and compulsory vaccination would mean fewer people are infected with the flu, medical institutions lose fewer man-hours from sick employees, and fewer patients in delicate conditions die.
His logic, however, is flawed and littered with benefits not to frail patients but to pharmaceutical companies.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Mask Avengers: Canadian Protesters to Show Faces or Get 10 Years in Jail
Canadian lawmakers weren’t exactly in the Halloween spirit when they approved a new bill on Wednesday. The legislation makes it illegal to wear masks during riots and protests. Guilty parties could face up to 10 years in prison.
Bill C-309 passed with a vote of 153 to 126 in the Canadian Parliament. It will now move on to the Senate.
If it becomes law, mask-wearers at riots face up to 10 years in jail. Those busted wearing a disguise at an unlawful protest could be sentenced to up to five years in the big house.
The sanctions would not apply to those taking part in peaceful demonstrations or protests.
Parliamentarian Blake Richards, who sponsored the bill, says the measure is aimed at targeting the “growing threat” of vandalism and violence.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
A New Army of Ghosts Haunts Corsica
Le Monde Paris
Never mind Sicily or Naples, the most crime-ridden European region is what the French call “the Isle of Beauty” — Corsica. There, nationalists and racketeers, who are sometimes one and the same, are regularly felled by bullets. A journalist from French daily Le Monde took a “murder tour” of the sites of these crimes that everyone knows about but which are cloaked in a shroud of silence.
Ariane Chemin
There are no candles or flowers to serve as a vigil for their last moments. In the places where they fell, you can find none of those improvised altars seen on every roadside, plastic sentinels which year in, year out, honour the memory of car accident victims. There are few or no commemorative plaques either such as the one for the WW2 resistance fights on Ajaccio’s Cours Napoleon.
Despite the epitaphs carved on their marble gravestones, which state that, although they were killing one another, they fell “per la nazione”, there are no traces of memorials for the activists of the FLNC, Corsica’s National Liberation Front. For the last six years, since the murder of Corsican parliament member Robert Feliciaggi, new ghosts are coming to haunt Ajaccio at an alarming rate. And the island’s administrative capital is rapidly becoming like a corpse-strewn battlefield.
The streets of Napoleon’s imperial city are the site of a recent crime wave with as victims, the members of a handful of rival factions that rule the city now that it is freed of the supervision of [nationalist] elders and underworld godfathers. This is a new criminal landscape, layered over two previous murderous shooting sprees.
Shot like a rabbit
There was one in 1995, when, during the “civil war” between nationalist groups, a death in one camp was avenged by a death in another within twenty-four hours. There is also an older — even bloodier — episode which shook up the town some forty years ago, the Combinatie War, named after a cargo ship full of cigarettes that floundered in the Gulf of Ajaccio. The battle for the cargo’s booty structured the underworld in Corsica and in Marseilles [home to many Corsican émigrés] for decades…
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
French Citizen’s Extradition to Spain Sparks Outrage
A French Basque separatist was handed over to Spain on Thursday after she was arrested in France on a European arrest warrant from Madrid, sparking a wave of criticism across the political spectrum in France, where her activities are not illegal.
More than two years after Spain first issued a Europe-wide arrest warrant for French citizen and Basque separatist Aurore Martin (pictured, above), the 33-year-old was stopped by police earlier this week in southwest France and handed over to the authorities in Madrid.
The non-violent political activist was driving alone through her hometown on Thursday afternoon when French police pulled her over for what they say was a routine drink-driving check.
Immediately identified as a high-profile Basque separatist wanted by the Spanish authorities, Martin was detained by the police and within hours, had been transported to Madrid, where she faces 12 years in prison on terrorism-related charges.
Her offence — in the eyes of Spanish law — is having attended two Batasuna political party meetings in the Spanish city of Pamplona in 2006 and 2007. Batasuna was ruled an illegal movement in Spain in 2003 and attending their meetings thereby a criminal offence. The group is considered the political arm of the Basque terrorist group, ETA.
But in France, where Batasuna is not an illegal group, Martin’s arrest has caused a storm of criticism against the French government, and in particular, Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who many high-profile Martin sympathisers believe gave the green light for her arrest.
On Sunday, Valls told regional newspaper Sud Ouest Dimanche that he had “played no part” in extraditing Martin, stressing that “the decision to carry out the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) was a judicial decision”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Group Says Church of England Vicar Anti-Semitic
LONDON — Britain’s Jewish community representative organization has taken the unprecedented step of lodging a formal complaint to the Church of England, the country’s officially established Christian church, accusing one of its clergyman of anti-Semitism.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has accused Rev. Stephen Sizer, the vicar of Virginia Water Church in Surrey and an ardent anti-Israel campaigner, of making anti-Semitic statements and republishing anti-Semitic material.
Submitting the complaint on behalf of the board, Arkush said, “The evidence disclosed indicates that Rev. Sizer spends time trawling dark and extreme corners of the Internet.”
“Rev. Sizer republishes items to support the target of his polemical writing, while at the same time introducing his readers to the racist and anti-Semitic websites from where he draws his material,” he added.
The complaint cites numerous examples over an 11-month period showing a clear and consistent pattern of activity that “can no longer go unchallenged.”
In October 2011, the Church of England minister posted a link to his Facebook page from an anti-Semitic website called “The Ugly Truth: Zionism, Jewish extremism and a few other nasty items making our world uninhabitable today.”
Sizer removed the link three months later only after numerous complaints.
In March, Sizer linked a picture of US bases surrounding Iran from the “Veterans Today” website, which publishes articles defending Hitler, and promotes Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and the anti- Semitic musician Gilad Atzmon.
In June 2011, Sizer gave an interview to a Malaysian television program in which he claimed that “the Zionists” and the Far- Right in Britain were forming an alliance.
“It’s ironic that the very people who favored the work of Hitler are now working with the Zionists against the Muslims because they view them as a threat,” he said.
The complaint will now be considered by Bishop Christopher Hill
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: South Loses 20% of Students to Northern Italian Universities
Some 18,000 university grads also leave for work each year
(ANSA) Naples, November 2; Some 20% of students, or 24,000 young people per year, leave Southern Italy to pursue higher education in central or northern Italian universities, according to data released by research body Ipe on Friday. The report is based on data provided by the education ministry.
The South of Italy also loses about 18,000 local university graduates each year when they receive job offers from central or northern Italy, according to the Svimez think-tank.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
There is a striking contrast between European media anxiously monitoring the slightest variations in the United States presidential polls combined with their blow-by-blow attention to the weather patterns above New York City, and the fact that the word “Europe” was uttered only once, during the last debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. European observers concluded from this that Europe no longer counts on the world stage. It is also the sign that the US is abandoning a global vision to refocus on what it sees as its best interests: the economy and employment, relations with China and its style of social protection.
It is a known fact that Barack Obama symbolises a turning point in an America that no longer has affinities with the Old Continent. Born in Hawaii of an African father, raised in Indonesia, Obama presides a country in which the nation’s share of Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians is growing steadily. And even the Republican candidate, although elected to public office in New England, is a Mormon, thus a far cry from the traditional WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) that determined domestic and international policies in previous decades.
In this (first?) Obama term, Europe will have had to manage two legacies: that of the Iraq and Afghan wars and that of the 2007 sub-prime crisis. At the price of some rousing internal debates (which caused a Dutch government to fall) and tensions within NATO, most European countries have begun or ended their pull-out of Afghanistan without calling into question their ties to the US or the unity of the EU, as had been the case in 2003 with the war in Iraq.
However, the sub-prime crisis, which mutated into a crisis of banks, debt, economies and societies, is a much more substantial legacy. Despite many G8 and G20 meetings and many phone calls from Obama to European leaders, it seemed impossible to implement an efficient, common management strategy. And despite the mutual benefits derived from both a healthy dollar and sturdy euro, Washington and the Eurozone have not engaged in concerted monetary policies, especially regarding the Chinese yuan.
As for the rest, Barack Obama, who managed trans-Atlantic relations through video conferencing, stood by the British and the French during their Libya campaign, furnishing the military hardware they needed and thus avoiding them a humiliating quagmire. But the U.S. left the Europeans isolated during global warming talks and caused the planet to lose several years of precious time.
For Europe, the candidate’s slogan of “Yes, we can” which gathered tens of thousands of hopeful supporters in Berlin in 2008, came to stand for a lacklustre transition period. But Europeans continue to vote “for” Obama. Living in a post-historic continent, better calm relations to the clamour of the Bush years or the incomprehensible conservatism of Mitt Romney.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Protocols of the Elders of Zion Read Aloud in Greek Parliament
Ilias Kasidiaris, a spokesperson for Golden Dawn, read out Protocol 19 from the book: “In order to destroy the prestige of heroism we shall send them for trial in the category of theft, murder and every kind of abominable and filthy crime,” according to Panayote Dimitras of the Greek Helsinki Monitor.
Kasidiaris was addressing parliament on October 23 at a discussion on lifting his immunity in connection with suspicions of assault.
In June, Kasidiaris slapped female politician Liana Kanelli three times on the head during a television discussion. He was subsequently locked in a room in the studio but he knocked down the door and escaped.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
A pub holding a competition to find the ‘Ugliest Woman’ got a visit from the police after someone reported them for sexism.
An unknown complainant demanded the competition be cancelled and wanted the owners of Islay Inn prosecuted.
However, when police arrived at the Glasgow venue they gave manager George Hogg the go ahead after discovering it was, in fact, a competition for men dressed as women.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Shajul Islam: ‘Jihadist’ NHS Doctor to Stand Trial
STRATFORD A trainee NHS doctor accused of joining a jihadist band of rebels who kidnapped two European photographers in Syria will stand trial next summer. Shajul Islam, 26, was allegedly involved in the plot to kidnap Dutch photographer Jeroen Oerlemans and his British colleague John Cantlie on the Syrian border with Turkey. The pair were handcuffed and held at gunpoint by a rebel army for nine days in July after stumbling into the camp accidentally. Property worth £15,000 was taken from them.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
U.K.’s Government Health Care Can’t Afford Seniors
Elderly face losing ‘almost all of their wealth’
(London Telegraph) In a stark assessment of the growing crisis in elderly care, a government report warns that the country may not be able to afford to fund a cap on care costs for a rapidly expanding aging population.
The report, released this week, depicts a bleak picture of the future, with a growing number of pensioners slipping into poverty as they use up their savings to fund care and rely on friends and family for help. It lays bare the scale of the task facing ministers and will increase the pressure on David Cameron to address the issue.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A sex abuse victim who told BBC’s Newsnight he was raped by a ‘leading politician from the Thatcher years’ as a child has said the top Tory told him he’d be killed if he told police.
Steven Messham revealed he was contacted by detectives yesterday following Friday’s programme which alleged he was raped ‘more than a dozen times’ by the man, described by Newsnight as a ‘shadowy figure of high public standing’.
Today, Mr Messham, now 49, told the Sunday Express he was sexually assaulted repeatedly for 18 months from 1977 when he was 13 and living in a children’s home in North Wales.
Mr Messham said on one occasion he was abused in a hotel room by the political figure as well as eight other paedophiles.
He also said he was warned afterwards that he would be killed if he ever breathed a word to anyone.
Mr Messham, who lived at the Bryn Estyn home near Wrexham when the abuse too place, told the Sunday Express: ‘It happened time and time again, it was terrifying. there were a group of paedophiles who would regularly abuse boys at the home.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man, 24, Has Skull Cracked by Soho Phone Theft Gang
A clubber was viciously attacked by a gang as he sprinted in pursuit of a man who snatched his phone.
Police are appealing for witnesses following the serious assault on Great Pulteney Street near the junction of Beak Street in the early hours of September 30.
The 24-year-old victim told police that he had his phone snatched while leaving a nightclub on Wardour Street and he ran through Soho in pursuit of a suspect.
He was then approached by another group of four males, who viciously attacked him by pushing him to the ground, before kicking him repeatedly about the head and body.
He suffered a fractured skull, perforated ear drum, and significant cuts and bruises.
Detectives from the Westminster Serious Violence Team are trying to identify the suspects who were described as a group of four Asian males aged in their mid 20s-30s and were wearing smart-casual clothing at the time.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Screen legend Leonard Rossiter is the latest celebrity name to be embroiled in the sex scandal engulfing the BBC.
The Rising Damp star, who died in 1984 aged 57, has been accused of performing a sex act as he watched three BBC staff trying to rape a male TV extra.
An anonymous male accuser told The Sun the trio twice assaulted him at BBC Television Centre in West London when he was 18.
He said Rossiter, who also starred in the much-loved series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, watched the second 1960s attack.
It is the latest scandal to hit the Corporation following the mountain of claims made about Sir Jimmy Savile.
Today, the alleged victim branded the BBC a ‘cesspit of depravity’ as he recalled the assault, one of two he said he suffered at the TV Centre.
Police are now investigating after the man stepped forward to give a statement and detectives are understood to be considering arrests.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Prisoners have been given telephones inside their cells despite ministers promising to crack down on perks behind bars.
Convicts at a young offender institution in Kent have become the first in state-run jails to be given personal landlines that they buy credit to use at any time of day or night.
They can only ring numbers approved by the authorities and cannot receive calls on the handsets, while the cost of installing them is being covered by BT.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Peers Clash Over Sharia Law Tribunals
Peers clashed today over the role of Sharia law tribunals as they backed measures aimed at toughening rules on sex discrimination and domestic violence.
Independent crossbencher Baroness Cox warned about the “suffering of women oppressed by religiously sanctioned gender discrimination in this country”.
And she hit out at a “rapidly developing quasi-legal system, which undermines the fundamental principle of one law for all”.
Lady Cox said her move to tackle this in the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill was backed by many Muslims and could apply to discrimination by other faiths.
She denied being “anti-Muslim” insisting she wanted Muslim women to enjoy their full legal rights under British law.
But the first female Muslim peer, Baroness Uddin, said the bid to change the law would be seen, outside the House, as “another assault on Muslims”.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Senior Tories Accused Over Child Abuse
Two senior Conservative figures were named during an official inquiry into widespread child abuse at children’s homes.
The inquiry, established to examine allegations of abuse, heard claims that a paedophile ring operating from children’s homes included policemen, social workers and other prominent public figures.
Their identities were protected by an order from Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, the retired High Court judge in charge of the 1997 North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal of Inquiry, after he dismissed the claims they had taken part in abuse as “fantasy”.
But there are now calls for the allegations to be re-examined in the light of the Jimmy Savile scandal, which has engulfed the BBC and parts of the NHS, with claims that his predatory abuse of young teenage girls over three decades was covered up at a time when victims were less likely to be taken seriously.
On Saturday night the calls were backed by Keith Towler, the children’s commissioner for Wales, who told BBC Radio 5’s Saturday Edition programme: “I would support a full inquiry. Unless you do that, the level of suspicion will always be around that there is a cover-up… No-one should be protected.”
One of the alleged victims of the north Wales abuse ring has now asked for a meeting with David Cameron to discuss his accusations, in the light of the Prime Minister’s statement, following the Savile revelations, that victims of abuse must be heard.
During the Waterhouse inquiry it was claimed that abuse took place at the country home of a senior Tory politician and at parties.
Sir Ronald ordered the media not to publish the names of the alleged members of the paedophile ring.
He ruled that the media could not report the name of any living person who was accused of abusing children in the North Wales homes unless they had previously been convicted of such an offence.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Tax officials will have the power to telephone parents and question them about their relationships as they monitor sweeping changes to the child benefits system.
As part of changes to how much parents receive in child benefits, the taxman will be able to call claimants and quiz them about the ‘stability’ of their relationship if HMRC records show anomalies.
The telephone quizzing will be part of a range of options the government can use to enforce the changes to the child benefit system, which restricts how much high earners can receive.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A suspected war criminal accused of playing a role in the slaughter of nearly a million Rwandans is working as a taxi driver in Britain and cannot be deported because of human rights laws.
Modeste Kennedy Hakizimana, 41, is alleged by the UK Border Agency’s War Crimes Unit to have helped Hutu soldiers kill members of the Tutsi ethnic group during the genocide in 1994.
[…]
But he has been allowed to remain because of a precedent set in the High Court which let four suspected Rwandan war criminals stay in Britain on the basis that they would not get a fair trial in their home country, breaching their human rights.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bosnia: Four Witnesses Dispute Alleged Serb Bombing of Sarajevo Market
The Hague, 31 Oct. (AKI) — Four defence witnesses in the trial of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused of genocide and war crimes by the United Nations war crimes tribunal, have disputed alleged bombing of Sarajevo’s Markale market by Serb forces during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.
British ballistic expert Derek Alsop, testifying in Karadzic’s defence, told the court on Wednesday there was “very little evidence” to determine where the grenade which killed 66 people and wounded 140 in February 1994 was fired from.
“Based on available information from the site of the explosion, it is impossible to determine with any precision from which distance the grenade was fired,” Alsop told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Earlier on Wednesday and Tuesday three former Canadian officers, who served with the UN peacekeepers (Unprofor) in Bosnia at the time, backed Alsop’s view that it was almost impossible to target the market by a mortar fire from Serb positions in hills overlooking Sarajevo.
Retired Canadian colonel Stephen Youdry went a step further, saying the explosion at Markale was “staged to blame Bosnian Serb forces”. His testimony concurred with Karadzic’s claim that the explosion was staged by Muslim forces in order to provoke international intervention in the Bosnian war.
“If Markale was a target, the most efficient way to hit it would be by a hand mortar from a rooftop of a nearby building, Youdry suggested.
Karadzic has been charged on eleven counts of genocide and war crimes, including two attacks on Markale in February 1994 and August 1995. The indictment centers on a massacre of over 7,000 Muslims in eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995 and 44-month siege and shelling of the capital Sarajevo in which 12,000 people were killed.
“The responsibility of one (Serb) side was wrongly determined,” Youdry told the court. Former Canadian general Michael Gaultier said the Unprofor investigation didn’t determine where the grenade was fired from, nor “which side was responsible”.
Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade in 2008, after 13 years in hiding, and was transferred to the Hague for trial. In his first appearance in court he denied the charges.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Benghazi: The Set-Up and the Cover-Up
In August 2012, Stevens reported that the security situation in Benghazi was deteriorating, yet in spite of this, the 16-man Site Security Team assigned to Libya, comprised of Special Forces led by SF LTC Andy Wood, was ordered out of Libya, contrary to the Ambassador’s stated desire that they stay.
Note that, at any time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could have ordered the deployment to Benghazi of additional security experts from the Department of Security (DoS) Bureau of Diplomatic Security (or Diplomatic Security Service-DSS), but apparently chose not to do so.
Instead, DoS hired a British firm, Blue Mountain, to manage its security in Benghazi, and Blue Mountain subcontracted the job to a local jihadist militia called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade who have known Muslim Brotherhood ties.
[…]
When asked why he didn’t authorize military assets to scramble to Benghazi’s defense, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta claimed that he didn’t know what was going on and “could not put forces at risk in that situation.” This is patently false on both counts: Panetta most certainly did know that an American Ambassador and other staff were under military assault by jihadist forces who had invaded the sovereign territory of a U.S. diplomatic facility. Whether U.S. military assets — either air support or Special Forces — could have arrived in time to save lives is unknown at this point, but the administration’s refusal to say when the president first learned that Benghazi was under attack, that the ambassador was in peril and that the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan jihadist group, Ansar al-Shariah, had taken credit for the attack invites speculation.
The White House refusal to comment on when exactly the president first met with the National Security Council after the attack began doesn’t help either. (And the weeks of deliberately false statements from a range of administration figures who tried to claim that an obscure trailer for a film no one had ever seen was to blame for the Benghazi debacle only confirms suspicions about the administration capitulation to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) demands for limits on free speech.)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
CIA Timeline Confirms: Woods and Doherty Killed in Benghazi 7hrs After Wh Told of Attack
(Commercial Airliner Can Fly From London to Libya and Back in That Time)
According to the CIA timeline provided to the Washington Post and other news organizations, Woods and Doherty were killed by mortar fire while on the roof of a CIA facility in Benghazi between 11:15 p.m. and 11:26 p.m. Washington time—or between 5:15 a.m. and 5:26 a.m. Sept. 12 Benghazi time.
Between 4:05 p.m. Washington time, when the State Department emailed the White House that the U.S diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack, and 11:15 p.m., when Wood and Doherty were killed, more than seven hours passed.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt’s Coptic Christians Choose New Pope
Bishop Tawadros (pictured) was chosen to serve as Egypt’s new Coptic Christian pope from among three candidates on Sunday. Pope Shenuda III died in March amid fears of how Christians would fare under the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.
Bishop Tawadros was chosen as new Pope of Egypt’s Coptic Christians Sunday when a blindfolded altar boy picked his name from a chalice in a ceremony invoking divine guidance for the beleaguered minority.
Acting head of the church Bishop Pachomius took the ballot from the boy’s hand and, showing it to those crowded into St Mark’s Cathedral, announced: “Bishop Tawadros.”
The crowd erupted in cheers and applause as church bells tolled in celebration across the country.
The new Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa in the Holy See of St Mark the Apostle succeeds Pope Shenuda III, who died in March leaving behind a community anxious about its future under an Islamist-led government.
Tawadros, 60, a bishop in the Nile Delta province of Beheira, was among three potential candidates — the other two being Bishop Rafael, 54, a medical doctor and current assistant bishop for central Cairo, and Father Rafael Ava Mina, 70.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Rival Militias Clash Outside Libyan Intelligence HQ
(AGI) Tripoli, Nov. 4 — Rival armed militias clashed outside the Supreme Security Committee, the intelligence headquarters, in Tripoli on Sunday morning. An eyewitness reports that the building took a hit from an RPG round. Haitham Ben Nour, a doctor at a nearby hospital, said they had admitted at least five people injured in the fighting, which took place in the early hours of the morning. Ben Nour added that the hospital had also been damaged in the shooting.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
It’s Official! Iran Fulfills Obama Surprise
Islamic regime announces suspension of uranium enrichment
Fulfilling a request of Barack Obama’s administration reported exclusively by WND, Iran Saturday announced its promise as outlined in the secret negotiations with the U.S. to suspend uranium enrichment to the 20 percent level for its nuclear program.
During an interview with the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA), Mohammad Hassan Asefri announced that Iran has halted the enrichment to the 20 percent level and at the same time requested the removal of sanctions by the West.
Asefri said that the halt is a sign of goodwill by Iran but it requires a positive response from the West.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Meanwhile, Secret Iran Nuclear-Bomb Plant Expanding
Work surrounding Iran’s latest secret nuclear site continues unabated, new satellite images from DigitalGlobe show. The existence of the site was first revealed by WND on Oct. 8. The site — Velayat 1 — which is in the province of Isfahan on the outskirts of the small city of Najafabad, was built for research and development and has a capacity of 800 centrifuges for uranium enrichment. It already has successfully tested a neutron detonator and implosion system for a nuclear bomb.
According to the source for that exclusive WND report, research at the site includes design of a nuclear warhead for the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which is now almost complete. The source added that there is also a nuclear reactor at the site along with a separation plant as another path to acquire a nuclear bomb.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Nuclear Iran Seeks Apocalyptic Holy Man
Obama is reluctant to openly admit that radical Islam’s open declaration of war presents a danger to America. The state of Israel shows no such hesitancy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stood before the United Nations and warned of a medieval war of civilizations that is set to erupt global security. A nuclear armed Iran is far different, Netanyahu pointed out, than a nuclear armed Russia. Netanyahu emphasized the distinction between the two ideologies of Iran and Soviet Russia:
“Militant Jihadists behave very differently from Secular Marxists. There were no Soviet suicide bombers. Yet, Iran produces hordes of them. Deterrence worked with the Soviets because every time Soviets chose between their ideology and survival, they chose survival. But, deterrence may not work with Iranians when they get their nuclear weapons.”
Netanyahu went on to explain that the difference between the two aggressors is the value placed on life. Iran anticipates its own destruction as a price to pay for bombing the globe into chaos:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Saudis Are Bulldozing Islam’s Heritage. Why the Silence From the Muslim World?
Imagine that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — the traditional site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus — has been taken over by Cromwellian Puritans. The new owners of the shrine plan to send bulldozers in, replacing the old church with a monstrous building resembling a concrete spaceship. This is so pilgrims can pray without being distracted by “superstitious” icons. Also, the Old City will be buried under hotels that make Vegas look like Venice.
It wouldn’t happen, would it? Christians would fight to the death to preserve Jerusalem. So would Jews and Muslims. And, for once, they’d have the support of secular politicians and scholars, horrified by the prospect of an act of cultural vandalism unprecedented in modern times.
Unprecedented until now, that is. The long-cherished ambition of Saudi Arabia’s ruling Wahhabi sect to smash up the ancient buildings of Mecca and Medina is nearing fruition.
In Mecca, the house of one of Mohammed’s wives has been demolished to make space for public lavatories. His birthplace may disappear, too, as part of King Abdullah’s scheme to complement the skyscrapers and shopping malls with a Grand Mosque fashioned from the same materials as a multi-storey car park in Wolverhampton.
As for Islam’s second holiest place, the city of Medina, a recent article by Jerome Taylor in the Independent revealed a megalomaniac plan to pull down three 7th-century mosques. Taylor added: “Ten years ago, a mosque which belonged to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited. Pictures of the demolition that were secretly taken and smuggled out of the kingdom showed the religious police celebrating.”
Only a small minority of the world’s billion Muslims are Wahhabis, despite the tens of billions of petrodollars spent by the Saudis propagating their creed. (Bosnia, for example, is now littered with Saudi-style mosques, replacing the graceful Ottoman architecture that Wahhabis detest.) Many pilgrims to Mecca are revolted by the marriage of Puritanism and greed they find there. Yet protests are scattered and muted. Why?
One answer is that the House of Saud, though widely hated, is also feared: its wealth and terrorist connections make it unlikely that, say, a Pakistani politician would speak openly about the desecration of the Hajj.
The West can hardly complain about such gutlessness: this year’s Hajj exhibition at the British Museum was creepily sanitised — no mention of bulldozers or the 2,000ft clock tower built right next to the Kaaba, the black cube-shaped building that is the centrepiece of Islamic devotions.
But what sticks in the craw is the hypocrisy of Muslims who throw a fit if Israeli archaeologists carry out non-intrusive work underneath the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, “Islam’s third holiest place”, as we’re constantly reminded. Such anger would be more convincing if the first and second holy sites weren’t being ploughed up by a police state. Likewise, are cartoons of Mohammed really more offensive than reducing the remains of his life to rubble?
As one Middle East expert put it to me: “Jews disturbing the Dome of the Rock fits into an anti-Western narrative, so Muslims can cope with that. The Saudi destruction of Mecca doesn’t fit into that narrative, and so there’s virtual silence.” Something worth bearing in mind, perhaps, when you wonder why the murder of Muslims by Muslims in Darfur or Syria provokes only limited outrage in the Islamic world.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
U.S. Moves to De-Recognize Syrian Opposition Group
Allies baffled: ‘I am not sure the Americans would propose the right people’
(McClatchy Newspapers) The Obama administration’s decision to drop its recognition of the Syrian National Council as the leading Syrian opposition group and propose creating a new umbrella organization surprised and puzzled close U.S. allies, diplomats said Friday.
The U.S. government gave no advance notice of its intention to renounce the council as the lead umbrella group, diplomats of three countries said. They said their governments learned about the initiative from news accounts.
Diplomats criticized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for using what they called inappropriate language in describing the council as made up of people who haven’t been in Syria for decades; many of its members, the diplomats said, left the country only after the uprising against President Bashar Assad began 19 months ago.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
United Arab Emirates: Four ‘Black Magic Practitioners’ Caught in Sting Operation
A woman who helped police set up a sting operation to catch three black magic practitioners was also arrested when it was discovered she herself practised black magic.
The woman, an illegal resident, reported her three friends to police as an act of revenge, said Col Salem Sultan Al Darmaki, the head of Ras Al Khaimah CID yesterday.
Police arrested the three Arab women in their apartment where they were found with an Emirati man, spices and liquids used in black magic, alcohol and tissue with human sperm.
Police believed these items were mixed to make a “magic” potion.
The informer was then arrested when it was revealed that she was also a “sorcerer”.
All four women confessed that they had used black magic for “a long time” to trick people out of their money, police reported.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Russian Nationalists Rallies Unity Day Detentions
MOSCOW — Police in the Russian capital say some 6,000 people have participated in a march of nationalists to mark the National Unity Day holiday, one of dozens of similar events across the country.
The rallies — both sanctioned and unsanctioned — were being held under the title “Russian March.”
Organizers of the sanctioned rally in Moscow claimed that as many as 20,000 people participated in that event.
Some 25 marchers were reportedly detained in the capital for wearing banned Nazi insignias, and police reported that some marchers set of fireworks, flares, and smoke bombs.
It was the first time the authorities allowed the march to proceed in the center of Moscow.
“They only hear us when there are a lot of us, when we take to the streets,” one of the organizers of the Moscow rally, Vladimir Tor, said of President Vladimir Putin’s government. “Unfortunately, our democratic system is ruined. The country lacks democratic institutions. The [Central Election Commission] has become a band of falsifiers and consequently the president and the Duma are only conditionally legitimate. This is a very hard situation. At this time, Russian people need to unite and create their own civil society institutions, parallel to democratic institutions.”
Tor also repeated the nationalists’ call for restricting immigration from Central Asia.
“We demand that the wave of immigration from Central Asia is stopped,” Tor said. “It’s essential to implement a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and to halt heroin traffic and other opiate traffic from Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other Central Asian countries.”
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill led a service in a cathedral in Moscow’s Kremlin.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Video: Illegal Transgenic Human Cloning?
Dumped Fetuses Discovery Could Point To Half Human, Half Engineered Synthetic Life Experiments
Hundreds of human fetuses, found in a forest in central Russia, may have been removed from a local medical university. Police are questioning a researcher, who was fired last year and could have taken the material she was working on with her. However, some doctors say the dumped fetuses could even be the product of cloning. RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
A ferocious leopard may have killed 15 people in Nepal over the last 15 months and now authorities have vowed to kill the ferocious beast.
The severed head of the latest victim, a 4-year-old boy, was found in the forest a kilometer from his home this morning, said Kamal Prasad Kharel, the police chief of the Baitadi district, an area 373 miles west of Kathmandu.
CNN reported that the creature dragged the child away into the jungle to eat, the 15th victim since the attacks began last year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
A dozen former Taliban militants laid down their arms today as they surrendered to an amnesty programme in Afghanistan.
Reports state the 12 fighters renounced their Taliban ties as they handed weapons over to the government during a ceremony in Herat.
The promise to surrender links to the terrorist network is said to be in return for free care of war wounds, temporary housing, a job and an empty plot of land.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
At Least 11 Wounded in Church Attack in Garissa, Kenya
(AGI) — Nairobi, 4 Nov. — Sources of the local police and Red Cross gave news of an attack, reportedly with a hand-grenade, that was launched against a church in Garissa (East Kenya), wounding at least 11 people. Three of the victims were seriously injured and are in urgent need of blood transfusions.
The attack occurred in an area close to the Somalian border.
Since Kenya sent troops to Somalia to combat the fundamentalist al-Shebaab militias, the Country has become the theater of a number of attacks. In July, the attacks on two churches in Garissa caused 18 fatalities. More recently, in September, an attack with a hand-grenade against a church in Nairobi caused the death of a 9-year old boy, the responsibility of which was attributed to sympathizers of Islamic militias.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Boko Haram Suspected of Police & School Attack in Nigeria
(AGI) — Kanu, Nov. 4 — The Nigerian army and local residents report further attacks, probably by Boko Haram, in the north of the country. Men armed with explosives assaulted a primary school, a police station and two telecommunications installations, setting them on fire. “We heard that there were some attacks in Fika by suspected Boko Haram terrorists. They attacked two telecommunication masts, a police station and a primary school,” said Lazarus Eli, the military spokesman in Yobe State. A witness said he saw the bodies of two policemen carried out of the burning police station, but Eli was unable to confirm the report. The military spokesman added that troops are deployed in the city to contain the violence. Fika is 170 km from Damaturu, the state capital of Yobe and a focus of activities by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. According to local sources, the attack took place at around 4:30 a.m.
“They threw explosives and fired gunshots at their targets, setting them ablaze, and fled after the attack,” said Tanimu Mani. “Soldiers who arrived in the town went inside the burnt police station and brought out the bodies of two policemen killed in the attack,” he said. Another resident, Hassan Gaji, a student, said he had heard blasts and gunshots during his early morning prayers. “They were shooting seriously for about one hour,” he said, adding that the town had been taken over by police and soldiers. According to estimates, violence linked to Boko Haram has accounted for 2,800 deaths since 2009, including many members of the security forces. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, a big oil producer, and is divided between the mainly Muslim north and the essentially Christian south.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Suspected Al Shabaab Terrorists in Kenya Linked to Obama Family
Kenyan police officers continued their anti-terrorism operations on Sunday when they killed or arrested suspected members of a Somalia-based Islamist group, one of whom lived in the same western Kenya location as some family members of President Barack Obama who are alleged Muslim Wahhabists, according to sources. A suspect, Omar Faraj, who was allegedly involved in Wednesday’s bombings that killed a police officer and two other suspected members of the Somalia-based al-Qaeda-affiliate, Al Shabaab, was killed by police officers who raided the suspect’s home in Mombasa, Kenya, on Sunday morning, an Israeli police and counterterrorism source informed the Law Enforcement Examiner.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Migrant Cap Will Hurt Britain Says Aide to ‘Open Door’ Tony Blair
THE mandarin in charge of Whitehall when Labour opened Britain’s immigration floodgates yesterday attacked the Government’s current cap on newcomers, saying it hurts economic growth.
The Coalition is “shooting itself in the foot” by shutting its borders to skilled immigrants, warned Sir Gus O’Donnell, former head of the civil service.
Tight immigration restrictions are “a big barrier to growth” as Britain emerges from recession, he claimed, saying they mean not enough skilled workers are moving to the UK.
Sir Gus worked in Number 10 for Tony Blair at a time when Labour operated an open door to immigration, then was Cabinet Secretary under David Cameron until he stepped down earlier this year.
In an article published yesterday he wrote: “The first thing that the Government can do to help growth is to stop shooting itself in the foot. A big barrier to growth is an immigration policy that deprives the UK of skilled workers.”
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Experts Warn of National Vote to Bash Families
‘Ambiguous language that is easily manipulated’ called a threat
Legal experts are warning citizens of Ireland about a Nov. 10 “Children’s Rights Referendum” that they fear is so ambiguous it could be used by the government to replace parents in their roles as decision-makers for their children.
“What is proposed in the amendment is a subtle, yet definite philosophical shift short of being the legal maid-of-all work that it may or may not be,” said an analysis developed by University College Cork law professor Bénédicte Sage-Fuller and history professor Gabriel Doherty, along with Grégor Puppinck, director of the European Center for Law and Justice.
At issue is a referendum that would redefine the role of government in helping children the government determines may be in need of assistance.
[…]
“The Children’s Rights Referendum gives Ireland absolute control over children in Ireland, who are subjected to the fancies of the state and can be deprived of loving and caring parents without a clear showing of parental neglect or abuse,” he concluded.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
From Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Identity Creativity
In exercise books, sports line-ups, or in the simple act of going to the bathroom, school children have to answer the seemingly simple question, “are you a boy or a girl?” For Canadian school kids who exhibit cross-gender behaviour or presentation, this question is not only limiting, it’s the source of angst.
Childhood gender independence, or gender creativity, is often viewed as an abnormality in need of a cure — but it’s that attitude that needs to be fixed, according to Concordia University political science professor, Kimberley Manning. “The majority of gender independent children suppress their identities because of societal pressure. In reality, it’s at this young age that these kids need the support and freedom to explore who they really are so that they have a better chance to grow up to be healthy and happy adults,” she says.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Homeschoolers Flee Persecution in Germany and Sweden
BERLIN — Two leaders in the European home education movement, a father from Sweden and a German mother, drew tears from the audience as they told a packed conference room about life in exile and the heart-rending decision to flee abroad. While each of their stories was unique, both parents were forced to escape from their homelands due to relentless government persecution when they refused to stop homeschooling.
The presentations were made during a Friday workshop at the first-ever Global Home Education Conference (GHEC), held in Berlin, Germany, bringing together around 200 homeschooling leaders, policy makers, parents, human rights activists, and pro-family forces from every corner of the world. Meeting here this weekend, they say the plan is to join forces in the battle to protect the right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of children.
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As The New American reported earlier this year, Himmelstrand was forced to flee from Sweden when officials threatened his family with massive fines and potentially even retaliation by social services. There finally came a point where the pressure became too much to bear.
“We cannot live with the fear of the threat that our children will be taken away,” Himmelstrand told GHEC attendees, explaining his decision to escape from Sweden after the family received a letter from social authorities calling the parents and child to a meeting. “The moment we got that letter, we knew the move was close.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Screenwriter Warns That Russell Crowe May Portray Noah as Environmentalist Wacko
It’s billed as a “Biblical epic” but a Christian screenwriter in Hollywood who has had a chance to read the script for “Noah” says there’s a good chance that the movie, which is still in production, will be far from the truth of the Gospel. “If you were expecting a Biblically faithful retelling of the story of the greatest mariner in history and a tale of redemption and obedience to God you’ll be sorely disappointed,” Brian Godawa recently wrote in his analysis of an undated script he was able to get his hands on as a movie industry insider.
Godawa told The Christian Post that he is not 100 percent sure that the copy of the script written by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel that he read has since been changed to reflect a more accurate portrayal of what’s written in the Bible, but chances aren’t good that is the case. In fact, he fears the movie’s Noah (played by Russell Crowe) will be depicted more like an “environmentalist wacko.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Survey Reveals 2/3 of Russians Repelled by Homosexuals
(AGI) Moscow — Two thirds of Russian citizens, both male and female, claim to be repelled by homosexuals, according to a survey carried out by survey research organization Levada Center. The survey covered 45 regions of the immense Federation. It showed that 66% of respondents (71% of men and 61% of women) feel revulsion toward homosexual men; the figure amounts to 60% for lesbians. A mere 1% of respondents claimed to respect homosexuals. Further, 89% of men and 84% of women expressed “pride” in belonging to their respective genders.
Over half the sample group, i.e. 56%, was in favor of a clear distinction between men and women’s social roles, with rights and duties for each gender. No more than 38% of respondents spoke out in favor of gender equity. Finally, some 33% of the population found feminists somewhat annoying, while 49% claimed to be indifferent toward them, and 9% appreciative.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Met Police ‘Could be Sued Over Plan to Give Top Jobs to Black People and Women’
Britain’s biggest police force is to become the first public body to adopt a policy that gives priority for top jobs to black people and women.
The Metropolitan Police will recruit senior officers and promote civilian staff from minority groups in ‘tie-break’ situations where they are just as qualified as white or male candidates.
Scotland Yard’s diversity board has warned that the ‘positive action’ policy, made legal by equality laws last year, will be controversial.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Today, Children, We’re Teaching Underage Sex and Debauchery
If we are all so disgusted by the Savile affair, which is over, why are we not much more revolted by the schools and clinics which, during next week, will be giving contraceptive jabs and implants to underage girls, so they can have underage sex?
If you want to know what a society is really like, you should not judge it by the sort of thing that becomes a scandal. You should judge it by the sort of thing that does not become a scandal.
The almighty authorities of this country, backed by Parliament, and ultimately by the force of fines, police and prisons, are now forcing their tawdry sexual standards on an entire generation.
These policies take us back to an age of great cruelty to women, and of dreadful sexual exploitation of the young of both sexes. They are closely linked with the growing number of young people who have no stable family, and the growing number of old people trapped in solitude.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Neanderthal Babies All Around: Synthetic Biology is Closer Than You Think
George Church—he of the beard, tall man’s lope and overwhelming credentials— has hit the circuit to promote a new book: Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. As the title explains, the book explores the field of synthetic biology, which centers on how man can program DNA to create things ranging from new fuels to seeds that grow into fully-formed houses. This subject often veers into the fanciful, and Church keeps up that tradition. Yet when he says things about bringing Neanderthals back to life, you have to take notice instead of chuckling.
For about the last 35 years, Church has been at the cutting edge of genetics and radical biology in academic and entrepreneurial settings. Today, he’s the professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, the super-sought-after adviser to more than 20 companies in genetics and synthetic biology, and co-founder of a handful of companies. Church, 58, relishes the academic side of his work and has scores of researchers doing cutting-edge stuff at his Harvard lab. That said, he likes to make sure that people see him as a man of action and not just some big brain in an ivory tower. “I still do things with my own hands,” he says.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
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