On November 6, Californians voted to destroy their state. Other than a brilliant piece by Charlotte Allen entitled “Decline and Fall” in The Weekly Standard, there has been almost no national media attention on this extraordinary event.
Over the last several years California has witnessed a mass exodus of industry and intellect. Some 200 successful businesses and thousands of entrepreneurs have fled this mecca of over-regulation, bounty-hunting attorneys, and over-taxation. California is reaping a bitter harvest, experiencing unemployment topping 10 percent. Rather than logically learn from last year’s lesson, a majority of the state’s legislators seem entirely unimpressed by that unemployment figure and are quite willing to make it grow much, much higher. They rejoice in passing ever more costly regulations and welfare benefits, exacerbating what is now the most inhospitable environment for business in the United States. The foreseeable consequences of California’s rush to regulate and tax everything are a significant worsening in the state’s unemployment rate, lower tax revenues despite tax increases, and great increases in the state’s debt due to mushrooming welfare and social services.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
On November 6 voters in California did something nearly unheard of during the past 30 years: They approved, by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent, a ballot measure raising state income taxes on the most prosperous Californians and sales taxes on everyone, even though the state’s sales tax is already the highest in the nation.
The successful tax-hike initiative isn’t just a hoped-for generator of revenue: a projected $34 billion over the next seven years, which California desperately needs because it is running a $16 billion budget deficit and its cumulative total debt is at least $618 billion, the highest in the nation. That latter amount includes up to $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities for 220,000 state employees plus billions in unpaid bills, delayed payments to schools, and amounts raided from dedicated funds to cover general expenses.
The new tax is also intensely symbolic. It represents the culmination of a two-decade-long process in which the nation’s most populous state, once a prosperous industrial and high-tech powerhouse and magnet for immigrants from elsewhere in the country, has transformed itself into something else: a high-tax, high-spending, highly regulated, and chronically broke welfare state that is fast losing to out-migration both its middle class and the businesses and industries that create jobs. California factories once housed such industries as steel, automobile manufacturing, tire production, and aerospace. Those are now mostly or entirely gone. Silicon Valley employs only tiny numbers of tech geniuses; the actual manufacturing is done elsewhere. California’s unemployment rate tops 10 percent, in contrast to less than 8 percent for the nation as a whole. A full third of Americans on public assistance reside in California, even though it houses only one-eighth of the nation’s population.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
European Union and the Welfare State
Politicians/oligarchs spent huge sums to control the Eurozone. German industry in general and its exports profited from the initial EU conglomeration. After Germany gave over one trillion euros in bailouts to Italy, Spain, and Greece, Germany’s economic growth slowed down, even in rich parts of Germany like Mainz and the industrialized Rhineland.
Germany’s economy has been successful when compared to the Eurozone. When compared to the period when the currency was the German mark or when compared to other non-EU countries, it has been a failure.
According to Rodney Atkinson, “Germany’s success in productivity is ironically due not to GDP per capita growth but to wages falling relative to production.” Thus Germany was “left with poor consumers at home and poor consumers abroad who cannot afford to pay their debts to Germany.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy’s Banks Press IMF on Capitalization Demands
ABI calls for all European banks to follow same credit rules
(ANSA) — Rome, November 26 — Italian bank association ABI pressed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday to not demand additional capitalization from Italian banks.
ABI claimed such a request would be disastrous for Italy’s financial system and the Italian economy. ABI presented documents to an IMF delegation in Rome, arguing that Italian banks are subject to stricter norms than their European rivals with respect to credit deterioration, and for this reason appear to be more fragile.
“We want to avoid a new case with the European Banking Authority,” said ABI President Giuseppe Mussari.
Mussari is asking that the same parameters be used across Europe to assess the solidity of all European banks.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Mary L. Schapiro to Announce She Will Step Down as Head of S.E.C.
Mary L. Schapiro, who overhauled the Securities and Exchange Commission after the financial crisis, is expected to announce on Monday that she is stepping down as chairwoman of the agency, according to two Obama administration officials briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
In recent days, the S.E.C. informed the White House and Treasury Department that Ms. Schapiro planned to leave next month, becoming the first major departure from the Obama administration’s team of financial regulators. Ms. Schapiro will also relinquish her position as one of the five members of the agency’s commission, the group that oversees Wall Street and the broader financial markets.
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Fiat Industrial and U.S.-Based CNH Seal Merger Agreement
Deal consistent with Fiat industrial’s Nov 19 final offer
(ANSA) — Rome, November 26 — Fiat Industrial and US-based agricultural machinery maker CNH sealed a definitive merger agreement, CNH announced in a statement Monday.
The terms of the deal between the Italian automaker and the American agricultural machinery manufacturer are consistent with Fiat Industrial’s final offer announced November 19. Those terms include a cash dividend of $10 per share to be paid to minority shareholders prior to the merger’s completion.
The merged company will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
It will also “use its reasonable best efforts” to be listed on the electronic Milan stock exchange, known as the Mercato Telematico Azionario.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
If America of 1776-2012 is to Live, Conservatism Must Defeat Liberal Socialism
Newsmax Friday, November 23, 2012, “The Talk Begins: Jeb Bush in 2016” the discussion starts about a possible 2016 presidential goal by former Florida Gov Jeb Bush. But I think that Jeb Bush is considered too heavily “establishment” and “Bush” connected, which has been proven to be what we DO NOT need.
Let’s think anti-establishment! The word ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ is considered the longest word in the English language. But don’t blame it on the Americans, it was created in 19th century England when controversy erupted over finances between government and the Church of England. Could we be entering a phase in our history where America could be getting involved in a similar but different engagement? If so it would need to be shortened by removing the three letters, ‘dis’ and call it just ‘antiestablishmentarianism’? Nah! Too much bother.
Did I hear someone mention the word ‘conservative’? SC Senator Jim DeMint? Now there’s a solid non-establishment Republican US Senator, or Conservative, who has worked hard to promote Tea Party type candidates for the Senate with the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) that he created to get solid conservatives nominated for the Republican Party instead of RINO establishment ‘cave-in’ types.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Memo on “Insider Threats”
On the day before Thanksgiving, Barack Hussein Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum, or an unofficial directive to the heads of departments and agencies under the executive branch. This Presidential Memorandum, the text of which is only 183 words, directs agency and department heads to establish a program “to deter, detect, and mitigate actions by employees who may represent a threat to national security.”
Much like all of Obama’s other directives, Executive Orders and findings, there is a disturbing level of ambiguity contained within this memorandum.
[…]
The key to understanding this memorandum is to understand that we are witnessing the greatest consolidation of power and control under the Executive branch of the government in recent U.S. history. This consolidation of power makes it possible for a select number of highly political “czars” and appointed officials to observe, control and report on the activities of people within their various departments to the Executive branch. This process creates a closed system of surveillance that cannot be easily penetrated by other branches of our government.
Accordingly, it becomes a self-policing network that has the ability to silence critics and individuals opposing a particular agenda or activity, even if such dissent is lawful. Taken to its extreme, it gives Barack Hussein Obama the ability to redefine what constitutes a threat to the government, including treason. It’s no longer about the rule of law and one’s allegiance to the United States. It’s now about allegiance to the agenda of the Executive branch, assured by active surveillance of government employees by Obama’s hand-picked appointees.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.
Reading Putin’s speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:
[…]
Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.
[…]
President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don’t they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Democrats are incapable of function as a majority party any longer. They have no solution to the country’s economic problems because they are unwilling to take responsibility for them. All their prescriptions involve looting the things they oppose and transferring the money to the things they support, substituting more radical redistributionism for responsible government, and then refusing to take responsibility for anything that they have done.
The outcome of this program can already be seen in the cities where Democrats collect the most votes; from the living and the dead. But the abandoned houses, the dead streets and the factories that haven’t made anything in fifty years do nothing to dissuade them from their course. Having ruined the country’s greatest cities, they are certain that they failed only because the pigeons fled the coop for the suburbs and for freer cities. Give them the whole country and they will have all the money they need to crack down on on the people who want to work for a living on behalf of the people who want to be taken care of by the big benevolent hand of the state.
Repeat the process nationwide and the country will go the way of the cities. Economic growth will stop, companies will flee and the Detroitization of America will continue apace.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
British Secondary School Teacher is Unmasked as Convicted Murderer
A man convicted of murder in Bangladesh is teaching at a secondary school in east London after checks into his criminal history failed, it has been revealed today.
Mohammad Siddiqur Rahman Chowdhury, an Islamic Studies teacher in Bethnal Green, is being investigated by the Home Office after it was revealed he was found guilty of murder in absentia in his native Bangladesh.
The teacher had undergone a Criminal Record Bureau check (CRB) but the conviction was not unearthed as the crime had happened overseas.
Chowdhury has denied the murder, claiming he was framed, and that it was actually committed by his brother who is now dead.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Catalan Voters Back Secession Parties in Spain
BARCELONA — Separatist parties were the winners in Sunday’s (25 November) regional election in Catalonia, which saw the highest voter turnout ever in Spanish regional elections.
The new parliament still favours a referendum on independence, something Madrid has said it will oppose.
The governing centre-right alliance party Convergència i Unio (CiU) won 50 seats out of 135 in the Catalan parliament, followed by the left-wing separatist party Esquerra Republicana with 21 seats.
In total, the seats in the new parliament that favour the “right to decide” on independence from Spain is nearly two-thirds with 87 while 48 are against — only a slight change from before the election (86 to 49).
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
EU Reviews Changes to Italy’s Tax Breaks on Church Property
Economy ministry lifts exemptions to comply with Brussels
(ANSA) — Brussels, November 26 — Brussels on Monday was reviewing Italy’s new property-tax rules to see if they comply with EU norms by curbing exemptions enjoyed by the Catholic Church.
“We are studying the new measures,” said a spokesperson for Joaquin Almunia, competition commissioner. Amid mounting pressure from the European Union, Italy’s economy ministry on Saturday changed the property-tax code by lifting exemptions on all income-producing institutions such as Catholic health facilities and Church-owned hotels. The changes go into effect December 31. The EU made its position known after Italy’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, scuppered a decree by the Italian government intended to resolve the issue of the Church not having to pay property tax, known as IMU.
In February, Italy’s technocrat government, led by Premier Mario Monti, formulated an amendment to Italian property-tax law that would terminate the Catholic Church’s historic exemption.
The amendment was intended to close an inquiry made by EU antitrust authorities dating back to 2007, and reopened in 2010 after complaints filed by Maurizio Turco, a representative of Italy’s civil liberties-oriented Radical Party, and tax expert Carlo Pontesilli, who turned to the European Court to prevent the case from being closed.
The EU holds that tax breaks received by the Catholic Church could be considered illegal State financial aid.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
France: Teen Charged After Girl Pushed on Tracks
A 15-year-old girl suspected of pushing a fellow student in front of a regional (RER) train south-east of Paris was charged and put in a prison over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Thursday evening when an argument broke out between the teenagers on the platform of the Yerres station as a train was arriving.
The victim, an 18-year-old woman, described by prosecutor Gilles Charbonnier in stable condition, was fighting for her life, Le Parisien reported.
The woman’s legs have been amputated and she suffered from excessive bleeding and bone fractures.
She had been jostled while waiting for the train on her way home for the day, according to police reports.
Still conscious, she was treated by medics at the train station for two hours before being transported by helicopter to a regional hospital.
The suspect was interviewed after the incident and placed in detention.
The interviews were hampered by the fact the young girl was “marked by the events that resulted,” Charbonnier is quoted as saying by Le Parisien.
“She spoke sparingly.”
The two girls were placed with the same host family while attending school several years earlier and they “did not like each other,” Charbonnier said.
The 15-year-old faces a charge of attempted voluntary homicide.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland: Sentence for Threats to Daughter
A man who attacked and threatened to kill his daughter at knife point for walking to college with a black friend has avoided a prison sentence.
Hakim Didani (47) assaulted his teenage daughter and made threats against her life while holding a knife in one hand and a screwdriver in the other.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Didani held a knife to his then 17-year-old daughter’s face and threatened to bring her to a forest to kill her.
Algerian national Didani, of Mount Egan Green, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, pleaded guilty to making threats to kill and assault of his daughter on the morning of November 18th, 2010.
The man has since been cut off from his family and has not been allowed return to the family home in Dublin 15.
Garda Kevin Mention told Una Tighe BL, prosecuting, that Didani became angry when he spotted his daughter walking to college at the Blanchardstown Institute of Technology with her friend.
He drove up alongside the pair and started shouted abuse out the window at them.
He called his daughter a whore and a cow, before shouting: “You needn’t come home tonight.”
Garda Mention said Didani gestured at his daughter’s friend and said: “He’s black,” before driving off. The teenager became upset and was comforted by her friend, who gave her a hug.
Didani then did a U-turn and pulled up alongside the two friends again. This time he brandished a screwdriver, pointed it at his daughter’s friend and said: “Come here, come here.”
The student ran away when the man tried to get out of his car while brandishing the screwdriver.
Didani shouted after the student, saying he would be waiting outside college to get him, before ordering his daughter into the car.
He began hitting his daughter in the face while shouting at her as he drove towards their home.
The court heard that he stopped the car in a bus lane and started hitting her with the handle of the screwdriver.
“If I get you to a forest right now I’ll kill you,” he told his daughter.
When they got back to the house, the girl was ordered inside. The court heard she wanted to run away but was too afraid.
Didani began beating her before she had a chance to close the door behind her, which caused her to fall to the ground.
He continued to kick and hit her while she lay on the ground before emptying the contents of her handbag on the floor.
Didani then walked into the kitchen and returned with a kitchen knife in one hand, while still holding the screwdriver in the other.
He put the knife to her face and said: “I’m going to kill you.”
The victim’s mother and youngest sister arrived home during the assault, and he began shouting in his wife’s face.
“You will go to Algeria or I will kill you,” he said, while brandishing the knife.
The teenager’s younger sister ran upstairs and phoned the gardai, who arrived and arrested Didani.
Garda Mention agreed with Vincent Heneghan BL, defending, that there were “cultural differences” which were key to this case, and confirmed that Didani has no previous convictions.
Judge Ring noted that the girl had only suffered minor injuries, but said there were serious emotional and psychological consequences of the incident.
She said it was a very sad case, as it has left the family divided and the girl — who is now 19-years-old — has not returned to college since the assault.
“It’s perhaps not surprising that the family unit has broken down since this event, but Mr Didani has no one to blame but himself,” she said.
Judge Ring questioned what would have happened if the girl’s mother and sister had not arrived home when they did.
She noted that the teenager was “very charitable” in her victim impact statement, and said she did not wish her father to be sent to prison.
Judge Ring handed down a two and a half year suspended sentence, and ordered that Didani make no efforts to contact his daughter during this period.
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Ireland: Man ‘Threatened to Beat Gardai’ Upon Release From Custody
Ousmane Baah, 23, of Mount Trenchard, Foynes, pleaded guilty at Limerick District Court to a number of public order offences in September and October of this year.
On the same date gardai were alerted by a member of staff at Tom Collins pub that the accused had acted aggressively towards customers and had refused to leave. “F**k off you piece of s**t”, was how he addressed Sgt Joe McGlynn on Cecil Street. Baah had become violent at Henry Street garda station, grabbed Sgt McGlynn by the throat and was pepper sprayed
“He threatened that he would beat gardai upon his release. And he also said that he hates white people,” said Insp McDonagh.
“If he hates white people, he has chosen the wrong country to live in,” remarked Judge Eugene O’Kelly.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Casini: “PDL is a Proprietary Party and Berlusconi a Liar”
(AGI) — Rome, Nov. 25 — The leader of the UDC, Ferdinando Casini, responded to the accusations levelled at him by the former Italian premier saying; “everybody konws Berlusconi is one of the world’s biggest liars but he must not include Casini in his bungles”. “Only somebody in a state of confusion can think of proposing Maroni as a candidate for the Lombardy Regional Council, attack Premier Monti and at the same time think of joining forces with the moderates”, added Casini in an interview with ‘SkyTg24’. Still referring to the PDL, Casini pointed out: “the incident between Berlusconi and Alfano is very sad; the former is used to striking blows below the belt and the latter to following the rules. Facts prove that the PDL is a proprietary party; I’m sorry, I would have preferred this party to have seriously evolved towards the European People’s Party”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
London Mothers Should Move to Outer Hebrides to Find Happiness
British mothers living in the UK’s most remote spots should be among the happiest people in the country, a think-tank revealed as the Government prepared to release its first report on public quality of life.
The study showed women were generally more content than men but appeared to experience more anxiety. It also identified geographical “hotspots” where people could expect to enjoy a better life, singling out the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland. Those based in London, Luton and Reading were deemed to have the lowest wellbeing in the UK, the new economics foundation (nef) found.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: Minister Dismisses ‘Halal Homes’ Fears
Home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk told a television programme on Sunday he has no problem with housing corporations renovating homes and taking the wishes of Muslim tenants into account.
Plasterk was responding to a report in Parool newspaper on Saturday which said 188 apartments in western Amsterdam had been adapted to meet the wishes of Muslims, with a special cupboard for storing shoes and an extra tap for ‘ritual cleansing’.
‘They’ve taken some of the wishes of residents into account. There is nothing wrong with that,’ Plasterk told the show. ‘But you should not build homes which non-Muslims would not want to live in.’
The paper described the flats as ‘halal homes’ and placed great emphasis on the fact dividing doors could be used to close off the large kitchen and that a hall meant women could avoid meeting male visitors.
The housing corporation, Eigen Hard, said the complex is completely mixed. The properties had been renovated to make sure they could be rented out and some are also lived in by students and people with a handicap, the corporation said.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Suicide Bomber Pic Mars Green’s Integration Site
An online integration campaign by Sweden’s Green Party has been marred by “racists”, who uploaded images of criminals with foreign backgrounds including one picture of Stockholm suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab.
“We have had a lot of racists who have uploaded things, but we have taken them all away,” Green Party spokesman Sven Elander to the Expressen newspaper.
The party’s campaign, “Open More Doors” (Öppnar Fler Dörrar), began this autumn and allowed people to upload their own images and messages highlighting their own tales of integration and assimilation in Sweden.
According to the website, the campaign aims to create a society where everyone is welcome, regardless of race.
However, some users took the chance to upload pictures of known and suspected criminals of foreign descent.
One of these images featured Abdulwahab, who killed himself in central Stockholm on a street filled with Christmas shoppers in 2010.
In the picture, which was uploaded anonymously, Abdulwahab is seen in a suit standing with three other people, one of whom appears to have just graduated from university.
The caption reads “Immigrants often have higher education than Swedes, and contribute to you and me”.
Another picture showed two teens who were sentenced for aggravated assault after viciously beating a 61-year-old man in Kortedala in western Sweden in March.
One more showed a 17-year-old boy who is suspected of murdering his sister in Landskrona in April.
“It’s tragic that there are so many people with so much hate in them. But it shows also that there is need for a campaign such as this,” Elander said.
The party has since claimed that moderators simply didn’t notice the pictures.
“In this case, the pictures must have slipped through. The pictures have made it past the moderators by mistake, but they’ve taken them down now. And such pictures won’t be there anymore,” he added.
An expert on the freedom of the press, Nils Funcke, has pointed the finger at the party, claiming that bad moderation is a poor excuse.
“You can’t hide behind a lunatic, that makes you just as much of a lunatic yourself. It’s piss-poor argument. The Green Party is responsible in this case for all the pictures that were uploaded,” he told Expressen.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Brother on Trial for Stabbing Sister to Death
The murder trial of a 17-year-old boy suspected of fatally stabbing his 19-year-old sister more than 100 times with two knives and a pair of scissors started in southern Sweden on Monday.
The sister had previously claimed she was forcibly married off at age 15 and raped.
The boy was arrested in April after calling the police to tell them he had found his older sister Maria dead in her apartment in Landskrona in southern Sweden.
When formal charges were filed earlier in November, prosecutor Magnus Larsson said that the 17-year-old denied having committed the crime.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: ‘No Pact With the Tories… It’s War’ …
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has dramatically rejected an electoral pact with the Tories, declaring ‘war’ on the Conservatives at the next election. Conservative Party vice chairman Michael Fabricant, who is in charge of Parliamentary campaigning, will today tell David Cameron a deal with UKIP is vital to reunite ‘warring brothers’. But Mr Farage has rejected the idea of being offered a ministerial post in exchange for not standing against Conservative MPs, writing on Twitter: ‘No pact with Tories: it’s war.’
[…]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
by Alexandra Swann
Few stories have occupied the airwaves like the story, broken by The Daily Telegraph, of Labour-run Rotherham Council’s decision to remove three young children from their foster parents, based on nought but the parents’ political allegiance. UKIP members, the couple have an “exemplary” record; the youngsters were said to be thriving in their care and the eldest had begun to refer to them as “mum and dad”. But why let the real issue, the welfare of these children, spoil a chance by the Left to punish “the Right” in the name of diversity and “multiculturalism”?
[…]
We in UKIP will be demanding to find out who in the council was responsible for the decision to remove these children from a loving family. We want to know what the inspection grading at Rotherham council’s children’s services is. We will be demanding that whoever was responsible will be held to account and we will hope that clear guidance will go out ensuring that this never happens again. Rotherham has been panicked into launching an inquiry, Ed Miliband is calling for one, too — but inevitably these inquiries are a smokescreen to show the actors are “doing something”. In this case, that is not enough; heads should roll, policies must change, the welfare of kids must come before politics.
There is a positive side to this dreadful story, though. That is the near unanimity from politicians, commentators and ordinary people who are horrified by what they have learnt. That everybody seems to agree that this is not how they want our country to be run gives me the hope that, by the end of all this, Britain will emerge more tolerant and less divided.
The bigots here are Rotherham’s social services, not the devastated couple who willingly opened their home to support vulnerable children.
[Reader comment by marplot on 26 November 2012 at about 10 am.]
When I woke on Saturday morning to the breaking news from Rotherham, I thought that this just possibly be the moment I and so many in the country have been waiting for for so long. Twenty-four hours later, waking to LBC’s repeat every five minutes of the soundbite of David Cameron labelling UKIP a party of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” I knew I was right. It’s perhaps premature to say that it’s all over bar the shouting, but if my hunch is right, this past weekend will be the time we look back on in twenty years time to when what James Callaghan so presciently called a sea change in British politics took place.
It’s easy to see why. With opinion polls regularly demonstrating that whatever the natterers and chatterers in the Westminster village might think are Britain’s political priorities, as the hapless Gordon Brown discovered, it is unlimited and unvetted immigration that tops the list of most people’s concerns and this directly impacts — and, indeed, fuels — most people’s attitude to EU membership. And Our Dave, with his tumescent sense of entitlement has just called the majority of the country and his fellow citizens racists — which, after being a paedophile, is just about the worst insult anyone can hurl in Britain today.
Like most fathers, mine was not short in boring me stiff with his advice and I tended not to take much notice of maxims such as “you don’t know what you don’t know” and “people tend to recruit in their own image” etc, etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. One piece of advice I did seem to digest was this, and it has stood me in good stead: When the tide is against you, rest on your oars; when the tide is with you, row like mad. Well, in this sea change, the tide is now with us. All we have to do is keep a cool head, stay at the wheel and ride the tide. Because if I’ve got it right, Milliband, Cameron and Clegg are now just flotsam and jetsam in the shallows.
There are already 21 constituencies where, in the last elections, UKIP deprived the Tories of a majority, forcing the Conservatives into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. That is a lot of power for a party with no representation in Westminster. Given that over 50 per cent of Conservative voters — let alone a soon to be majority of the electorate as a whole — want to leave the EU, Dave’s days are numbered. It was his Rochdale moment and no-one will now forget it. This past weekend was when we started an orderly withdrawal from the European Union and set about re-establishing our national sovereignty. A tide on the ocean wave is much better than going to sea, But what the difference is…
[Reader comment by Geoff Piggott on 26 November 2012 at about 9:30 am.]
It should begin with police raids on Common Purpose offices, the seizure of all Common Purpose assets, the forensic examination of computers and data bases, the closing and proscription of the organisation, and the summary removal of all Common Purpose trainees from positions of employment in the public sector.
[Reply by UK_Slave on 26 November 2012 at about 10 am.]
Not just Common Purpose. The Fabian Society should also be banned and its members imprisoned indefinitely. That would include our last 2 labour PMs and most of the big guns in the modern Labour Party. Progressive = Fabian = The death of the family, the death of the British nation state and the death of christianity. The incredible thing is that the modern Fabian movement has managed to portray itself as “centrist” and “moderate.” In fact, they are the most insidious, reactionary and dangerous people in this country, more dangerous to the British people than any other terrorist organisation, including the IRA.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: It’s Not This Family Who Are Bigots — It’s the Multicultural Thought Police
The story sounds just too idiotic and outrageous to be true. A Rotherham couple, by all accounts exemplary foster parents for nearly seven years, took on two children and a baby in an emergency placement.
Eight weeks later, social workers came and took the children away — despite the fact that they were thriving — on the grounds that because the couple belonged to the UK Independence Party this was not ‘the right cultural match’.
Astonishingly, the official in charge is still unrepentant. Joyce Thacker, the council’s director of children and young people’s services, has said that the children, who were from ‘EU migrant backgrounds’, had been removed to protect their ‘cultural and ethnic needs’ from UKIP’s ‘strong views’ and apparent ‘opposition to multiculturalism’.
This is as ludicrous and illogical as it is sinister.
This apparently splendid couple have been treated as criminals merely because social workers disapproved of their political views — which happen to be shared, incidentally, by millions of fellow citizens. This is the kind of behaviour we associate with a totalitarian state.
The clear implication is that they were racists. But there is nothing racist about opposing multiculturalism. Indeed, many immigrants themselves oppose it. To damn this couple in this way is an appalling smear.
[…]
In the early Nineties, I unearthed what, it is no exaggeration to say, was a climate of totalitarianism in social-work training.
Anti-racist zealots had captured the social workers’ training body, and built into the social-work diploma the explicit assumption that society was fundamentally racist and oppressive.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Nigel Farage Declares War on David Cameron Over UKIP Racism ‘Slur’
Nigel Farage has declared “war” on David Cameron over immigration policy after the the Prime Minister suggested some Ukip members may be racist.
The row over Ukip’s stance on immigration blew up after a council took three foster children away from a couple on the grounds their support of the party was “racist”. Mr Cameron has previously said that Ukip members are mostly “closet racists” and Downing Street infuriated the party further by clarifying this weekend that not all Ukip members are racist.
Mr Farage today condemned the “slur”, arguing it is not racist to believe in tighter border controls limiting immigration. “[David Cameron] alone in British politics today continues to throw this slur at us that because we believe in not having our law set in Europe and controlling our borders that somehow that is racist. If he wants an electoral war with my party on his immigration open door policy he can have one,” he told Sky News. He said Ukip, which came third in the recent Corby by-election, would tackle the Prime Minister on his immigration policies in the run-up to 2015…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing content.]
A manhunt is underway today for a notorious sex offender who is suspected of raping a woman after being released from jail for similar offences.
Dean Goodwin, 32, has gone on the run after a woman in her 20s was brutally raped in her own home last Friday.
Police have named the registered sex offender as the prime suspect for the attack and are urging the public not to approach him because of the threat he poses.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Paedophile Assaulted Girl, Aged Six
A predatory paedophile who cruised Bradford’s streets hunting for young girls was today behind bars after he was found guilty of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl.
Car salesman Qamar Malik, 28, was also convicted by a jury yesterday of twice attempting to abduct a girl aged 12 in daylight.
When he was 16, Malik sexually assaulted three girls he met by chance in the street, dragging one down a snicket to molest her, the jury was told during the trial at Bradford Crown Court.
| — Hat tip: Kitman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham, Hislop, Common Purpose
by James Delingpole
Perhaps the least surprising aspect of the Rotherham childcare story is that Car Crash Commissar and Child Catcher in Chief Joyce Thacker was a member of Common Purpose.
The secretive Fabian organisation has been getting quite a bit of media attention, lately, thanks to a bravura investigation conducted by the Daily Mail. Common Purpose has been described as a Left-wing version of the Freemasons (apologies to the Freemasons who certainly don’t deserve to be bracketed in the same noisome category) and to get an idea how it operates, here’s an excerpt from the Mail piece:
‘It’s a new old boys’ network,’ he explains ‘but the Left’s version of it — and I don’t like secretive deal-making and “group think” of any kind. What is interesting is that the same people appear in the same jobs, in different places, as if through a revolving door. They work for local authorities, leave, then come back as freelance “consultants” with huge, inflated fees. They are often mediocre and there is no evidence of how or why they were chosen. They can leave a council with a terrible reputation yet pop up next minute as head of a regulatory body and as a trustee of numerous bodies. It is a real money-spinner.’
It’s also, just like Agenda 21, a way of entrenching the ideology of the communitarian left — in the civil service, in the police, in the media (especially the BBC/Guardian) and, of course, among such local government apparatchiks as Joyce Thacker. Given that this is all established fact rather than conspiracy theory, you might imagine that someone like Ian Hislop — what with his being the editor of Britain’s leading satirical magazine — would consider this a story of some significance. The kind of scoop, indeed, that in its early days, before it became a mouthpiece for the soft-left establishment Private Eye might have been keen to bag itself.
Definitely not today though. Listen about 13 minutes in to Friday night’s episode of Have I Got News For You to the bizarre spectacle of Britain’s supposed leading satirist pouring scorn on the Common Purpose story — aided and abetted by the Left-wing comic Marcus Brigstocke. This is odd, for several reasons. First, HIGNFY is a tightly edited comedy programme which tends to leave the waffly/ranty stuff on the cutting room floor: yet clearly the team behind it (Common Purpose grads? Surely not!) felt that Hislop’s ex cathedra pronouncement was well worth broadcasting to the nation. Second, Hislop appeared quite incapable of offering any evidence to support his argument: he seemed to think that caricaturing the story in a sneery voice and noting — boo hiss — that it came from the Daily Mail was more than enough to prove his point. It wasn’t.
This is by no means the first time Hislop has lazily positioned himself on the side of the soft-left status quo rather than taking the trouble — as surely a professional satirist should — to question it. On Leveson, he has taken the side of the BBC/Guardian bully boys trying to close down a free press. On “climate change”, his magazine has consistently taken the side of perhaps the most corrupt industry on the planet — Big Green. Now, in championing Common Purpose, he has made it the hat trick.
I don’t think Hislop actually is an ideological Lefty. I think, much more likely, he’s a wet Tory in the Max Hastings tradition. Nothing too wrong with that necessarily, except it’s a Weltanschauung which is looking in severe danger of being made by events such as Rotherham and by the shifting public mood to look short-sighted, intellectually flabby, morally cowardly — and irrelevant. Funnily enough, I suspect, our friend Tim Montgomerie is going to be facing a similar problem.
[JP note: See also:
1) www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4649364/The-leftie-plotters-with-one-Common-Purposeto-gag-the-Press.html#ixzz2DKAnbbaU
2) www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2233717/How-Lefts-old-boy-network-helps-appoint-mandarins.html
We have already revealed the discreet but powerful matrix that Common Purpose — an unaccountable body — has constructed in British public life.
Its ‘graduates’ occupy important positions across the UK public sector. They are encouraged to seek advice or help from each other through the organisation’s so-called ‘360 Community’ alumni network. …
3) www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/18/press-regulation-daily-mail
4) www.commonpurpose.org.uk/
Sir David Bell: ‘In the past, Common Purpose and its founder and CEO Julia Middleton, have been the subject of conspiracy theories and negative commentary regarding their integrity. They have been accused of everything from running Britain and Europe — and more recently the US — to being a secret brainwashing society. They have also been portrayed as criminals, child abusers, embezzlers of government funds and being spies. ….’
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham By-Election Candidates Talk Jobs and Grooming
Candidates vying to be Rotherham’s next MP have discussed two major issues affecting the town.
South Yorkshire Police have been told to “get a grip” on child sex offending in Rotherham, while unemployment in the town is above the national average. In a debate on the BBC’s Sunday Politics show, candidates in Thursday’s by-election all spoke of how they wanted to tackle the problems. The by-election was sparked by the resignation of Labour’s Denis MacShane. Mr MacShane resigned on 2 November after he was found to have wrongly claimed at least £7,500 in expenses. Labour’s candidate Sarah Champion said Mr MacShane’s actions were “shameful” and she wanted to be the one to “bring respect back into Rotherham”…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Rotherham, UKIP and Fostering: A Discriminatory Disgrace
Telegraph View: The Rotherham fostering scandal is doubly unsavoury: the racial bias in the care system, and the institutional discrimination against Ukip.
The outcry that followed this newspaper’s disclosure of Rotherham council’s fostering policies has been deafening, and rightly so. It beggars belief that after an exhaustive screening process, and taking in roughly a dozen children, many from very difficult backgrounds, the seemingly blameless couple at the centre of the story could be told that they were unfit to be foster parents, and have three children summarily removed from their care, simply because of their membership of Ukip.
There are two equally unsavoury aspects to this affair. The first is that the bias within our adoption and fostering system against those of a different race or background to the children concerned lingers on, despite the desperate shortage of both carers and adopters outlined by Roger Graef on these pages. If it is a tragedy that a child is taken into care every 22 minutes, it is a scandal that so few then find places in decent, loving homes, and that fosterers and carers can be rejected for reasons of social engineering.
The second issue is the discrimination against Ukip. It would be comforting to think this is limited to Rotherham, but already allegations of similar prejudice are emerging elsewhere. Indeed, when the Prime Minister can describe the party’s members as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”, it is small wonder that others follow his lead. We have our own views on the merits of Ukip’s policies, but there is no doubt that it is, as Michael Gove has said, a mainstream political party, and that its members are entitled to play a full part in national life. But it is not just Ukip — increasingly, any position that challenges the bien-pensant orthodoxies of the metropolitan elite is looked upon with scorn by those in power. The result is government by narrow minds, and harder hearts.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Social Work Training is Where the Seeds of Scandal Are Sown
Give me a student undertaking a three year social work degree, consisting of the most unadulterated Marxist rubbish, and I will give you a social worker who puts their warped ideology ahead of the interests of those they are paid to serve. There are 22,050 children’s social workers in England. Nobody can join them without a social work degree. Somebody who might have the most impressive practical experience is prohibited from joining unless they have first subjected themselves to the degrading thought control. Endless stuff about how they need to consider the individual cases they are dealing with in the “context” of how the capitalist system must be overthrown.
Frankly it is astonishing that there are as any good social workers as there are. I have met several who cheerfully admit to cynicism about all the nonsense they had to learn before being allowed to get on with their mission of saving children. That does not alter the astonishing harm that is done by the requirement to have this qualification or the odious nature of its content. The regulatory body for social workers is the Health & Care Professions. Its mushy Standards of proficiency includes plenty of code words from the Left:
5 be aware of the impact of culture, equality and diversity on practice
5.1 be able to reflect on and take account of the impact of inequality, disadvantage and discrimination on those who use social work services and their communities
5.2 understand the need to adapt practice to respond appropriately to different groups and individuals
5.3 be aware of the impact of their own values on practice with different groups of service users and carers
5.4 understand the impact of different cultures and communities and how this affects the role of the social worker in supporting service users and carers
6 be able to practise in a non-discriminatory manner
6.1 be able to work with others to promote social justice, equality and inclusion
6.2 be able to use practice to challenge and address the impact of discrimination, disadvantage and oppression.
Some may just shrug off these bland references. We’re all against oppression, aren’t we? Although a bit odd to see this in a job description. Supporting social justice? Didn’t Iain Duncan Smith set up a think tank about it? I’m afraid that if Mr Duncan Smith, or anyone else with his interpretation of social justice, decided to become a social worker and expressed himself honestly in his essays he would have difficulty qualifying. He might wish to avoid Liverpool Hope University where Dr Michael Lavalette is the Professor of Social Work. Dr Lavalette is a member of the Socialist Workers Party and runs their front organisation the Social Work Action Network. This consists of denouncing social workers that do their jobs rather than spending time on “solidarity”, “collective action” and “building alliances.”
What about those Conservatives seeking a career in social work choosing Bath University to secure the necessary qualifications? There it’s Dr Mark Baldwin who is the senior lecturer. He is keen on:
Radical social work practice — history, current renewed interest and development within social work organisations and collective organisations. This includes an exploration of the re-emergence of interest in social work as a political activity and of community focused social work as a manifestation of a more radical practice.
Last year The Guardian offered some tips for social work students from Professor Peter Beresford of Brunel University:
Join the union, your professional association and get involved in the new College of Social Work. Build alliances with other professionals, work at strengthening the team you are in. Get their strength around you. Learn from the Social Work Action Network and build links with service users and their organisations.
Manchester University and the University of Central Lancashire sponsored a conference for their social work students to attend at Liverpool University with various far left speakers on how to link social work to assorted “struggles” involving the “Stop the War Coalition”, the trade unions and resisting deportations. I think we get the picture. A paper by Birmingham University about the history of their social work courses notes this type of thinking is well established:
The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of global radical political action. This had an influence on social work education and practice. Radical social work texts emerged analysing the structural and political positions of social work clients and critiquing social casework as the dominant method of practice. The social work teaching at Birmingham moved in 1973 from a social casework focus to a ‘unitary model’ approach. An approach designed to educate students about the range of political, economic, social and personal systems which impacted on clients lives as well as the range of techniques and strategies needed to work with them.
If we are attempting to bring on the revolution the decisions of social workers suddenly become explicable. It is not about the needs of the individual but building collective resistance. The evidence is that children in care thrive at boarding schools. But could the social workers collaborate with the class enemy? The social work preoccupation with an ethnic match in adoption has no basis of being in the interests of the child. But for the revolutionary left, racial antagonism is a means to bring about social change. Black identity is about the struggle, smashing the system. Why the social worker preference for constantly returning a child to their biological parent(s) to face more abuse rather than adoption? It’s about the class system. It tends to mean returning a child to a council block rather than a new life in an affluent middle class home. How would that help speed up the crisis? Let’s remember that bursaries, financed by the taxpayer, to undertake these social work courses come to £70 million a year. This funding should cease.
I would be surprised if the Education Secretary Michael Gove regards the current arrangement for qualifying to be a social worker as entirely satisfactory. However there is the complication that the Universities Minister David Willetts is desperately craven. What is needed is to end the ban on those without a social work degree practising as social workers. A local authority or agency should be able to take a broader view on who would do a good job. This might be a young recruit with a good degree in another subject (any other subject!) than social work who could then serve an apprenticeship before being given individual responsibilities. It might be a charity worker with a proven record of success. Or someone who has been a social worker abroad.
Very sensibly, free schools (and soon academies) are allowed to employ teachers without a formal teaching qualification from a Teacher Training College. If, for example, someone has been a fantastic teacher at an independent school for years but doesn’t have Qualified Teaching Status (QTS) it’s absurd to prohibit them from state schools. Similarly if a couple who have been exemplary foster carers for seven years decided they wanted to become social workers is that really less of a qualification than enduring years of indoctrination in Marxist theories?
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan it’s not that those who have taken the social work degree are ignorant, “it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” I repeat that many social workers are decent practical people who manage to some extent to forget the theories and get on with the job. Such “sell outs” are a grave disappointment to their old professors. Other social workers keep the faith rigidly maintaining all the dogmas inculcated in them without being distracted by reality. Social workers should not have social work degree courses inflicted upon them.
[Reader comment by Lindsay Jenkins on 26 November 2012 at about 9 am.]
Brilliant article, hits every nail on the head. My old college, Bedford College part of the University of London, harboured the first sociology department in the country dating back to c. 1940 and started by staff from the LSE. It was firmly rooted in the Fabian Society with its policy of quiet revolution. That first department has spawned department after department across every university and more in this country. While standards across the College were enviably high that did not apply to sociology — a deliberate mish mash of different disciplines and a volume which would make it difficult for even the brightest to think for themselves. One notable alumnus is Baroness Ashton.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing content.]
A great-grandfather was left for dead by an ‘evil’ young mother and her partner who attacked him in his own home.
Arnold Hilton, 88, had his life ‘destroyed’ when Aurelisa Galdikaite and Laurynas Dauksas broke in and inflicted ‘severe violence’ on him.
Mother-of-one Galdikaite, 23, ransacked ‘every drawer, in every room’ of the house while Dauksas repeatedly punched and kicked Mr Hilton. The Lithuanian couple then left their victim lying on his bedroom floor, covered in blood.
Galdikaite was jailed for nine years for the despicable crime, while Dauksas, 25, got 11 years.
The morning after the attack, Mr Hilton’s son Stuart found him bleeding on the floor with his belongings scattered around him. When he saw his son Mr Hilton said: ‘I’m not going to make it.’
The father-of-five, now 89, spent two weeks in hospital before he was well enough to be moved to a care home, but remains so traumatised that he barricades his bedroom door shut at night.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
by Graeme Archer
Regarding Rotherham, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, says “We need an urgent investigation by Rotherham council into the circumstances of this case”. Do we? Really? Might I save the Labour leader time, and Rotherham council the expense of an investigation. I’d bet my mortgage that the “circumstances” of this case are that positions of power in Rotherham are held by practitioners of Leftist identity politics.
The head of social services in Rotherham, Mrs Joyce Thacker, is straight from Peter Simple. She said “The children were from EU migrant backgrounds and Ukip has very clear statements on ending multiculturalism, which might be sensitive to these children.” EU migrants? People who’ve moved from one EU country to another? What, like me? I grew up in a family of almost 1960s idealist hippy-cum-Toryism, but we never agreed about politics, not once; there’s a lot of space to disagree, even if you all vote the same way. Did that make my parents insensitive? I don’t think they ever checked their views with the head of Ayrshire social services. Perhaps I should have dialled them in.
I don’t support Ukip, not even secretly, though I loathe what is commonly described as “multiculturalism”, because it’s a word whose meaning has been doublethinked to oblivion. It no longer indicates different cultures living together; in this case, for example, it means removing children who need a bit of stability and care from a home where they received those old-fashioned qualities, in order that they can be made to comply with their Thackerist quota of “cultural and ethnic needs”…
[JP note: Loathing for multiculturalism is probably universal apart from among our bien-pensant elites with their blind faith in things they pretend to understand.]
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UK: The Prejudice on Display in Rotherham
by James Forsyth
There are some stories that become more shocking the more you think about them. The case of the Rotherham foster parents who have had the children they were caring for taken away from them for being members of UKIP is one of these. It is hard to imagine the distress that must have been caused to them by this arrogant, ill-thought out decision…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
A teenager suffered seven heart attacks after a contraceptive Pill caused her to develop hundreds of blood clots.
Promising show jumper Alyce Clark had been taking a daily dose of Microgynon for just one month when she suddenly collapsed at home with a cardiac arrest.
By the time the 19-year-old was admitted to hospital she had been resuscitated by paramedics seven times in the ambulance. Her condition was so severe that her parents Roger, 61, and Freda, 60, were invited to ‘say goodbye’ to their daughter in hospital.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UKIP Fostering Storm: Rotherham Council Report Due Today
TWO separate investigations have been launched after claims that foster parents in Rotherham had three children taken away because they were members of UKIP. Cllr Paul Lakin, Rotherham Borough Council’s Cabinet member for children’s services, said he had ordered a review, due to report this morning, into reports over the weekend that children of East European origin had been removed by Rotherham social workers…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UKIP Fostering Scandal: Has Labour Just Lost the Rotherham by-Election?
by Andrew Gilligan
The stunning decision by Rotherham Council to remove three children from a foster home (where they were happy) because the foster parents support UKIP shows that the “culture war” here in Britain is being waged not by the Right, but by the Left…
The special interest of the Rotherham case — and no doubt why Ed Miliband was so quick to condemn it — is that in five days’ time the town has a parliamentary by-election. Labour is already in a bit of trouble here — about 80 of the 114 members present at the meeting to select its candidate walked out in protest after the favourite, local man Mahroof Hussain, was excluded from the shortlist. Many of them said they wouldn’t campaign for the woman Labour chose, Sarah Champion. UKIP only got 6 per cent of the vote in Rotherham at the general election — but they came second in another byelection in next-door Barnsley last year. Like many working-class Labour areas, Rotherham showed an undercurrent of disaffection with the party, even before its MP was forced to resign for fraud. In the general election, the total broadly “Right-wing” vote in Rotherham (Tories, UKIP, BNP and an anti-Labour independent) added up to 39.3 per cent, only 5.3 per cent behind the Labour vote. In a low-turnout by-election with big protest vote potential, the fostering decision by a Labour council could just be the kind of issue UKIP might use to pull off an upset. It’s still much more likely that Labour will win, of course. UKIP is notoriously **** at the ground game of fighting elections. But if I was them, I’d pile everything I have, and more, into Rotherham.
[Reader comment by Cassandra1963 on 26 November 2012 at 1:07 am.]
Why does this new ugly breed of common purpose indoctrinated fascist hate Britishness and British values so much? What is wrong with teaching immigrant kids British values and Britishness? If they are to live among us should they not know and take on British culture? Why do freaks like Thacker hate Britishness so much, is our way of life so worthless and abhorrent to her? She really ought to be forced to live with the cultures she so fanatically peddles, she needs a taste of what some cultures do to their children in the name of tradition.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UKIP Fostering Row: Council’s Actions ‘Beyond Belief’ [Letter to Editor, Rotherham Advertiser]
What is about Rotherham Council and children? First they sit on child abuse hoping it will go away by itself, now they have politicised the fostering of children. The report on the BBC Breakfast programme stating that Rotherham children’s services have removed three children from the care of a couple because they belong to a political party the council deem racist is beyond belief.
This decision has not been taken in the interests of the children. but because of a political decision. Joyce Thacker says that the decision was not political, but in the long term interests of the children. However that did not stop her employers taking a political decision to keep silent on the abuse of some children under the care of Mrs Thacker. A decision certainly not in the best interests of the children.
Alan Pearman, Marlowe Road, Herringthorpe.
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UKIP Foster Report ‘Being Considered’ By Rotherham Council
Rotherham council is considering a report into the row over a foster family who had children in their care taken away because they belong to UKIP.
Rotherham councillor Paul Lakin, cabinet member for children, young people and families services, had ordered an investigation. The council said a report had arrived on Monday morning and an announcement was likely in the afternoon…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
UKIP-Tory Pact: ‘Absolutely No Chance’ Says Downing Street
Downing Street slaps down senior Conservative who called David Cameron to forge electoral pact with Ukip to help win the next election.
Number 10 sources said there is “absolutely not” the remotest possibility the Conservatives will do a deal with Ukip, after Michael Fabricant, a former Government whip, published a report claiming it could win them dozens of seats. Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, also rejected the idea of a pact because he is at “war” with the Prime Minister for implying some of the eurosceptic party’s members are racist…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
‘Ukrainian Tries to Bribe Proctors to Get Visa in Italy’
‘This is how it’s done in my country’
(ANSA) Pisa, November 23; A 60-year-old Ukrainian woman in Tuscany has been reported to police for allegedly trying to bribe an exam board evaluating visa candidates’ ability to speak Italian.
The woman is said to have folded 150 euros in her test papers before handing them into the exam board.
When she discovered she had been reported, she said this was “how it was done” in her country, witnesses said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Morocco: EU Approves 25 Mln for Poor Rural Communities
Support for 2nd phase of national human development initiative
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 23 — The European Commission has approved the allocation of 25 million euros for the struggle against poverty in rural Moroccan communities. The anti-poverty measures to receive support are part of the 2nd phase of the national human development initiative (2011-2015), which focuses on 885 rural communities. EU Neighbourhood Policy Commissioner Stefan Fule says that this government initiative “has unquestionably set in motion development and strengthened local government in the most disadvantaged areas of the country.” This is the reasoning behind Brussels’ decision to consolidate it “to significantly reduce poverty”. The measures focus on increasing the amount of investment and the quality of the social services available, as well as bringing in more revenue for rural populations and greater participation by women and the young in the development process.” This programme is coming in the wake of a previous European one (64 million euros) carried out with the collaboration of Germany and Belgium.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt’s President Said to Limit Scope of Judicial Decree in Deal With Courts
President Mohamed Morsi agreed Monday to scale back a sweeping decree he had issued last week that raised his edicts above any judicial review, according to a report by a television network allied with his party.
The agreement, reached with top judicial authorities, would leave most of Mr. Morsi’s actions subject to review by the courts, but preserve a crucial power: protecting the constitutional council from being dissolved by the courts before it finishes its work.
| [Return to headlines] |
Twelve Men Face Execution by Libyan Militia for Allegedly Being Gay
An extremist Libyan militia has captured twelve men who now face mutilation and execution for allegedly being gay.
The militia stormed a private party in Ain Zara, a suburb of the capital Tripoli, late on Thursday night and took the men hostage.
Pictures of the men with their hands up against the wall and their faces covered as well as one of a man’s back with a henna tattoo have been posted on Facebook.
One of the pictures was accompanied by the Quranic call ‘there is no power but the power of Allah!’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hamas Reconciles With Fatah, Will Free Prisoners in Gaza
(AGI) Gaza, Nov. 25- Following congratulatory remarks on Hamas’s “victory” that were anything but easy for PNA leader Abu Mazen, Hamas announced that it would free all of its Fatah prisoners in the Gaza Strip as an effort to further reconciliation between the two opposing factions. Hamas’s decision was announced by its spokesman Taher al-Nunu. A commission will be created to analyze the single cases of the 22 Fatah prisoners still held in Gaza. Tensions between the PNA and Hamas began in January 2006, after Hamas won the elections pushed for by Western nations a year after Israel withdrew from Gaza. Western states, the US in particular, were unaware of Fatah’s lack of popularity but even less aware of Hamas’s sweeping popularity in Gaza.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Palestinians are working to rebuild a network of smuggling tunnels that were targeted during eight days of violence in Gaza.
Just days after a ceasefire was called between Palestine and Israel, workers were today trying to repair the network that is used to bring in food and arms from Egypt.
Experts estimate that as of yesterday about half of the network of hundreds of tunnels was still in use.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Just in case you’ve been visiting relatives on the dark side of the Moon for the past few months, and aren’t up to speed on the latest events, I’d like to point out that the Middle East, under the guiding hands of the Only Adult in the Room, and the Smartest Woman in America, is about to disintegrate into regional war and chaos of historic, unprecedented proportions.
Egypt is about to explode; Iran is inches away from having nuclear weapons and is supplying arms and missiles to Syria and Hamas at a rate almost as fast as Congress is borrowing money from China and spending it on only God knows what; Syria is engulfed in civil war; al-Qaeda is growing like a metastasizing cancer; and the Fifth Column media are complicit in promoting the Islamist version of events, and covering up the Obama administrations disastrous inept meddling in it all.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NATO’s Patriot Missiles at Border Merely Defensive: Turkish Military
ANKARA, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) — The deployment of NATO’s Patriot missile system on the Turkish border with Syria is merely a defensive measure against threats from Syria, a Turkish military statement said Monday. A delegation of Turkish and NATO officials will start a site survey Tuesday for the deployment of the missile defense system, a written statement released by the Turkish General Staff said. The system was not for “no-fly zone or offensive operation,” but “solely against air or missile threats that could be derived from Syria,” said the statement…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: A “Politically Correct” Civil War
The reality of the Syrian conflict is different from the image offered by the international media. The testimony of Sister Maria Agnese, founder of the “Movement of Reconciliation” (Mussahala), “we know the regime and its dictatorial aspect, its actions do not surprise us. But for an opposition officially presented as a promoter of human rights, democracy and freedom to act with even bloodier violence than that of the regime, is something shocking.”
Milan (AsiaNews) — In the Syrian civil war, the protagonists are clear for Western public opinion: on the one hand, Assad’s bloody dictatorship, on the other, the oppressed people who with heroic resistance rebel against the tyrant. The reality is quite different from what is presented to us, and it is not the first time that the Western media has made a major blunder, afterwards repented of by no one. Few remember that in the long “Korean War” (1950-1953), the Americans who helped the South not to be overwhelmed by the North and the Chinese were colonialists and imperialists, the Chinese who helped the North were heroic “volunteers” coming to the rescue of brothers. Today, it is clear who was right. In Cuba’s civil war (1955-1959) the “bearded ones”, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, were the “partisans” against the “fascists” of the Batista regime, and the longest dictatorship of the modern world was born. In the Vietnam War (1963-1975) and the Cambodian War (1968-1975), the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge were the “liberators” of the peoples in revolt against the pro-American dictatorships. And I could go on recalling other cases, such as when the West hailed Khomeini to power in Iran (1979) because he had defeated the “American Satan” and freed his people from the tyrannical Shah Reza Pahlevi. But from Khomeini were born the “martyrdom for Islam” and the “jihad” (holy war) against the West that led to the collapse of the Twin Towers in 2011, and not only that.
Is the same pattern occurring in Syria? Nobody knows, but what is certain is that the story of the war being presented by the international media is now “politically correct” in the sense that the roles have been established and it is not easy to contradict them. World and Mission is publishing (December 2012) an article by Giorgio Bernardelli that can help shed light on what has been called “the war with the least direct information on the two sides in the field.” The protagonist is a Carmelite nun Syrian (64 years), superior of the monastery of St. James of Qara (a town near Damascus), the most well-known voice denouncing the anti-Christian violence in Syria and founder of the “Mussalaha” movement that works for reconciliation, approved and supported by the Greek-Melkite Patriarch Gregory III Laham. Agnese Maria of the Cross does not take sides between the two warring parties, but uses uncomfortable words, complaining that the Islamist militias’ violence against Christians shows a new aspect of Assad’s opponents. Sister Maria Agnese (a Syrian of 64 years), threatened by the rebels and who has now fled to France, cites specific dates and events: “There are more than two thousand groups operating in Syria, most are linked to Al Qaeda”, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis. They have not come to establish democracy, but Qur’anic law in the name of Allah …. We know the regime and its dictatorial aspects, its actions do not surprise us. But for an opposition officially presented as a promoter of human rights, democracy and freedom to act with even bloodier violence than that of the regime, is something shocking.”
Above all, Sister Maria Agnese cited the events of Homs (near the monastery of Qara), a city where thousands of Christians lived, who have fled the country and abroad; the last of them was killed in early November, an elderly man who had remained in his home to care for his disabled son. The truth of the Syrian war is gradually coming out. Without any doubt, the regime of Bashar al-Asad is totalitarian, murderous and allows no opposition whatsoever. It responded with unprecedented violence to the first popular demonstrations in March 2011, within the framework of the Arab Spring demanding freedom, democracy and development. But it is just as true that, in a year and a half of civil war, the Islamic extremists, at the grassroots level as a strategic guide and war tactic, have already taken power among Assad’s opponents. In an appeal announced October 26, 2012, the leader of “Al Qaeda” and successor to Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, returned to inciting Muslims “around the world to support their fellow Syrians in all possible ways,” calling for the end of the Assad regime.
Christians do not support Assad’s dictatorship, but neither would they wish for another Islamic extremist regime to be born in Syria. The small but great Carmelite Agnese Maria has personally lived through the plight of the Palestinian refugees and the refugees from the war in Lebanon, and for this reason founded the “Movement of Reconciliation” (Mussahala) which has a following in Syria. Today it is obliged to be the credible voice of the Syrian Christians and of many Muslims who condemn the anti-Christian violence. My denunciation, she underlines, “is not a pro-Assad plot, but a way of overcoming the violence and of giving voice to the Syrian people. To choose its future, it needs a minimum of security and stability, after assuring the cohesion of its social fabric severely affected by attempts at sectarian fragmentation, fueled by bloody attacks by both sides.”
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
UN Climate Change Thieves Gather in Qatar
Unlike previous gatherings of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 18th one occurring in Doha, Qatar between November 26 and December 7 is likely to shun media coverage of their schemes to enrich participants who want massive transfers of money from developed to undeveloped nations. Thieves work best in the dark.
These are the folks who came up with the Kyoto Protocols that were intended to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), in order to save the Earth from becoming a crispy desert as the result of global warming. Adopted on December 11, 1997, the protocols set “binding targets for 37 industrialized nations and the European community with the goal of reducing 1990 levels of CO2 over a five-year period 2008 to 2012.” Two major emitters, China and India, were exempted from the Protocols, thus rendering it even more idiotic than it already was.
[…]
The Kyoto Protocols were an international deception perpetrated by the UN. The Earth has been cooling for the past sixteen years. Carbon Dioxide has nothing—zero—to do with the planet’s temperature and all warming comes from the Sun.
Even so, representatives to COP 18 are gathering to create a “Green Climate Fund” for the same purpose that existed in 1997.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Russia to Return to Afghanistan After US Occupation
In an anticipation of the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan, Russia strengthens its activity in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai’s government is ready to cooperate. Karzai ordered to build a Russian Cultural Centre in Kabul. Ordinary Afghans support the return of the Russian Federation too. Will the current government find a compromise with the Taliban? The answer to this question means a lot indeed.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Young Man Who Slapped Maoist Leader Prachanda Hailed Hero by Fellow Nepalis
A farmer’s son, Padam Kunwar was a Maoist supporter for many years. His action against the veteran guerrilla fighter is a response to corruption scandals involving the Maoist party. On Facebook and other social networks, hundreds of groups call for his release; however, the young man could be tried and convicted on terrorism charges.
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) — “My brother’s actions were the result of deep frustration against the Maoist party,” said Pratibha Kunwar, the 28-year-old sister of Padam Kunwar, who slapped veteran Maoist leader Pushpa Lama Dahal (Prachanda) during a public ceremony. For her, his attack betrays the frustration ordinary Nepalis have against politicians. At present, the slightly bruised young Maoist activist is in police custody after Prachanda supporters tried to lynch him.
In recent months, the Maoist party, now back in power, and Prachanda’s family have been in the spotlight because of various scandals involving graft and a lavish lifestyle. The former prime minister allegedly bought a mansion in downtown Kathmandu with party funds. His son apparently used his father’s influence to organise expeditions to the Everest for his friends with public funds at a time when the government is in the red.
“People are unhappy about the country’s situation,” said Krishna Pahadi, a human rights activist. “Political leaders deceived us, reneging on all the promises they made over the years.”
Such scandals have shaken public opinion, especially hundreds of young Maoists like Kunwar. His story has moved people and some opposition leaders call him a hero. Support groups have sprung up on Facebook, other social media and a number of websites.
Padam Kunwar is the youngest son of farming family that backed the Maoist struggle against the Hindu monarchy, which was toppled in 2006.
Prathibha said that Padam was only nine when his parents sent him to India to spare him the war. Once he came back to his village in 2007, he supported the Maoist revolution with his entire family, becoming an activist for the rights of poor people crushed by the caste system that existed under the monarchy.
However, he eventually became disillusioned when he saw local Maoist officials engage in abuses and corruption, turning what was once respect into hatred for Maoist hypocrisy.
His sister said that all his relatives served in the Maoist army. “My father was jailed several times for supporting the Communist during the insurgency.”
Tek Bahadur, Padam’s elder brother and a former official in the liberation army, is still suffering from the wounds he received during the war.
“We began supporting the Maoists in 2000,” she explained. “In 2005, the military broke all my ribs during a raid at our home. Because we are too poor, I was not able to get treatment.”
In recent days, opposition leaders and ordinary Nepalis launched different appeals asking for the release of the young man, who could be tried for terrorism.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
“Imperialist” Map in China’s New Passport Angers Hanoi and Delhi
In its new travel papers, Beijing incorporates big swathes of the South China Sea and the Himalaya, not to mention Taiwan. In response, India is issuing Chinese citizens with visas embossed with New Delhi’s own maps. Vietnam is issuing visas on separate documents. Growing tensions could further escalate, analysts and experts warn.
Hanoi (AsiaNews/Agencies) — Hanoi, Manila, New Delhi and Taipei announced they would promptly respond to China’s decision to issue a new passport with a map that includes as part of China contested territories in the South China Sea and the Himalaya.
Without any coverage by domestic media, China’s new passports are fuelling resentment among other Asian nations, including India, Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.
The new travel documents include Beijing’s nine-dash line-sometimes called the “Cow Tongue” line-which demarcates its territories in the South China Sea (Spratly Islands for example), Taiwan, India’s state of Arunachal Pradesh and parts of the Himalaya.
In an attempt to downplay the controversy, which is turning into a diplomatic incident, China’s Foreign Ministry said, “China’s map in the passport wasn’t targeted at specific countries.”
Still, India has already called China’s move “unacceptable”, and is now issuing Chinese citizens visas embossed with New Delhi’s own maps.
Taiwan is also concerned that countries that accept the passport will implicitly recognise Chinese claims to the island.
Both New Delhi and Taipei have issued formal protests through diplomatic channels.
To counter Beijing’s move, Vietnam has refused to stamp visas on the new Chinese passports. Its passport control offices are allowing Chinese passport holders into the country but issuing visas on separate documents.
This is an assertion of Vietnam’s non-recognition of China’s Cow’s Tongue line “under any form,”
The four nations most affected by the new passport are to hold talks in Manila on 12 December to push for a common front against China’s growing “imperialism”.
Most experts and analysts agree that the South China Sea is one of the most contested regions in the world. If tensions are not lowered, conflicts could break out and spill across the region’s boundaries.
Most parties to the issue, including Vietnam and Philippines, prefer a multilateral approach. China has opted instead for bilateral accords with each nation in order to profit from its great economic power to get the most from its territorial claims.
Among the nations of the Asia-Pacific region, China has in fact the most extensive maritime claims in the South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel Islands, which are uninhabited but rich in natural resources.
Holding hegemonic sway over the area would be strategically important for trade and access to natural resources, including oil and natural gas.
China’s expansionist claims are challenged by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, joined by the United States, which has strategic interests of its own in the area.
Washington is particularly active behind the scene in building a coalition to counter China’s expansionism. The Philippines and Japan are its leading members, but Vietnam too could become a major ally in a potentially conflictual scenario developing in the Asia-Pacific region.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
China: Xian: The Hero Who Denounced Poisoned Milk Dead After a Beating
Jiang Weisuo, 44, shocked China and the world with his complaints of industrial pollution in children’s milk factories. In early November he had been beaten bloody by an “unknown individual.” Police arrest a suspect but won’t reveal the details.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) — After the beating suffered at the beginning of November, the great whistleblower Jiang Weisuo has died in a hospital; Jiang had shocked China and the world with his complaints of industrial pollution in children’s milk factories. Jiang, the 44 year old former general manager of a milk collection center in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, passed away on Nov. 14 at a hospital in Xian. Police say they have arrested a suspect linked to the beating, but will not reveal his name.
The national media had dubbed him “the main source” on the scandals related to the Chinese dairy industry: since 2006 he had denounced malpractice by various companies.
In 2006 Jiang, a former farmer, revealed that his own colleague in another company used a washing machine to mix togther substances such as antibiotics, hydrogen peroxide, nitrate and protein powder: this mixture was then combined with fresh milk supplied by the farmers and sold to distributors.
The following year, he spent about 300,000 yuan (almost 30,000 euro) for a tour of the milk production areas in the north of the country. After completing his investigation, he published a book in which he pointed the finger against the production system which, in the name of profits, spared on quality control and health controls for consumers.
Two years later, following his example, other leaders denounced the use of melamine in infant formula. But it was too late: 6 children died of poisoning and another 3,000 were operated on or treated for liver problems. After this scandal, the whole system fell under suspicion, and consumer confidence fell to record lows. Still today, some dairy products are viewed with great suspicion and remain unsold.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Miracle Based on Moth-Eaten Stealth Technology
The J-31 (J-21/F-60) is a second Chinese fighter made with the use of stealth technology. It was developed in record time — in only 19 months. In contrast to J-20, the J-31 is smaller and probably cheaper than the J-20. It can become a very popular aircraft in the arms market. Chinese aircraft designers did not hesitate to borrow US design solutions that had been tested on F-22 and F-35 fifth-generation fighters.
Experts note that the wings, nose cone, air intakes and cockpit canopy of the J-31 almost completely reproduce the contours of similar parts of the aforementioned U.S. aircraft. This is probably the result of the work of Chinese intelligence. In particular, there was a scandal in the United States in 2009 connected with the theft of drawings from six American aerospace contractors, including those involved in the development of the F-35 fighter.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
British aid to Rwanda is ‘funding a dictator’ and worsening the misery of his victims, a former senior aide to the African state’s president claimed last night.
The £270million of aid earmarked for the country over the next three years is ‘sustaining a bad regime’, said David Himbara, who was private secretary to President Paul Kagame until two years ago.
Kagame’s regime is alleged to be funding and arming a bloody rebellion in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a conflict marked by the use of child soldiers and widespread rape and murder.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Migrants Found Adrift 96 Miles From Lampedusa
Alarm launched through sms text message
(ANSA) — Rome, November 26 — The Italian coast guard and navy saved 99 immigrants on Sunday night who were adrift in an inflatable motorized dinghy headed for the southern Italian island of Lampedusa. The alarm was launched Sunday afternoon, when an Eritrean resident of the southern Italian city of Bari received a cell phone text message calling for help, according to a port authority source. The Bari resident, in turn, called the Italian coast guard.
The stranded dinghy was located 96 miles southeast of Lampedusa, thanks to the use of a satellite phone.
The Italian port authority coordinated with Maltese authorities, who spotted and reported the precise coordinates of the dinghy.
Italian authorities sent two vessels that reached the distressed boat at 22:15. Of the 99 on board, 15 were women.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Charge of Racism in America
In the raging immigration debate, all of the minorities in the United States scream “racism” against “white” America. But, they carry on their own “Black Caucus” and “Hispanic Caucus” in Congress. They carry on with Black Entertainment Television. They sponsor “Black Miss America” and other racially segregated events. Whites are not allowed to sponsor anything of that nature.
If anyone stands up to endless illegal immigration, they automatically become a racist. Never mind that 20 million illegal migrants inhabit the United States in violation of this nation’s laws. If anyone speaks up, writes up or presents the facts, he or she becomes a racist.
Within the next 38 years, as America remains on course to add 100 million immigrants from all over the world. They bring languages, cultures and incompatible religions that fail to meld with Western thought and civilization. Within those 38 years, the current dominant European tribe will become a minority to the new dominant Hispanic tribe coming up from Mexico, Central and South America. (The same thing occurs in Canada, Europe and Australia.)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Schools ‘Struggling to Teach About Christianity in RE’
The teaching of Christianity in religious education lessons is often incoherent, stereotypical and “lacking in intellectual development”, Oxford academics have warned.
Some teachers are nervous about tackling issues related to the faith for fear of being seen “evangelising”, it is claimed. Researchers insisted that drastic improvements to lessons were needed to make sure pupils properly understood about the traditions and fundamental beliefs of Christianity. The comments came as Oxford’s department of education launched a new project aimed at supporting teachers in the presentation of Britain’s principal religion in RE lessons. Under the plan, a series of online materials will be made available free of charge to primary school teachers — and non-specialist staff in secondary education — from next September. Dr Nigel Fancourt, a lecturer on the university’s RE programme, said Christianity was the only religion that was consistently taught to pupils of all ages throughout the education system…
| — Hat tip: JP | [Return to headlines] |
Lake Life Survives in Total Isolation for 3000 Years
It is seven times as salty as the sea, pitch dark and 13 degrees below freezing. Lake Vida in East Antarctica has been buried for 2800 years under 20 metres of ice, but teems with life.
The discovery of strange, abundant bacteria in a completely sealed, icebound lake strengthens the possibility that extraterrestrial life might exist on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter’s Europa.
“Lake Vida is a model of what happens when you try to freeze a lake solid, and this is the same fate that any lakes on Mars would have gone through as the planet turned colder from a watery past,” says Peter Doran of the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is co-leader of a team working in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica where Vida is situated. “Any Martian water bodies that did form would have gone through this Vida stage before freezing solid, entombing the evidence of the past ecosystem.”
The Vida bacteria, brought to the surface in cores drilled 27 metres down, belong to previously unknown species. They probably survive by metabolising the abundant quantities of hydrogen and oxides of nitrogen that Vida’s salty, oxygen-free water has been found to contain.
Co-research leader Alison Murray of the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, is now investigating this further by growing some of the extracted cells in the lab. “We can use these cultivated organisms to better understand the physical or chemical extremes they can tolerate that might be relevant to other icy worlds such as Europa,” she says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
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