Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/3/2013

North Korea announced to the world that it has authorized a nuclear attack on the United States. Its military says that it is prepared to use the latest advanced technology to get around America’s defenses and attack its interests in the region as well as the United States itself.

In other news, in the wake of the revelation that two of their number were among the jihadis killed in the January attack on the Libyan gas plant, Muslim leaders in London, Ontario have issued a public statement condemning all forms of violent extremism.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, JD, JP, McR, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Financial Crisis
» Britain’s Debt Mountain Reaches £1.39trillion, Equivalent to 90% of the Entire Economy, Ons Reveals
» Could the Banksters Grab Your Bank Deposits?
» Cyprus Finance Minister Quits After Bailout Concludes, Investigation Begins
» Economics 101: Production, Coercion and Theft
» Global Elite Preparing New Korean War to Coincide With Economic Implosion?
» Greece Auctions Off Railroad as Pressure From International Banksters Increases
» Homeland Security Insider Warns Orchestrated Collapse of U.S. Dollar ‘Has Begun’
» IMF Urges Economic Death Blow With Gasoline Carbon Tax
» List Released With 132 Names Who Pulled Cyprus Deposits Ahead of “Confiscation Day”
» Obama is Pushing Banks to Make More Home Loans to Borrowers With Poor Credit
» Thomas Sowell: Can it Happen Here?
» Unemployed Youth Turn Their Backs on Spain
 
USA
» Are You a Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the DOJ, You May be a Criminal
» Building an Indestructible Three-Legged Stool
» Coulter: Don’t Knox This ‘Serious Network’
» DHS Excuse for Buying Billions of Rounds of Ammo Exposed as Yet Another Blatant Lie
» Every Mass Shooting Over Last 20 Years Has One Thing in Common… and It’s Not Guns
» Facebook Seeking Even More Personal Data
» Gardasil Fingerprints Found in Post-Mortem Samples
» JW Seeks Answers to Payouts Made to Victims of HPV Vaccines
» Kaufman: The Sleepy Texas Town Living in Fear of Vendetta
» Next Assault on 2nd Amendment: Mandatory Liability Insurance
» Sowell: Guns Save Lives
» Veteran’s Guns Confiscated After Forced ‘Psychiatric Evaluation’
» Weather Underground Radical Then, Columbia Prof Now
 
Canada
» Ontario Mosque Leaders Reject Links to Extremism
 
Europe and the EU
» Bilderberg 2013 Set to Take Place Near London?
» France: Munching Sheep Replace Lawn Mowers in Paris
» France: Vigilante Granny Fires Rifle at Noisy Teenagers
» Germany: WWII Bomb Found Near Berlin’s Main Train Station
» Greece: Golden Dawn MP Snubs Ethics Committee Over Public Urination
» Greece: Tender for Athens State Mosque to be Launched
» Ireland: Dog Seat Belts Proposal ‘Being Considered’
» Ireland to Build One of Europe’s Largest Mosques
» Lego Pulls Toy Following Accusations of Being Anti-Islamic. It’s Time to End Racism in the Nursery
» Norway Schools Delay Exams Amid Bieber Fever
» Spain Pumps Wave Power Onto European Grid
» UK Now Has Seven Social Classes, With Traditional Model ‘Too Simplistic’
» UK: ‘They’Ve Got Nothing on Me — Just Stick to What We’ve Said’: Mick Philpott’s Boast in Secret Dossier of Undercover Police Tapes
» UK: Bullfinch Trial: Court Will Hear Defence Against Sex Charge
» UK: Ban Cautions for Rapists and Burglars, Ministers Say
» UK: Blonde Mother of Two, 31, ‘Killed Young Lover, 20, By Stabbing Him 24 Times With Such Force She Broke the Knife Moments After Texting Ex to Say She Wanted Him Back’
» UK: Bookmaker Jailed for 12 Years for Shooting Man Who ‘C**k-Blocked’ Him When He Tried to Chat Up Women in a Club
» UK: Evil Mick Philpott Shot Me in the Groin With a Crossbow Dart Because He Thought My Dress Was Too Short: Stabbed Ex-Girlfriend of Fire Killer Reveals His Campaign of Terror
» UK: Feminism or Islamism? Which Side Are You on?
» UK: Inside the House of Depravity: Two Giant TVs, A Snooker Room But the Children Were Barely Fed by Mick Philpott Whose Sordid Lifestyle Beggars Belief
» UK: Leftwing Internationalists Are the Most Self-Centred People on the Planet
» UK: Now Teachers Demand to Work Just 35 Hours a Week… and They Even Want to be Allowed to Do Five of Those at Home
» UK: Philpott Was on Bail for Road-Rage Attack When He Plotted House Fire, It is Revealed as Judge Delays Sentencing Until Tomorrow
» UK: Predatory Paedophile Robin Malkas’ Sick Plot: Breed Daughter to Sexually Abuse
» UK: Stabbed. Kicked So Hard My Back Broke. But Sue? No, I Was a Proper Copper
» UK: Shame of ‘Theft, Fraud and Under-Age Sex’ At the BBC: Dossier Reveals Crimes That Have Never Been Reported to Police
 
North Africa
» Egypt: Freed Cleric: Muslims Should ‘Hate Christians’ (Video)
» Thief Beaten to Death in Egypt
 
Israel and the Palestinians
» Israel Launches Airstrike on Gaza
 
Middle East
» A Christian Catastrophe: Islamist ‘Cleansing’ In Mideast
» Islamic Cleric Issues Fatwa Permitting Rape of Syrian Women
» New Efforts to Protect Jordan’s Wadi Rum Desert
» Qatar: Al Jazeera to Train Imams in Communication
» Saudi Man Who Paralysed His Best Friend in Knife Attack Faces Having His Spinal Cord Severed in ‘Eye-for-an Eye’ Punishment
» Stakelbeck Show: Pressuring Israel, Appeasing Iran
» Three Men Put to Death in Kuwaiti Car Park in Country’s First Execution in Six Years
» Turkey: Work Commences on ‘Erdogan the Magnificent’ Mosque
» U.S. Secretary of State to Visit Turkey for 2nd Time in Two Months
» We Abandon Christians in the East at Our Peril
 
South Asia
» Organic Rice Farmer in India Yields Over 22 Tons of Crop on Only Two Acres, Proving the Fraud of Gmos and Big Ag
» Pakistani Youth ‘Prefer Sharia to Democracy’
 
Far East
» N. Korea Approves Nuclear Strike on United States
» North Korea: The Larger Picture
» North Korea Says it Has Approval to Use Its ‘Cutting Edge’ Nuclear Weapons Against the United States
» This is What Air War Over North Korea Would Look Like
» Will Globalists Use North Korea to Trigger Catastrophe?
 
Australia — Pacific
» Australia Braces for ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ In National Child Sex Abuse Inquiry
» New Zealand Could Adopt Maori Names for Main Islands
 
Sub-Saharan Africa
» Al Qaeda Wants Africa
» Boy Who Claimed He Was Enslaved by a Black Family Found Stoned to Death in South African Street
» Ethiopia Persecutes Muslims: HRW
» Nigeria: Boko Haram — Federal Govt Report Rejects Compensation for Victims
» South Africa: Stellenbosch University Muslims Get Their Own Prayer Room
 
Latin America
» Maya Blue Paint Recipe Deciphered
 
Immigration
» Obama’s Amnesty: An Attack on the Poor
 
Culture Wars
» American Arrested for Anti-Homosexual Statements
» Common Core and CSCOPE Education
» Court Refuses ‘Pregnant Man’ Thomas Beatie’s Divorce
» Gay Propaganda Campaign Takes Offensive Turn
» Killing Us Softly
» Only Parents Can Set Their Children Free From Common Core Indoctrination
» Painting of Jesus Coming Down Under Pressure
» Pink Lego is an Abomination. End This Gender Fascism
» Public School Bans Cub Scout Pack
» Should the GOP Dump Social Issues?
 
General
» Dark Matter Possibly Found by $2 Billion Space Station Experiment
» Do You Believe Things Are Getting Better or Worse?
» U.N. Overwhelmingly Approves Global Arms Trade Treaty
» United Nations Adopts Global Arms Trade Treaty

Britain’s Debt Mountain Reaches £1.39trillion, Equivalent to 90% of the Entire Economy, Ons Reveals

Britain’s debt mountain has topped £1.387trillion, and is now the equivalent of 90 per cent of the entire economy.

The grim milestone was passed at the end of 2012, new figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed today.

It lays bare the dire state of the nation’s finances in the wake of the 2007 financial crash, which has seen government debt double in just five years.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Could the Banksters Grab Your Bank Deposits?

The recent news about Cyprus banks confiscating depositor’s funds sent chills throughout the financial world here and abroad. I couldn’t believe that the plan in Cyprus hinged on the idea that the bank could just steal customer’s funds to balance the bank’s books. I muttered to myself when I read the story that something as crazy as that couldn’t possible happen here in the United States. Unfortunately, I learned that the plan to pull a Cyprus type grab here was already in the works.

“A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. “ NationofChange

The above article explains that most of us do not realize that when you deposit money in a bank, that it becomes the property of the bank and we become unsecured creditors of the bank! “Although few depositors realize it, legally the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs or promises to pay. (See here and here.) But until now the bank has been obligated to pay the money back on demand in the form of cash. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price?”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Cyprus Finance Minister Quits After Bailout Concludes, Investigation Begins

Cyprus’s finance minister resigned on Tuesday after concluding a 10 billion euro bailout deal with international lenders in which the country slashed its dominant banking sector and hit depositors with losses.

Michael Sarris, a lead player in talks with International Monetary Fund and European Union lenders, said he had completed his task but also that he was likely to come under scrutiny in an investigation into the crisis.

Tuesday’s deal, which requires ratification from national EU parliaments and euro zone finance ministers, will see Cyprus receiving a 10 billion euro loan, carrying an interest rate of approximately 2.5 percent. It is repayable over a 12 year period after a grace period of a decade.

[Comment: Probably leaving the country as you read this.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Economics 101: Production, Coercion and Theft

(NaturalNews) I’d like to share a lesson in economics today, and I call it the “Production, Coercion and Theft” lesson.

There are only three ways to accumulate money and wealth in world (other than stumbling across a hidden treasure and actually finding money, that is):

#1) Production: Offer something of value in exchange for money voluntarily traded by recipients

#2) Coercion: Confiscate money (or stores of value) by claiming authority over those who earn it

#3) Theft: Steal money (or stores of value) from those who already have it

Every person in society today acquires money in these three ways (with “gifting” being a fourth way that’s in a separate category because it’s passive, not active). The office worker, the entrepreneur, the laborer, the weekend burglar and even the professional politician all acquire money in one of these three primary ways.

Out of the three methods of money accumulation covered here, production is the only one that adds abundance to the economy. The other two methods reduce wealth and ultimately promote poverty…

Theft is what recently happened in Cyprus, where banksters stole 40% or more of private account balances, later stealing 60% or more of many business accounts. It wasn’t coercion because there was no threat of force, nor any compliance on your part. You simply wake up one morning and find that your bank account, your truck, your wallet or your laptop computers is missing. That’s theft… and that’s how the global banking system fundamentally functions.

Another advanced kind of theft is committed by the Federal Reserve. By printing new money, it steals the value of all the money you currently hold. This is called “currency theft” but a full discussion of it is beyond the scope of this lesson. For now, let’s stick to simple theft and coercion.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Global Elite Preparing New Korean War to Coincide With Economic Implosion?

The Federal Reserve plan to crash the economy and make room for world government and an authoritarian globalist economic and accompanying police state control system will necessitate a sufficient prerequisite — and that prerequisite may very well be a new war on the Korean peninsula.

It should be obvious by now that the Federal Reserve’s so-called quantitative easing — bankster shorthand for pumping fiat dollars into rigged financial markets by buying bonds, treasury bills, etc. — is creating a huge financial asset bubble that is going to burst with an ear-splitting boom… and soon.

If you’d like to get a handle on what Federal Reserve policy will ultimately mean, read David Stockman’s article published in the New York Times last Sunday.

Funny money cranked out by the Fed “has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble,” Stockman writes. And when the Wall Street bubble “bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Greece Auctions Off Railroad as Pressure From International Banksters Increases

The Greek government has been trying in recent years to sell everything short of its historic Parthenon in an attempt to climb itself out a massive debt hole.

Now, facing mounting pressure from international lenders to speed up its national yard sale, the government has announced it would begin the tender to sell the Hellenic Railways Organization, known by its Greek acronym OSE, by the end of the second quarter.

Development Minister Costis Hatzidakis and Yiannis Emiris, managing director of Greece’s privatization fund, Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF), said the government would like to see an investor by the start of 2014 if not sooner, according to the Greek news site ekathimerini.com.

[Comment: The asset striping for pennies on the dollar commences. This is the real goal of forced collapse of economies.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Homeland Security Insider Warns Orchestrated Collapse of U.S. Dollar ‘Has Begun’

(NaturalNews) The countdown clock is ticking as the insanely evil cabal known as the “global elite” prepares its final moves for a complete world takeover. As relayed by Canada Free Press (CFP), an insider at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is America’s very own reanimation of the Nazi SS, recently delivered an ominous warning that America’s days are numbered, and that Americans basically need to ready themselves for the worst, which is yet to come.

Not only is a complete collapse of the U.S. dollar on the very near horizon, according to the unnamed source, but a single, uniform currency system is already in the works to take its place. All that needs to happen now is for the final hammer to drop, so to speak, an event to truly shake the people and wake them out of their drunken, entertainment-imbibed stupors. But when this finally happens, it will already be too late for anyone to actually do anything about it.

“The first shots in a global economic takeover were fired in Cyprus,” explains Doug Hagmann from CFP about the situation as it is currently playing out. “It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the ‘middle class’ will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

IMF Urges Economic Death Blow With Gasoline Carbon Tax

Following the criminal plot by the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank to steal billions from depositors in Cyprus, the banksters have hatched a new plan to steal trillions, level the economic playing field and force millions into grinding poverty.

In order to save the earth and pay for social programs supposedly designed to help the victims of our alleged carbon crimes, the IMF says we need to pay an extra $1.40 per gallon in taxes.

“The time has come for subsidy reform and carbon taxation,” declared the IMF’s deputy director, David Lipton, last week. “The IMF will draw attention to the issue and help those who want to go forward.”

The IMF says impoverishing more people through burdensome taxation will reduce traffic jams and accidents by discouraging driving.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

List Released With 132 Names Who Pulled Cyprus Deposits Ahead of “Confiscation Day”

With every passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer the Cyprus deposit confiscation “news” was the most unsurprising outcome for the nation’s financial system and was known by virtually everyone on the ground days and weeks in advance: first it was disclosed that Russians had been pulling their money, then it was suggested the president himself had made sure some €21 million of his family’s money was parked safely in London, then we showed a massive surge in Cyprus deposit outflows in February, and now the latest news is that a list of 132 companies and individuals has emerged who withdrew their €-denominated deposits in the two weeks from March 1 to March 15, among which the previously noted company Loutsios & Sons which is alleged to have ties with the current Cypriot president Anastasiadis.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Obama is Pushing Banks to Make More Home Loans to Borrowers With Poor Credit

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Thomas Sowell: Can it Happen Here?

Whether in Cyprus or in other countries, politicians tend to think in short run terms, if only because elections are held in the short run. Therefore, there is always a temptation to do reckless and short-sighted things to get over some current problem, even if that creates far worse problems in the long run.

Seizing money that people put in the bank would be a classic example of such short-sighted policies.

After thousands of American banks failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were people who would never put their money in a bank again, even after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created, to have the federal government guarantee individual bank accounts when the bank itself failed.

For years after the Great Depression, stories appeared in the press from time to time about some older person who died and was found to have substantial sums of money stored under a mattress or in some other hiding place, because they never trusted banks again.

After going back and forth, the government of Cyprus ultimately decided, under international pressure, to go ahead with its plan to raid people’s bank accounts. But could similar policies be imposed in other countries, including the United States?

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Unemployed Youth Turn Their Backs on Spain

Frustrated by a lack of opportunities at home, Spanish youth are leaving in droves. More than 280,000 left last year alone in the hope of finding jobs in countries such as Germany, Britain, Argentina and Venezuela.

It was a small sign tucked in the corner of a pizzeria in Barcelona that got David Garcia Jurado all excited. After months of job hunting, “help wanted” was exactly the kind of sign he was looking for. David, who speaks three languages and has a master’s degree in financial management, sent in his resume, anxiously hoping to hear back.

The call never came.

The waiter job became just another one of the more than 800 jobs David has applied for in the past year. “They don’t call you — they just don’t call you,” the 30-year-old said. Sometimes he doubts that the companies actually intend to hire people.

Well-dressed and confident, David once dreamed of working in international relations. His face hardens as he explains that these days he would be willing to take any job to ease the monotony of unemployment.

“It’s frustrating. It’s boring when you wake up every morning and you don’t know what to do,” he said. “You try to study a little bit, study languages or try to learn how to use new IT programs, but you know that the next day is going to be the same.”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Are You a Teenager Who Reads News Online? According to the DOJ, You May be a Criminal

During his first term, President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month,” emphasizing that, for students, learning to navigate the online world is as important a skill as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a move that echoed his predecessor’s strong support of global literacy — such as reading newspapers — most notably through First Lady Laura Bush’s advocacy.

Yet, disturbingly, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) of both the Bush and Obama administrations have embraced an expansive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that would literally make it a crime for many kids to read the news online. And it’s the main reason why the law must be reformed.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Building an Indestructible Three-Legged Stool

CPAC 2013 found itself caught again in a running nightmare: How do we rebuild the Buckley revolution and Reagan’s three-legged stool of economy, social values, and defense?

They ask the wrong question.

We must ask ourselves how to build an indestructible three-legged stool. Reagan’s stool had one weak leg that has always haunted the Party: social “values”. Values are useful ideals for guidance, but they do not translate into wise non-partisan socioeconomic policy that most everyone will agree to.

The clash between right and left has rendered much of the Republican party terrified of social issues. “Values” debates are pie fights that result in little more than Republicans wiping pie off their faces.

Values wars are proxy wars invented by the left to keep Republicans busy while liberals easily pass deconstructionist pork legislation. Liberals deconstruct social policy matters into downstream “tabloid disasters”, while hobbled Republicans are capable of little more than bemoaning the demise of marriage and the deficits it creates.

To build a strong stool, the third leg must stand on “pro-family socioeconomic policy.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Coulter: Don’t Knox This ‘Serious Network’

Just days after the Turner Broadcasting System CEO claimed that CNN “is a serious news network,” it aired a childish report on “Anderson Cooper 360” about convicted murderer Amanda Knox, which appears to have been written by Amanda’s parents. Next up: “The Charles Manson story, reported by Squeaky Fromme.”

Amanda, you may recall, was charged, along with her Italian boyfriend and another of her acquaintances, of sexually assaulting and murdering her English roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, in 2007. Amanda and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted, the convictions reversed and then the reversal reversed.

Among the evidence for her guilt is that the murder weapon was found — freshly bleached — in the apartment of Amanda’s boyfriend with Meredith’s DNA on the blade and Amanda’s DNA on the handle.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

DHS Excuse for Buying Billions of Rounds of Ammo Exposed as Yet Another Blatant Lie

(NaturalNews) Responding to a letter from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Department of Homeland Security — an agency that has no business being armed in the first place — says it’s buying billions of rounds of ammunition in order to “significantly lower costs.”

It’s all about saving money, you see. DHS isn’t arming up in anticipation of a shooting war on the streets of America, and it’s not buying thousands of armored assault vehicles for that purpose either. No, DHS is only buying all this ammo to save you money!

This response by DHS, of course, is an obvious lie. Why? Because a significant portion of the bullet purchases specify hollow point rounds. In case you didn’t know, hollow points are significantly MORE expensive than “ball” ammo (FMJ). Under the Geneva convention, hollow points are illegal to use in war because they cause far greater tissue damage, too. So they can only be used domestically, inside the United States in a civil action, not an international war.

If DHS really wanted to “significantly lower costs” on ammunition, it would have purchased FMJ rounds (full metal jacket), not hollow points. But in April of 2012, ammunition manufacturer ATK announced it had been awarded a DHS purchase contract for 450 million rounds of hollow point .40 caliber ammo. That’s almost half a billion rounds right there, and they’re all hollow point rounds.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Every Mass Shooting Over Last 20 Years Has One Thing in Common… and It’s Not Guns

[WARNING: ** Disturbing content **]

(NaturalNews) The following is a republishing of an important article written by Dan Roberts from AmmoLand.com. It reveals the real truth about mass shootings that bureaucrats and lawmakers are choosing to sweep under the rug: psychiatric drugs. If you want to know the real reason why mass shootings are taking place, this is the “inconvenient truth” the media won’t cover.

As part of a collective grassroots effort to defend the Bill of Rights against usurpers and tyrants, Natural News is republishing this article without asking for permission first. When it comes to fighting tyrants and defending liberty, the unstated agreement across the entire liberty-loving grassroots community is, “Use our articles; help spread the word!” Every article I write here on Natural News, for example, may be reprinted with credit and a link back to the original source article on NaturalNews.com.

Here’s the full article by Dan Roberts:

(Ammoland.com) Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and its not the weapons used.

The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.

Multiple credible scientific studies going back more then a decade, as well as internal documents from certain pharmaceutical companies that suppressed the information show that SSRI drugs ( Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors ) have well known, but unreported side effects, including but not limited to suicide and other violent behavior. One need only Google relevant key words or phrases to see for themselves. www.ssristories.com is one popular site that has documented over 4500 “ Mainstream Media “ reported cases from around the World of aberrant or violent behavior by those taking these powerful drugs.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Facebook Seeking Even More Personal Data

Every day, tens of millions of people post remarkably intimate details about their lives on Facebook. And yet the operators of the online social network say they still don’t know enough about their subscribers.

So Facebook is purchasing even more information on its members from data brokers — companies that collect huge amounts of sensitive information about the everyday activities of millions of Americans. Facebook will use the data, as well as information provided voluntarily by members, to target them with more relevant — and profitable — advertisements.

“We think that serving the right ads to the right people creates a better user experience on Facebook,” said a company spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Gardasil Fingerprints Found in Post-Mortem Samples

For the first time in history, a biologically plausible mechanism of action has been discovered linking a vaccine to a serious adverse event. Gardasil has left behind its genetic fingerprint in post-mortem central nervous system samples of two girls who took this vaccine.

Two teenage girls from opposite ends of the world — both dead before their time have two additional things in common. They both took Gardasil to try and prevent cervical cancer and fragments of the HPV-16-L1 antigen used in Gardasil have been found in blood vessels within their brains.

The HPV-16-L1 protein is one of the antigens used in both Gardasil and Cervarix. An antigen is a toxin or other foreign substance that induces an immune response in the body. Theoretically, these antigens are not supposed to cross the blood brain barrier. However, according to a recently concluded case study this may not be the case.

Using a new immunohistochemical (IHC) protocol they developed, Drs. Chris Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic examined post-mortem samples taken from the cerebellum, hippocampus, choroid plexus and watershed cortex of a 19 year-old girl; as well as post-mortem samples of the cerebellum, hippocampus, choroid plexus, portions of the brainstem (medulla, midbrain, pons), right basal ganglia, right parietal and left frontal lobes of a 14 year-old girl. They tested for the presence of two of the specific antigens used in both Gardasil and Cervarix: HPV-16-L1 and HPV-18-L1.

They discovered the presence of HPV-16-L1 particles within the blood vessels in the brain (cerebral vasculature) with some of these particles adhering to the blood vessel walls. For the average medical consumer, this is the equivalent of a Gardasil fingerprint and it should not be in brain tissues.

… this evidence suggests that the antibodies produced in response to vaccination with the HPV-16-L1 may cause one’s immune system to attack its own blood vessels.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

JW Seeks Answers to Payouts Made to Victims of HPV Vaccines

(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to obtain records related to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a program that compensates patients who have been adversely affected by certain vaccines, including Gardasil, the vaccine for the sexually transmitted disease human papillomavirus (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:13-cv-00197)).

Judicial Watch initiated an investigation of HPV vaccine Gardasil after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fast-tracked the vaccine for through the approval process in 2006. Since 2007, Judicial Watch has uncovered government records documenting thousands of adverse reactions associated with the vaccine, including seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short term memory loss, Guillain-Barré Syndrome and death.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Kaufman: The Sleepy Texas Town Living in Fear of Vendetta

The murder of prosecutor Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia has raised the spectre of the Aryan Brotherhood menacing Texas. Philip Sherwell reports.

A battery of heavily armed police guarded the courthouse as Brandi Fernandez arrived to take up her duties as district attorney in the normally sleepy Texan county town of Kaufman. The menacing mood facing Miss Fernandez, 42, an experienced local prosecutor, is the product of a double murder that has caused fears that criminal gangs are targeting the town’s officials. She has good reason to fear for her security, since she led the prosecution of a senior “enforcer” of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas last year. The assassination of two of her colleagues and the death of the wife of one of the men has unnerved the ranks of law enforcement…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Next Assault on 2nd Amendment: Mandatory Liability Insurance

A New York Democrat is working to reduce the number of Americans legally owning firearms by mandating they obtain expensive insurance.

In March, New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney boasted her proposed measure would be “the first bill to require liability insurance of gun buyers nationwide.”

H.R. 1369, the Firearm Risk Protection Act, mandates that all gun owners obtain liability insurance prior to buying a firearm.

“It shall be unlawful for a person who owns a firearm purchased on or after the effective date of this subsection not to be covered by a qualified liability insurance policy,” Maloney’s bill states.

The legislation calls for the federal government to impose a fine of $10,000 on firearms owners who do not have insurance after the bill becomes law.

The law would effectively reduce the number of legal firearms owners in the country and create a new class of criminals. Many Americans would either not choose to follow the law or would be unable to afford the required insurance and would be forced to forfeit their firearms under fear of prosecution by the federal government.

In other words, according to the New York Democrat and the sponsors of her legislation, legal gun owners are responsible for violence committed by others.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Sowell: Guns Save Lives

The defensive use of guns is usually either not discussed at all in the media or else is depicted as if it means bullets flying in all directions, like the gunfight at the OK Corral. But most defensive uses of guns do not involve actually pulling the trigger.

If someone comes at you with a knife and you point a gun at him, he is very unlikely to keep coming, and far more likely to head in the other direction, perhaps in some haste, if he has a brain in his head. Only if he is an idiot are you likely to have to pull the trigger. And if he is an idiot with a knife coming after you, you had better have a trigger to pull.

Surveys of American gun owners have found that 4 to 6 percent reported using a gun in self-defense within the previous five years. That is not a very high percentage but, in a country with 300 million people, that works out to hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns per year…

Even in the case of Britain, London had a much lower murder rate than New York during the years after New York State’s 1911 Sullivan Law imposed very strict gun control, while anyone could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked in the 1950s.

Today, virtually the entire law-abiding population of Britain is disarmed — and gun crimes are vastly more common. Gun control laws make crime a safer occupation when victims are unarmed.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Veteran’s Guns Confiscated After Forced ‘Psychiatric Evaluation’

A US Navy veteran had his guns confiscated by police following a forced “psychiatric evaluation” in another example of how the Veterans Administration is accelerating a purge of armed ex-servicemembers in accordance with a federal government demonization campaign that has labeled vets domestic terrorists.

50-year-old David A Schmecker is an honorably discharged disabled US Navy veteran from Connecticut with no criminal record and no psychiatric history.

On February 5, Schmecker’s hospital primary care doctor called and heard a message on Schmecker’s answer machine that “sounded peculiar,” prompting him to contact the local police and urge them to visit Schmecker to perform a “wellness check”.

“The police came to my home, and, without any justification whatsoever, hauled me away for a psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. I submitted to their forceful insistence under duress and fear of arrest or worse. I wasn’t arrested, no crime was committed nor any threats were made to myself or others,” Schmecker told Survive and Thrive’s George Hemminger.

Schmecker warns that the harassment he suffered is part of “a campaign orchestrated to disarm law abiding citizens,” adding that he is “concerned about where this country is headed.”

As with all contemporary authoritarian governments, the psychiatric system is being used to circumvent courts and bypass normal legal due process.

Veterans are increasingly being targeted by authorities as part of a broader move to demonize them as domestic extremists and even potential terrorists.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Weather Underground Radical Then, Columbia Prof Now

Former Weather Underground radical Kathy Boudin — who spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery that killed two cops and a Brinks guard — now holds a prestigious adjunct professorship at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, The Post has learned.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Ontario Mosque Leaders Reject Links to Extremism

Canadian suspects in Algerian attack unknown to London, Ont., mosque leaders

Muslim leaders in London, Ont., say they “unequivocally condemn violent extremism of any kind” following the identification of two young Canadians from the city as participants in a deadly attack in Algeria earlier this year.

Chair of the London Muslim Mosque, Rob Osman, said at a news conference Tuesday that “the Association of London Muslims has and will continue to unequivocally condemn violent extremism of any kind, as this is the opposite to the core teachings of Islam.” CBC News has learned that two al-Qaeda-linked militants, Xristos Katsiroubas, 22, and Ali Medlej, 24, came from a comfortable middle-class neighbourhood in London and were former high school friends, who may have attended the mosque…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Bilderberg 2013 Set to Take Place Near London?

Henry Kissinger jokes about keeping people guessing location of secretive confab

According to veteran Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker, the secretive group could be preparing to host its annual confab within 40 miles of London, contradicting previous reports that the conference was set to return to Chantilly, Virginia.

“A new possibility has evolved in the annual hunt for Bilderberg’s spring meeting: somewhere within 40 miles of London, England June 6-9,” reports Tucker.

The location of the annual Bilderberg conference, a get-together involving around 120 of the most influential people on the planet, is always a guessing game for activists and journalists, who usually only pin down the precise spot just a few weeks beforehand.

Bilderberg occasionally likes to throw out a “red herring” months in advance, a bait and switch venue to trick would-be protesters into abandoning their plans. It now appears that speculation the conference would take place in the United States for an unprecedented two years running was inaccurate.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

France: Munching Sheep Replace Lawn Mowers in Paris

AFP — Four little black sheep on Wednesday left the countryside and began their new careers in the city: working as eco-friendly lawn movers in a largely working-class district in northeastern Paris.

Between April and October, the new “park workers” will graze grounds the size of eight tennis-courts in three two-week-long sweeps in a move to promote biodiversity and make the grooming of the capital’s green areas more sustainable — replacing both chemicals and lawn mowers.

Out of work, they will be resting back at a farm on the outskirts of Paris, the Ferme de Paris.

“For a lawn mowed 24 times a year, there is no biodiversity. When you use animals, the droppings attract insects and the insects bring birds,” said Eco Terra president Alain Divo whose company plans and organises eco-pasture projects in French urban areas.

Grazing next to a ring road and by the foot of a giant grey building housing the capital’s archive centre in the 19th arrondissement, the sheep seem to have adjusted to their new environment quickly.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

France: Vigilante Granny Fires Rifle at Noisy Teenagers

A pensioner in central France used more than a brush to take on a group of teenagers, who were making a racket outside her apartment, it was reported on Wednesday. To the shock of the youngsters the 81-year-old woman opened fire on them with a rifle.

Police in the town of Bois, in the department of Loir-et-Cher responded to gunfire at an apartment building around 10pm last Friday night.

Upon arrival, the security forces found three teenage boys in shock, including one 15-year-old who had suffered a facial injury. The youngster was taken to hospital.

Police would have been forgiven for thinking the shooting might have been related to a feud between warring gangs but instead the teenagers pointed the finger at their 81-year-old neighbour.

Officers then questioned the elderly lady at her apartment, where two rifles — one loaded — were discovered.

The octogenarian had apparently reached her limit, and decided to take her quest for peace and quiet into her own hands.

She admitted to police that she had fired shots from a rifle, but denied having aimed at the boys, according to French daily Le Parisien.

She was taken into custody on Friday night and released the next day. Police are awaiting the results of forensic testing on evidence taken from the scene.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Germany: WWII Bomb Found Near Berlin’s Main Train Station

BERLIN, April 3 (Xinhua) — Police cordoned off streets near Berlin’s main Hauptbahnhof Railway Station on Wednesday morning as a 100kg unexploded World War II bomb has been discovered nearby…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Greece: Golden Dawn MP Snubs Ethics Committee Over Public Urination

Golden Dawn was protesting Mega TV showing Turkish soap operas

Parliament’s ethics committee said it would call a Golden Dawn MP for questioning after he was filmed apparently urinating outside the entrance to the Mega TV studios in Athens during a protest this week. However, the far-right deputy, Christos Pappas, said he would refuse to attend the hearing. “Some hypocrites are asking me to answer for the protest at Mega,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.” Golden Dawn was protesting Mega TV showing Turkish soap operas. The protest was held to coincide with Independence Day, marking the start of the war that ended Ottoman rule. The protest was criticized by the coalition, opposition parties and the POESY journalists’ union.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Greece: Tender for Athens State Mosque to be Launched

Stalled project moving ahead seven years after Votanikos site was earmarked

Seven years after a site in central Athens was earmarked for the construction of the capital’s first state-sponsored mosque, a tender for the project is expected to be announced by the government on Wednesday. The tender, which is to be uploaded onto the government’s Diavgeia portal (diavgeia.gov.gr), where draft laws are published, is for a 1-million-euro project. The construction of the mosque, which will not have minarets, is estimated to cost 846,000 euros, with another 150,000 euros going toward the feasibility studies that must precede construction on the former naval base in Votanikos. An existing structure will form a part of the mosque…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Ireland: Dog Seat Belts Proposal ‘Being Considered’

Proposals to introduce dog seat belts in cars are being considered by the (Irish) Department of Transport, it has been revealed.

Minister Leo Varadkar is currently consulting with the Road Safety Authority on the issue.

The ISPCA says it is a major safety issue and dogs can inflict severe injuries on passengers and themselves if thrown around during a crash.

Harnesses can be bought in shops for around €10, but it is not yet clear what types of restraints are being examined or whether any legislation will be introduced.

Noel Griffin of the Irish SPCA said it is a good idea to have dogs restrained or in a sectioned off part of a vehicle.

“The main issue here is that any object coming from the back of the car to the front, at any speed… I would hate to think of a large, 60kg (120 lb) dog coming from the back of the car to the front.”

           — Hat tip: McR [Return to headlines]

Ireland to Build One of Europe’s Largest Mosques

The Emir of Qatar, who has long cultivated an image as a pro-Western reformist, has vowed to “spare no effort” to spread Wahhabi Islam throughout Europe. Wahhabism — which not only discourages Muslim integration in the West but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims — threatens to radicalize Muslim immigrants in Ireland.

City planners in the Irish capital, Dublin, have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland’s burgeoning Muslim population.

The massive €40 million ($50 million) “Islamic Cultural Center” will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin.

According to the Dublin City Council, which approved the project on March 7, the Clongriffin Mosque will consist of:

(a) a three-story domed mosque and cultural center with towering minarets.

(b) a two-story conference center including a reception foyer, conference room, restaurant, banquet hall, kitchens and ancillary accommodation.

(c) a three-story 16-classroom primary school and a two-story 12-classroom secondary school.

(d) a two-story fitness center with a gym, sauna, steam room and an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool.

(e) a bookshop, library and mortuary.

(f) three four-story blocks of two-bedroom apartments with ground floor shops.

The Clongriffin Mosque will cater to some of the 30,000 Muslims living in Dublin, which is home to around 60% of the estimated 50,000 Muslims living in Ireland.

Although the number of Muslims in Ireland is relatively small (1.07% of the overall population), when compared to other European countries, the rate of growth of the Muslim population in Ireland has surged exponentially (1,170%) over the past 20 years, and Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the country. The total population of Ireland is 4.6 million.

According to Irish census data for 1991, the number of Muslims in the country was 3,875. After 1991, the Muslim population jumped, due to the arrival of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers from Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia. According to the Irish census data for 2002, the number of Muslims was 19,147; by 2006, that number had swelled to 32,539. In the 2011 census, the number of Muslims was 49,204.

Ireland’s Muslim population is projected to almost triple over the next twenty years, according to the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center. A report entitled, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 forecasts that there will be 125,000 Muslims living in Ireland by 2030.

The Clongriffin Mosque is being promoted by a Dublin-based Muslim organization called the Dublin Welfare Society Limited, an opaque group that was incorporated in April 2010 and has no formal activities other than to lobby for the mosque project.

The mega-mosque will be developed by a local real estate mogul, Gerry Gannon, on extensive land he owns at Clongriffin. According to the Irish Times, the project is a “coup” for Gannon, who hopes to sell hundreds and possibly thousands of newly built homes to Muslim families using the cultural center.

Clongriffin is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Dublin. Also known as the North Fringe, most of the land on which Clongriffin is being built was previously farmland. In July 2003, the Dublin City Council granted permission to begin developing a new suburb comprising houses and apartments, as well as schools, retail stores, supermarkets and a multi-screen cinema.

But construction in Clongriffin came to an abrupt halt after the Irish property bubble burst in 2009, and the country needed to be rescued in November 2010 with an €85 billion ($109 billion) bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Before Ireland’s real estate crash, Gannon invested millions of euros on developing Clongriffin, including the construction of a railway station linking the suburb to downtown Dublin. With the approval of the mega-mosque project, Clongriffin suddenly has a new lease on life… and so does Gannon.

Planning documents show that the Dublin City Council has approved the construction of 3,678 new homes near where the mega-mosque will be built. Gannon hopes the Clongriffin Mosque will fuel demand for the homes he is eager to sell.

But critics worry that Clongriffin is in danger of becoming an exclusively Islamic suburb on the outskirts of Dublin where Muslims will establish a parallel society rather than integrate.

SPECIAL NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS PART:

An Islamist website called “Islamic Vanguards: Spearheading Ireland’s Transition” recently warned that Gannon’s greed would be Ireland’s undoing: “If there’s one thing the west yearns, it is money. For it has worshiped this false god without fail for as long as they have departed from the worship of the true God. And it is this weakness, nay addiction that will see what they hold precious being wrenched from their spindly hands. Already as we speak vast swathes of the London metropolis are in Muslim hands, Dublin is set to follow as the wealth that Allah has blessed His servants with is used to reclaim the land for His glory.”

In any event, the Clongriffin Mosque will not be the only mega-mosque in town: the new mosque on the northern edge of Dublin will compete with another mega-mosque, located in Clonskeagh on the southern edge of Dublin.

The mosque complex at Clonskeagh, which also goes by the name “Islamic Cultural Center,” has been in operation since 1996. Its sprawling four-acre campus was financed by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai.

The Clonskeagh Mosque is home to the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), an Islamist group which seeks to have Islamic Sharia law recognized throughout Europe.

The ECFR is an integral part of the Brussels-based Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), an umbrella group that unites more than 30 Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Europe, and acts as the main vehicle for propagating Muslim Brotherhood ideology in Europe.

The ECFR is chaired by the Egyptian-born, Qatari-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Islamic scholar who is also a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Qaradawi — a spiritual advisor for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas who has defended suicide attacks against Jews as “martyrdom in the name of Allah” — has been banned from entering Great Britain and the United States.

Al-Qaradawi speaks openly about the goals of Islam: “What remains, then, is to conquer Rome. (…) This means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was expelled from it twice. (…) Conquest through Dawa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through our Dawa.”

According to a leaked US State Department memo dated July 7, 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood is stronger in Ireland than anywhere in the world outside of Qatar, and al-Qaradawi “runs Islam in Ireland.”…

           — Hat tip: McR [Return to headlines]

Lego Pulls Toy Following Accusations of Being Anti-Islamic. It’s Time to End Racism in the Nursery

What do Salman Rushdie and Lego have in common? They’ve both been accused of ridiculing Islam. But while Rushdie’s crime was to write a book parodying the faith, Lego’s mistake was to release a toy model that looks a bit like a building in a Muslim country. Don’t laugh: I’m sure this is how Nazism started…

[Reader comment by anotherjoeblogs on 2 April 2013 at 5:58 pm.]

give 30 years or so and we will think that the telegraph was really brave to actually show a lego model of a building that slightly resembled a museum that was once a mosque but originally a church in a city conquered by muslims. ah the good ol’ days of freedom, we will reminisce while getting poked with sticks in a zoo in Anglesey

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Norway Schools Delay Exams Amid Bieber Fever

Norwegian schools have moved exams that clashed with Justin Bieber’s concerts in the country, fearing some fans would rather cut class than miss out on an evening with the Canadian heart throb.

“We find it regrettable, but we preferred to move forward the Norwegian exams to avoid problems,” Roar Aasen, the headmaster of an upper secondary school in Aalesund on Norway’s west coast, told AFP.

In total, five schools in the town — more than a seven hours’ drive from Oslo — decided not to hold exams on April 16th and 17th since they coincided with two of Bieber’s three gigs in the Norwegian capital.

The tests, which would have been taken by around 500 pupils, will now be held on April 10th and 11th.

“We took this decision three or four months ago when we found out many students had already bought their tickets, because it didn’t pose any organisational problems for us,” said Aasen.

But the school is not setting “a precedent” for future concerts, he added.

Bieber, who is 19, sparked chaos in Oslo in May last year when dozens of teenagers chased the singer’s car in the hope of following him to a free concert at a location that was only revealed at the last minute.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Spain Pumps Wave Power Onto European Grid

The surf in the Bay of Biscay, off Spain’s north coast, has claimed countless lives in shipwrecks over the centuries. Spanish engineers have found a way to harness the power of these waves to produce electricity.

Waves constantly thrash the tiny fishing village of Mutriku on Spain’s northern Basque coast. Tax logs as far back as the 13th century describe dangerous surf and shipwrecks. Water even hurled debris through the windows of homes before the local government built a cement breakwater a few years ago.

Today, residents can stroll down a pier and out over the breakwater, which is a hollow cement and stone structure more than four football fields long. Hidden inside, Spanish scientists are busy generating electricity from the powerful waves that roll in off the Bay of Biscay.

Gloria Etxebarria is a renewable energy technician specialized in electricity generated from tides or waves. “The government decided to build a breakwater to protect the harbor of Mutriku,” she said in an interview with DW. “To make use of that investment, we decided to put our wave energy plant there.”

Spain is exploring the relatively young wave power industry after investing heavily in solar and wind power for decades. Every wave that rolls into the Mutriku wave plant sets 16 turbines spinning with the help of oscillating water columns (OWC) technology.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

UK Now Has Seven Social Classes, With Traditional Model ‘Too Simplistic’

The British public no longer fit into just three social classes, with society now split into seven based on economic, social and cultural measures, a major new study has discovered.

More than 160,000 people took part in the Great British Class Survey, the largest of its kind in the UK, with the results prompting researchers to dismiss the established upper class, middle class and working class system as “too simplistic”.

Unlike the three traditional class divisions, defined by occupation, wealth and education, the new classes range from the privileged ‘elite’ to the deprived ‘precariat’, based on income, savings, house value and social capital — the number and status of people that someone knows…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

UK: ‘They’Ve Got Nothing on Me — Just Stick to What We’ve Said’: Mick Philpott’s Boast in Secret Dossier of Undercover Police Tapes

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

An extraordinary dossier of secret recordings gathered by police to help convict two parents over the deaths of their six children in a tragic house fire was publicly released today.

In one recording, father-of-17 Mick Philpott, who was today found guilty of manslaughter along with his wife, tells her: ‘It’s my fault that half the family’s gone. I should have seen it all coming, duck.’

And in another recording, he tells Mairead in a police van: ‘My brief said that for the judge to do what he’s doing, he’s got to have some big balls because there’s no evidence — they’ve got nothing…

The Philpotts were convicted by jurors at Nottingham Crown Court of the unlawful killing of the six children on May 11, 2012. A third defendant, Paul Mosley, was also found guilty of manslaughter.

During the trial, the court heard that the six children — Jade Philpott, 10, and her brothers John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six, Jayden, five, and Duwayne, 13 — all died as a result of the petrol-fuelled blaze.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Bullfinch Trial: Court Will Hear Defence Against Sex Charge

The Old Bailey will today hear the defence case of a man accused of rape and sexual activity with a child, as the Bullfinch trial enters its 39th day. Assad Hussain, 32, is one of nine men charged with running a child sex exploitation gang in Oxford.

All defendants deny all 66 charges against them.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

UK: Ban Cautions for Rapists and Burglars, Ministers Say

Dangerous criminals should not be repeatedly getting let off with cautions, ministers said today, as they launched a review of the formal warnings.

The Ministry of Justice is looking at banning police from handing out cautions for some serious crimes, amid evidence they are being handed out to rapists, criminals carrying knives and burglars. Cautions are used by police as a way of censuring someone who has admitted guilt to avoid going to court, but ministers said their use is sometimes not “appropriate”…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

UK: Blonde Mother of Two, 31, ‘Killed Young Lover, 20, By Stabbing Him 24 Times With Such Force She Broke the Knife Moments After Texting Ex to Say She Wanted Him Back’

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

A mother-of-two stabbed her ‘smitten’ young lover 24 times just moments after texting her ex-boyfriend saying she wished she had never let him go, a murder trial jury was told.

Michelle Mills, 31, stabbed Edward Miller, 20, with such ferocity that the handle of the knife she used broke away from the blade, the court heard.

Mr Miller bled to death on the living room floor of their rented cottage in Scalford, in Leicestershire, after he was stabbed in the chest, abdomen and back.

On the night of the alleged attack, the couple were seen acting affectionately during a Bonfire Night party at the King’s Arms pub where Mills worked part-time.

But hours later when both were drunk they argued and Mills texted Trevor Stuckey, the father of her eldest child, saying: ‘I still love you and always have. I’m sorry. xx.’

In a second text she wrote ‘I wish I’d never let you go. xx.’

Moments later she armed herself with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed Eddie Miller leaving him bleeding to death on the living room floor, the court heard.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Bookmaker Jailed for 12 Years for Shooting Man Who ‘C**k-Blocked’ Him When He Tried to Chat Up Women in a Club

[WARNING: ** Disturbing content **]

A bookmaker who shot a teenager in the stomach when he stopped him flirting with a group of young women was jailed for 12 years today.

Leslie Ammah, 23, flew into a rage when Ashley Toppin-Hector, 19, thwarted his efforts of chatting up fellow clubbers at a south London bar.

During the confrontation he pulled out a handgun and fired a single round at his victim’s stomach.

Mr Toppin-Hector escaped serious injury after the weapon misfired and the bullet barely penetrated the skin and did not cause any internal injury.

Ammah, who was working as a William Hill cashier, was later identified thanks to his distinctive gold tooth and blue stripey top…

The gunman fired the weapon and his group then ran off and fled in Ammah’s Audi TT.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Evil Mick Philpott Shot Me in the Groin With a Crossbow Dart Because He Thought My Dress Was Too Short: Stabbed Ex-Girlfriend of Fire Killer Reveals His Campaign of Terror

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

House-blaze killer Mick Philpott subjected a former lover to a two-year campaign of terror which included shooting her in the groin with a crossbow dart simply because he objected to her short dress.

The father-of-17’s ex-girlfriend Kim Hill also told how he cracked her kneecap with a hammer when she paid too much attention to a baby.

It was an appallingly abusive relationship that nearly cost Miss Hill her life when Philpott stabbed her 27 times and left her for dead after she dared to break up with him.

Kim Hill, a mother of two, says she was groomed by Philpott when she was a schoolgirl before he brutally attacked her with a nine-inch knife, shouting: ‘I’m here to do you.’

He also declared: ‘If I can’t have you, no one else will.’

He then turned the knife on her mother, Shirley, when she ran to help her daughter, mercilessly stabbing her in the back as he chased her down the stairs.

Shirley, now 75, is dying of a rare liver cancer, which doctors believe was triggered by the scar tissue from the knife wounds, it was reported in The Sun.

Philpott, who attacked the pair at their family home in Spondon, Derbyshire, was described by a judge as a ‘dangerous young man’ when, aged 21, he was sentenced to seven years in jail for attempted murder and grievous bodily harm in 1978.

But he was released after just over three years despite showing no remorse, arguing in court that he meant only to punch his victims and had forgotten he had a knife.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Feminism or Islamism? Which Side Are You on?

by Nick Cohen

No group is better than liberal academics at illustrating how racist anti-racism has become. As liberals, they ought to respect individual rights and oppose reactionary attempts to corral and control. As academics, they ought to look for evidence that shakes comfortable opinions. As it is, they do neither…

I don’t mean to single out academics for special condemnation. The postmodern university may not be able to guide society, but it reflects its deformities and double standards. I know civil servants, liberal journalists, broadcasters, politicians, diplomats and police officers who never read an academic paper from one year until the next. They will condemn the gender pay gap or the sexual abuse of white-skinned women, but stay silent about the religious oppression of brown-skinned women. Fear of violent reprisals, fear of causing offence, fear that their enemies will denounce them for possessing a racial or sectarian hatred play their part. On the Left, there is the strong fear of accusations of complicity with the status quo, which never go down well in arts and humanities departments. Tax quotes one left-wing academic booming at a colleague: “Secular feminists’ concern that Muslim fundamentalist religious codes impose and sanction violence on women and queers relies on a myopia that understands Muslim women only as victims of Muslim men and Islam, ignoring the role of imperial violence in defining Muslim realities around the world.” No one looking for tenure wants to hear words like that directed against them

[…[

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

UK: Inside the House of Depravity: Two Giant TVs, A Snooker Room But the Children Were Barely Fed by Mick Philpott Whose Sordid Lifestyle Beggars Belief

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

Of the six children pulled dead or dying from the Philpott family home in the early hours of the morning of May 11, 2012, only ten-year-old Jade was wearing pyjamas.

Jack and Jesse, eight and six, were in their underwear while Duwayne, 13, was in his jeans, as was John, nine.

As for the youngest, Jayden, just five, he was wearing his full school uniform…

Despite repeatedly claiming that the three-bedroom council semi was too small for his growing brood, Philpott had selfishly extended the ground floor space to accommodate a full-sized snooker table ‘ leaving the children to squeeze into three bedrooms upstairs.

The house was kitted out with two 50in flat-screen TVs, one in the conservatory and the other in the lounge.

The Philpotts also enjoyed a full Sky TV package and had PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DS games consoles.

While ‘Shameless Mick’, a man who washed only once a month, lounged on the settee, it was left to his 32-year-old wife Mairead and mistress Lisa Willis, 29, to cook, clean and wait on him hand and foot. If they worked — they did occasional cleaning jobs — their wages went straight into his bank account, along with £60,000 a year in benefits.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Leftwing Internationalists Are the Most Self-Centred People on the Planet

There is an ideological fault line that divides the left from top to bottom. Nick Cohen, stands on one side of the split and, in an article for Standpoint, describes those who stand on the other:

“In human rights organisations, leftish political parties, liberal newspapers and, above all, in the universities, committed and morally earnest people would rather die than admit that radical Islam is a murderous and oppressive movement. The effect of their evasion is to promote the racism they say they oppose, while denying their supposed allies in “Muslim lands” and immigrant communities the same rights as they enjoy. Hypocrisy is too meagre a word to cover their behaviour.”

Cohen is an angry man. He has every right to be, such is the decadence of his opponents on this issue. Consider, for instance, the following statement (from a prominent leftwing academic)

[…]

There are two further excuses that are made for glossing over the threat posed by Islamic extremism: firstly, that even if it does exist, it is a consequence of Western imperialism; and, secondly, that any pre-occupation with the phenomenon is motivated by Islamophobia…

What can possibly explain the indulgence that so many secular leftists display towards reactionary religious fanaticism? Nick Cohen’s theory is as follows:

“On the Left, radical Islam has taken the place once filled by socialism. As I said in my book What’s Left?, when the dreams of Karl Marx died, many leftists concluded that any enemy of the West was better than none. It did not matter that the most violent enemies of the West were against everything leftists supported. They were also against America and that was all that mattered.”

[…]

[Reader comment by David2 on 3 April 2013 at about 9 am.]

Cohen is quite right in his criticism of the stone age religion. It is a vile and disgusting philosophy used by the usual suspects to attack and undermine civilised countries and societies.

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

UK: Now Teachers Demand to Work Just 35 Hours a Week… and They Even Want to be Allowed to Do Five of Those at Home

Teachers demanded a 20-hour a week limit on classes yesterday to maintain a healthy ‘work/life balance’.

Union members called for a rigid 35-hour week, with little more than half given over to teaching children.

Five hours would be used for planning, preparation and assessment ‘at a time and place of the teacher’s choosing’ — meaning at home in most cases.

The remaining ten hours would be set aside for other ‘non-contact’ duties including marking and going to meetings.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Philpott Was on Bail for Road-Rage Attack When He Plotted House Fire, It is Revealed as Judge Delays Sentencing Until Tomorrow

[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]

Mick Philpott was facing trial over a road-rage attack when he set fire to his house, it emerged today.

The father-of-17 was on bail accused of forcing a motorist off the road and then punching him in the face.

He attended a court hearing relating to the incident just a week before the fatal blaze.

Details of the case emerged during a mitigation hearing before Philpott, his wife Mairead and their friend Paul Mosley are sentenced tomorrow for starting a fire which killed six of the Philpotts’s children at their home…

Together with his wife Mairead and friend Paul Mosley, he plotted to set fire to the family home in an appalling attempt to frame Philpott’s former live-in lover Lisa Willis.

The deadly gamble was to save the six youngsters, blame Miss Willis, and win back custody of five children who had recently moved out of the cramped three-bedroom semi with her.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Predatory Paedophile Robin Malkas’ Sick Plot: Breed Daughter to Sexually Abuse

[Warning: ** Disturbing Content **]

A predatory paedophile plotted to ‘breed’ a daughter he could sexually abuse, a court heard today.

Robin Malka, 38, hatched a ‘twisted and depraved’ plan to father his own victims and feed his sexual obsession with children.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Stabbed. Kicked So Hard My Back Broke. But Sue? No, I Was a Proper Copper

The night shift was under way at our police station in South-West London when a 999 call came through.

I was an inspector in those days, and felt a frisson of excitement as I received the report of a burglary at a nearby detached home.

This was what I really loved about my job: chasing and nicking criminals. It was why I’d joined the police…

I was reminded of that incident this week when I read about the outrageous decision by PC Kelly Jones, a constable from Norfolk, to take legal action against the owner of a petrol station in Thetford after she tripped up over a kerb while investigating a break-in there…

Tragically, beat policing is now treated as an irrelevance and given a far lower priority than other tasks such as holding meetings, monitoring the internet, attending training courses or dealing with paperwork.

So officers have far less hard experience of life on the streets.

And when they do venture out, they tend to go in pairs, something that would have been unthinkable in my time because it is such a colossal waste of manpower.

The justification for this rigid policy of pairing is that it supposedly helps in the corroboration of evidence at any crime scene, but in reality it shows a crippling lack of self-confidence and authority.

But perhaps the most important reason for the shift in policing culture is the fact that, like all major institutions, the police mirror the worst changes in our society.

[Comment: Great article, recommended reading.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

UK: Shame of ‘Theft, Fraud and Under-Age Sex’ At the BBC: Dossier Reveals Crimes That Have Never Been Reported to Police

BBC staff are suspected of a catalogue of crimes at work — many of which have never been reported to police.

A dossier spanning four years shows theft and fraud allegations running at more than 500 a year.

A significant number of the suspects were employees at the broadcaster.

Documents also reveal allegations of sexual or indecent assault, as well as incidents of suspected drug use.

Thefts of TVs, radios, iPhones, Blackberry devices and computers from BBC staff were endemic.

In one instance, an employee was accused of having under-age sex while on assignment. Because the allegation could not be proved, the log showed the staffer was given only a warning.

This allegation, like many others, was not passed on to police for further investigation because the BBC’s internal investigations service — which employs former police officers — decided it could not be substantiated.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Egypt: Freed Cleric: Muslims Should ‘Hate Christians’ (Video)

Dr. Abdullah Badr — an Egyptian Muslim scholar, Al Azhar graduate, and professor of Islamic exegesis, who spent ten years in prison under Mubarak, but, along with any number of Islamic terrorists and agitators, was released under Mohamed Morsi — recently gave an excellent summation of the second half of the highly divisive Muslim doctrine of wala’ wa bara’ (or, “Love and Hate”) — namely, that the true Muslim should love and help fellow Muslims, while hating and being disgusted by non-Muslims.

During a conference last week (see video below, with English subtitles) he explained how he is so “disgusted” by Christians, to the point that, if a Christian were to touch his cup, he would not drink from it:

[…]

Even so, the pious Badr went on to warn that any Muslim who goes out of his way to make a show of his disgust for Christians is a hypocrite. His logic was perversely similar to Jesus’s teaching that those who show off their piety — Christ was talking about fasting, not hating — are hypocrites.

Instead, according to Badr, the disgust, and as he later explained in the video, the hate for Christians and other infidels, must come from the heart — as it does with him — and not be a mere matter of showing off around other Muslims.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Thief Beaten to Death in Egypt

CAIRO, April 2 (Xinhua) — A thief was beaten to death by some villagers in Egypt’s northern Qalyubiya governorate over an attempt to steal a truck, state-run Al-Ahram Online reported Tuesday. The truck driver chased and seized the thieves with the help of local residents, and beat them until one of the group was killed…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Israel Launches Airstrike on Gaza

Israel has launched an air strike on the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the first such attack since an eight-day war in November.

“Occupation planes bombarded an open area in northern Gaza, there were no wounded,” a statement from the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the territory said. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed there had been a strike in Gaza, but gave no further details…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

A Christian Catastrophe: Islamist ‘Cleansing’ In Mideast

Islamist terrorists and fanatics are methodically exterminating the 2,000-year-old Christian civilization of the Middle East through oppression, threats, appropriations and deadly violence.

Our media ignore the intensifying savagery against Christians in Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt. Unconfirmed reports assert that, last month, Muslim Brothers dragged Christian protesters to a mosque and tortured them — but our reporters won’t look into an Islamist Abu Ghraib.

For a century and a half, the varied strands of Middle East Christianity have faced increasingly fierce pogroms and, for the Armenians, outright genocide. But with the rise of Wahhabi and Salafist terror, the long, slow-motion Holocaust accelerated.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Islamic Cleric Issues Fatwa Permitting Rape of Syrian Women

[WARNING: * Disturbing Content *]

Another Islamic cleric has gone public to announce a fatwa that permits US-backed FSA rebels to rape non-Sunni women in Syria as part of a “sexual jihad” that has seen girls as young as 14 transported into the country to service the needs of anti-Assad militants.

“Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-’Ajlawni, a Jordanian of origin who lived in Damascus, Syria for 17 years, posted a YouTube video last week where he said he was preparing to issue a “legitimate fatwa” making it legal (in the eyes of Islam) for those Muslims fighting to topple secular president Bashar Assad and install Sharia law to “capture and have sex with” all non-Sunni women, specifically naming Assad’s own sect, the Alawites, as well as the Druze and several others, basically, all non-Sunnis and non-Muslims,” reports Human Events.

As CNS News reported earlier this week, girls as young as 14 are being sent to Syria from other middle eastern and north African countries following a call by Saudi scholar Sheikh Mohamed al-Arifi for rebels to engage in “sexual jihad,” a so-called “temporary marriage” that amounts to little more than sex slavery.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

New Efforts to Protect Jordan’s Wadi Rum Desert

Humankind has left his mark on Jordan’s Wadi Rum since prehistoric times. The unique desert last year was granted UNESCO heritage status as a natural and cultural site — and is now paying the price.

The 1962 film “Lawrence of Arabia” made this vast, 74,000-hectare desert in Jordan famous: Wadi Rum’s red and gold sands is where the real T.E. Lawrence stationed his troops during the Arab Revolts of 1917 and 1918.

Almost a century later, the landscape is essentially the same: in the blistering sun, sweeping sands cut a valley into towering mountains of sandstone and granite rock.

Now, there is a new intruder — four-wheel-drive tour groups. Traveling up to five cars at a time, the oversize vehicles churn through the sand and mud, making deep tracks and plenty of noise.

Wadi Rum director Nasser Al Zawideh is a local Bedouin who was born and raised there. “Our major problem with the travel agencies is that they don’t understand Wadi Rum, because we have a huge number who use the cars,” he said. “Just between the village and the nearest site there are more than 100 roads.”

According to recent figures, more than 250,000 tourists come to Wadi Rum every year. Numbers have dropped since the Arab Spring in the region, but they are expected to rise again in light of the site’s UNESCO world heritage status, granted in 2011.

Due to the remoteness of the desert’s location, most tourists have just a two-hour window to experience the unique rock formations and desert landscapes of Wadi Rum, so they choose a four-wheel-drive rather than a camel to see as much as they can. Some 1,000 such motorized vehicles are available for hire in the area, Al Zawideh told Deutsche Welle.

There is no plan on limiting the number of visitors, or better distributing them in the area. The question, says Al Zawideh is: “How can we convince the visitors to use the camels rather than the cars?”

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Qatar: Al Jazeera to Train Imams in Communication

Deal with Ministry of Islamic Affairs. But not the first with Qatar

(ANSAmed) — DOHA, APRIL 4 — The Al Jazeera network is set to train 200 imams and Muslim preachers in improving their communication skills with the public.

According to reports in the Doha press Tuesday, the news follows a signed agreement by the Qatar Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Al Jazeera.

“The agreement establishes a framework for the relationship between the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Al Jazeera and will be followed by other agreements for specific programs”, Al Jazeera media training chief Munir Daeim said.

The TV network has in the past made other cooperation deals with the Emirate, in particular with the Ministries of Labour and Urban Planning and with Qatar TV.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Saudi Man Who Paralysed His Best Friend in Knife Attack Faces Having His Spinal Cord Severed in ‘Eye-for-an Eye’ Punishment

[WARNING: ** Disturbing content **]

A Saudi man convicted of paralysing his best friend in a knife attack is being threatened with having his spinal cord cut in a tit-for-tat punishment.

The ultra-conservative desert Kingdom enforces Islamic law and on rare occasions issues punishments based on the ancient code of an ‘eye-for-an-eye’.

Ali Al-Khawahir was 14 years old when he stabbed his friend in the backbone and has been imprisoned for 10 years.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Stakelbeck Show: Pressuring Israel, Appeasing Iran

On this week’s edition of the Stakelbeck on Terror show, we examine President Obama’s recent trip to Israel and his administration’s continued pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state. We also sit down with Middle East expert Dr. Matthew Levitt to discuss Iran and Hezbollah’s plans for America. And journalist David Bedein reveals how the UN is helping to fund the radical Palestinian educational curriculum.

Click the link above to watch.

           — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck [Return to headlines]

Three Men Put to Death in Kuwaiti Car Park in Country’s First Execution in Six Years

[WARNING: * Graphic and Disturbing content * ]

Blindfolded, his hands bound, a condemned prisoner puffs desperately on a final cigarette.

Just a few minutes later he and two others are led up a short flight of stairs, nooses are placed around their necks before a trapdoor opens beneath their feet. This is justice Kuwait-style.

The Gulf-Arab state hanged three convicted murderers today, the first executions to take place there since 2007, state news agency KUNA reported.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Turkey: Work Commences on ‘Erdogan the Magnificent’ Mosque

On hill over the Bosphorus, highest minarets in the world

(ANSAmed) — ANKARA, APRIL 3 — Polemics, accusations, and sarcasm have failed to put a damper on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans to build an enormous mosque towering over the Bosphorus.

The mosque will be gigantic, covering a surface area of some 15,000 square meters on the Camlica hill on Istanbul’s Asian side, with another 250,000 square meters housing a park, museum, bar, restaurants, amusement park, and a terrace with a breathtaking view over the Bosphorus and Byzantine and Muslim Istanbul. Erdogan had announced the project a year ago, saying that the “enormous” mosque would be “visible from anywhere in the city” with “the highest minarets in the world”.

In the eyes of opposition secularist Turks, Erdogan — who is referred to as ‘the new sultan’ by many — would like to leave his mark on the city in the tradition of the caliphs of the past. His mosque will be endowed with six minarets instead of two, a distinction of which thus far only Istanbul’s famous Blue Mosque can boast.

“There are many places in Istanbul where a mosque could be built, but they want to send a message,” Hurriyet was told by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu. “The message is that they want to build an Islamic republic in the place of the secular system. That’s what they are doing, step by step”. Erdogan’s Turkey cannot be said to be lacking in mosques.

According to Milliyet, since 2002 when Erdogan’s AKP gained power, 17,000 new ones have been built. In Istanbul, where Erdogan was mayor 20 years ago, there are 3,113. The Turkish leader has now decided to build one even in the well-known Taksim Square, the heart of the city and the symbolic location of large gatherings of left-wing groups and unions.

The “enormous” mosque on Camlica will be another sort of symbol, said Urban Planning Minister Erdogan Bayraktar: “a work symbolizing the AKP rule”.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

U.S. Secretary of State to Visit Turkey for 2nd Time in Two Months

ANKARA, April 3 (Xinhua) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Turkey this weekend before his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, local media reported Wednesday. In his second visit to Turkey since March, Kerry will hold talks with Turkish officials on possible contribution of Ankara to reviving the Middle East peace process…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

We Abandon Christians in the East at Our Peril

by Robin Harris

When Margaret Thatcher negotiated with Communists about human rights, she had a self-imposed rule. It was to deliver the same message in private as in public. That was, and is, unusual. Politicians prefer bold and indignant speeches at home to bruising confrontations with foreign leaders face to face. But you have to do it. The reason is simple. It is because, whatever someone’s ideology, he will not take you seriously as a human being if he thinks you don’t really care about the causes you espouse. When the Soviet leaders understood that Ronald Reagan and Mrs Thatcher were deadly serious about the rights of people who, in Soviet eyes, didn’t really matter at all, the Kremlin also grasped that Western leaders were serious about wider strategy — Afghanistan, subversion, weaponry and the rest…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Organic Rice Farmer in India Yields Over 22 Tons of Crop on Only Two Acres, Proving the Fraud of Gmos and Big Ag

(NaturalNews) Despite all the claims made by industry-funded hacks that genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and other industrial agricultural methods are necessary for the future of humanity, it is the traditional growing methods that continue to shine through as the real sustainers of life. As reported by Gaia Health, Indian rice farmers using traditional, organic growing methods are achieving yields far higher than farmers using more modern methods.

In the case of Sumant Kumar, rice yields have surpassed the national average per hectare (about 2.5 acres) nearly ten-fold. According to reports, Kumar is currently yielding about 22.4 tons of rice per hectare, greatly surpassing that of other rice farms currently outputting roughly 2.3 tons per hectare. His secret? A traditional crop management protocol known as System of Root Intensification, or SRI.

Farmers adhering to SRI techniques will typically plant about half the number of seeds as farmers using more modern methods, and will space them out at intervals of about 10 inches. They also plant their seeds much younger, and keep the soil dryer, while paying much closer attention to weed growth. By hand-removing weeds, SRI farmers are able to allow more water and nutrients to feed their rice plants, which results in significantly higher yields.

“Farmers use less seeds, less water and less chemicals but they get more without having to invest more,” says Dr. Surendra Chaurassa, agriculture minister to the region where Kumar’s farm is located, as quoted by The Observer. “This is revolutionary. I did not believe it to start with, but now I think it can potentially change the way everyone farms. I would want every state to promote it. If we get 30 to 40 percent increase in yields, that is more than enough to recommend it.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Pakistani Youth ‘Prefer Sharia to Democracy’

Pakistani youth would prefer Islamic law or military rule over democracy, a British Council survey suggests.

More than half of 5,000 18-29 year-old Pakistanis polled said democracy had not been good for them or the country.

Furthermore, 94% said Pakistan was going in the wrong direction — a figure up from 50% in 2007. Almost a third of registered voters in Pakistan are under 30 years old, and are expected to play a big part in a general election due in May.

When asked to pick the best political system, both Sharia and military rule were favoured over democracy…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

N. Korea Approves Nuclear Strike on United States

SEOUL — North Korea dramatically escalated its warlike rhetoric on Thursday, warning that it had authorised plans for nuclear strikes on targets in the United States.

“The moment of explosion is approaching fast,” the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out “today or tomorrow”.

Pyongyang’s latest pronouncement came as Washington scrambled to reinforce its Pacific missile defences, preparing to send ground-based interceptors to Guam and dispatching two Aegis class destroyers to the region.

Tension was also high on the North’s heavily fortified border with South Korea, after Kim Jong-Un’s isolated regime barred South Koreans from entering a Seoul-funded joint industrial park on its side of the frontier.

In a statement published by the state KCNA news agency, the Korean People’s Army general staff warned Washington that US threats would be “smashed by… cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means”.

“The merciless operation of our revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified,” the statement said.

Last month, North Korea threatened a “pre-emptive” nuclear strike against the United States, and last week its supreme army command ordered strategic rocket units to combat status.

But, while Pyongyang has successfully carried out test nuclear detonations, most experts think it is not yet capable of mounting a device on a ballistic missile capable of striking US bases or territory.

Mounting tension in the region could however trigger incidents on the tense and heavily militarised border between North and South Korea.

The White House was swift to react to Pyongyang’s latest “unhelpful and unconstructive threats”.

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said: “It is yet another offering in a long line of provocative statements that only serve to further isolate North Korea from the rest of the international community and undermine its goal of economic development.

“North Korea should stop its provocative threats and instead concentrate on abiding by its international obligations.”

           — Hat tip: Vlad Tepes [Return to headlines]

North Korea: The Larger Picture

U.S., and several other allies, including Saudi Arabia, are engaged in a proxy war with Russia and Iran in Syria.

To understand what we are seeing on the world stage, it is important to identify the actors and the different acts of the show. Do not, however, depend on the Western media to provide you with any meaningful insight, as they are facilitators in this grand illusion that is being sponsored, in part by the international bankers and globalists, who are the primary architects of all wars. Do not rely on the talking heads, political pundits or even some conservative commentators, as many have been seduced and collectively mesmerized by the special effects that are part of the show, or have agreed to become shills themselves for attendance to the “after-party.”

First, it is critical to understand that North Korea is a client state of China, which was elevated to its current level of power by the overt and covert actions by the likes of U.S. Presidents Nixon, Carter and Clinton, with the assistance of globalists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, just to name a few. A review of recent history shows, without argument, how China benefitted from the deliberate actions of the Communist elements that infiltrated the United States over the last few generations. Communism is merely a stepping stone to the creation of global governance…

Further and perhaps more significant are the vastly underreported rapid, surprise joint military exercises held by Russia and China in the South China Sea. Can anyone not see that this was intended to send the U.S. a very clear and unambiguous message that further meddling in Syria, which continues now through arm shipments in part, through Croatia, will not be tolerated?

[…]

As you watch the various acts of this global magic show progress, do not become mesmerized by the diversions of the magicians’ assistants and shills. Look at the larger picture and what is taking place behind the magician’s fog. You will see that the fog obscures the real hands of the hidden actors of this asymmetrical war: Russia and China, as they attempt to stop the Saudi-backed Obama regime who are hell-bent on creating a Muslim brotherhood led Pan-Islamic state across the Middle East.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

North Korea Says it Has Approval to Use Its ‘Cutting Edge’ Nuclear Weapons Against the United States

The North Korean Army said today it had received final approval to launch ‘merciless’ nuclear strikes against the United States.

The General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said it was formally notifying Washington that U.S. threats would be ‘smashed by… cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means,’ according to a statement published by the official KCNA news agency.

‘The merciless operation of (our) revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified.

‘The moment of explosion is approaching fast,’ the statement read, adding that it could occur ‘today or tomorrow.’

The pronouncement came just hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said North Korea presented a ‘clear and present danger’ to the U.S. and its allies after days of escalating rhetoric.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

This is What Air War Over North Korea Would Look Like

Why the U.S. sends stealth aircraft to Korean war games, and why it freaks out North Korea.

By Joe Pappalardo

It’s easy to mock North Korea for its lack of infrastructure—shoddy communications, electricity, and transportation. But one thing the nation has is a decent air defense system. Because military action of any size would require dominating the airspace over the rogue nation, the radar sites and antiaircraft missiles available to Kim Jong-un make the airspace over North Korea one of the world’s most dangerous.

That’s not to say it’s impenetrable. The U.S. Air Force has faced much of this hardware before, and prevailed—it’s just not easy. And last week, the U.S. began to fly B-2 practice missions over the Korean peninsula, just to remind North Korea what the American Air Force can do.

Here’s what you should know about the attack and defense strategies on both sides of the DMZ…

           — Hat tip: Steen [Return to headlines]

Will Globalists Use North Korea to Trigger Catastrophe?

North Korea’s standing army, obtained through mandatory two year conscription, is estimated at about 1.1 million active personnel; very close to the numbers active in the U.S. armed forces. But North Korean reserves are estimated at more than 8 million, compared to only 800,000 in the United States. If made desperate by economic sanctions, the North Koreans could field a massive army that would wreak havoc in the South and be very difficult to root out on their home turf. Asian cultures have centuries of experience using asymmetric warfare (the kryptonite of the U.S. military), and I do not believe it is wise to take such a possible conflict lightly, as many Americans seem to do. It is easy to forget that the last Korean War did not work out so well for us. At best, we would be mired in on-ground operations for years (just like Iraq and Afghanistan) or perhaps even decades. Like North Korea, we also do not have the logistical economic means to enter into another such war.

The skeptics argue that we will never get to this point, though, because North Korea has brandished and blustered many times before, all resulting in nothing. I see recent events being far different and more urgent than in the past, and here’s why:

1)   The West needs to realize that North Korea is under new leadership. The blowhard days of Kim Jung Il are over, and little is known about his son, Kim Jong Un. So far, the young dictator has followed through on everything he said he would do, including the multiple nuclear tests that the West is using as an excuse to exert sanctions. To assume that the son will be exactly like the father is folly.
2)   Many people claimed that North Korean threats to abandon the Armistice in place since 1953 were empty, yet they dropped it exactly as they said they would at the beginning of March…
6)   The DPRK has suddenly locked down the Kaesong Industrial Zone; a region which holds manufacturing centers for both North and South Korea. Southern manufacturers operating there employ nearly 50,000 Northern workers. Nearly 1000 Southerners also work there. The arrangement generates approximately $2 billion a year for the North. The joint industrial zone has existed since 2000, and the North has never locked down access until this past week. The fact that the DPRK is willing to restrict this area and possibly lose a sizable income signals that the situation is not as “mild” as some would like to believe.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Australia Braces for ‘Uncomfortable Truths’ In National Child Sex Abuse Inquiry

A national inquiry into child sex abuse has opened in the Australian city of Melbourne, with more than 5,000 people expected to provide evidence of “abuse and consequential trauma”.

PM Julia Gillard has warned that the commission will unearth “some very uncomfortable truths”.

She said that its opening was an “important moral moment” for Australia.

The inquiry will look at religious groups, NGOs and state care providers as well as government agencies.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

New Zealand Could Adopt Maori Names for Main Islands

New Zealand could adopt Maori names for its two main land masses after it was found that “North Island” and “South Island” have never been officially listed.

The New Zealand Geographic Board, the statutory body charged with naming everything from islands to mountains, is inviting public discussion on whether the North Island should formally become known as Te Ika a Maui and the South Island as Te Waipounamu…

[JP note: Aloha Ahkbar.]

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Al Qaeda Wants Africa

[WARNING: * Disturbing Content *]

This February, after a victorious battle against Islamic insurgents in the Saharan city of Gao, the Malian army put on a tour for the assembled press. Journalists from various news outlets from around the world stood in a dusty courtyard in the heart of the city. Gao is a conservative town — the sort of place where six-month-old babies wear hijabs — and since last year, it has played host to some of the fiercest battles in an international conflict that could reach far beyond Mali’s 15 million people: the fight to prevent al Qaeda from flourishing in Africa.

The press tour was supposed to be a victory celebration. French soldiers, who had offered military support to the Malian troops in the recent battle, stood silently at the edge of Gao’s central courtyard and watched with amusement as the Malians led reporters around the battlefield. Gendarmes swathed in ammo belts guided the journalists around the town’s courthouse, pointing out dismembered limbs and dead jihadists crumpled on the ground.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Boy Who Claimed He Was Enslaved by a Black Family Found Stoned to Death in South African Street

A man who once claimed to be a white child enslaved by a black family has been found murdered, apparently stoned to death.

Happy Sindane was found dead yesterday in the village of Tweefontein, having been ‘severely assaulted’, said police.

No arrests have been made and there are said to be no known motives for the killing…

In 2003, Sindane walked into a police station near Pretoria and claimed he had been kidnapped from a white family 12 years before and had been living in a black township.

Sindane, then 16, said he was abused and forced to live outdoors tending animals.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Ethiopia Persecutes Muslims: HRW

CAIRO — An international human rights group has accused Ethiopia of persecuting Muslims over their protests against government interference in their religious affairs and using flawed anti-terror laws to demonize Muslims and silence their protests…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Nigeria: Boko Haram — Federal Govt Report Rejects Compensation for Victims

The White Paper on the report of the Presidential Committee on the Security Challenges in the North-east has rejected the recommendation that the federal government should pay compensation to victims of Boko Haram attacks. It said rather than paying compensation to orphans and widows of terror victims, as recommended by the committee, government would only assist them. But it was silent on the form of assistance government would render to them…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

South Africa: Stellenbosch University Muslims Get Their Own Prayer Room

Muslim students and staff at Stellenbosch University can now enjoy the benefits of an on-campus prayer room that was opened last week. The prayer room addresses an important need among Muslims on the campus by providing a facility that allows them to pray five times a day. Various stakeholders from the community, students and university management united to realise this request, first presented five years ago. Muslim students and staff said they were grateful for the recognition of their religious needs as an important part of the university’s culture. Rector and vice-chancellor, Russel Botman said that he wanted the Muslim community to feel they were fully part of the university…

Dean of students Llewellyn McMaster said that people needed to stop fearing “the other” and learn to share experiences…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Maya Blue Paint Recipe Deciphered

The ancient Maya used a vivid, remarkably durable blue paint to cover their palace walls, codices, pottery and maybe even the bodies of human sacrifices who were thrown to their deaths down sacred wells. Now a group of chemists claim to have cracked the recipe of Maya Blue.

Scientists have long known the two chief ingredients of the intense blue pigment: indigo, a plant dye that’s used today to color denim; and palygorskite, a type of clay. But how the Maya cooked up the unfading paint remained a mystery. Now Spanish researchers report that they found traces of another pigment in Maya Blue, which they say gives clues about how the color was made.

“We detected a second pigment in the samples, dehydroindigo, which must have formed through oxidation of the indigo when it underwent exposure to the heat that is required to prepare Maya Blue,” Antonio Doménech, a researcher from the University of Valencia, said in a statement.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Obama’s Amnesty: An Attack on the Poor

Last Friday, the so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” effort received a boost when U.S. Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka reportedly came to an agreement regarding a guest-worker program. The deal indicates that one of the bill’s major stumbling blocks—the worry that a flood of unskilled, low-wage workers would crowd poorer Americans out of the job market—has apparently been overcome. Politically speaking, it has. For low-skill, low-wage Americans, however, it is an economic disaster-in-the-making. And though Democrats are once again casting themselves as the champions of beleaguered minority groups for pursuing this legislation, it is American blacks and Hispanics—the communities that suffer from some of the nation’s highest unemployment rates—who will pay the price for the Left’s amnesty folly.

A report published in 2011 by the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) made the case that illegal aliens were already competing with Americans for jobs, especially in the low-wage, low-skilled category. “Immigration, Poverty and Low-Wage Earners: The Harmful Effect of Unskilled Immigrants on American Workers,” revealed that of the 1.1 million legal immigrants admitted to this country on an annual basis, less that 6 percent “possessed skills deemed essential to the U.S. economy.” “Some family-based immigrants may be highly educated or skilled, but the vast majority of admissions are made without regard for those criteria,” the report stated. “The immigrant population reflects the system’s lack of emphasis on skill. Nearly 31 percent of foreign-born residents over the age of 25 are without a high school diploma, compared to just 10 percent of native-born citizens.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

American Arrested for Anti-Homosexual Statements

What does the Islamic world and Europe have in common? There are actually many similarities, but one is this: in neither place are Christians allowed to fully express their beliefs without fear of persecution.

As for Eurasia, its Ministry of Truth’s latest handiwork is the arrest and punishment of an American street preacher who dared speak of sin in that land once known as Scotland. The victim is 47-year-old New Yorker Shawn Holes, who was on a UK tour when he was arrested in Glasgow after running afoul of UK hate-speech laws.

I’ve said much about “hate speech” laws over the years, and I won’t rehash the old arguments except to again point out that all hate-crime law is an attempt at thought control. Instead, I’m going to point out another bias relating to this situation and others like it.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Common Core and CSCOPE Education

In the late seventies, Americans were very proud and fiercely protective of their freedoms granted by the Constitution, of the United States, and of their standing in the world as a capitalist nation. Just the mere notion that someone came from a communist country raised eyebrows and pointed questions about one’s allegiance.

Then on October 17, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Department of Education Organization Act, the U.S. Department of Education began operating on May 4, 1980, and things started to change.

People’s patriotic behavior and protectiveness of their culture, of their language, of the capitalist system in general that made them the most prosperous nation on earth, began to erode more and more overtly. Among the culprits were teachers who advanced personal socialist agendas to impressionable youth who believed every word they said.

In 1979 the Office of Education had 3,000 employees and an annual budget of $12 billion. In 2013 the Department of Education (DOE), with a cabinet level position, has 5,000 employees and a budget of $69.8 billion…

At first I attributed my basic clash with other teachers’ educational views to my assimilation problems. Teachers would tell me, this is how we do things in this country and, if you don’t like it, you can go back where you came from. That I did not want to do because that is exactly why I left — education, how people thought, lived, behaved, and what they learned was dictated and entirely regulated by the Communist Party in the classroom.

I began to realize quickly that most of these teachers were hard-core liberals who were acting and behaving just like our former communist apparatchiks. When I became a teacher, as a conservative, I was one of the “rara avis” (rare bird) in education, having completed most of my schooling in an Arts and Science environment, save for a few College of Education classes which did not help me at all to become a better teacher.

I did not fully comprehend how brainwashed my college students were by previous teachers until I tried to tell them what life and education were like under communism and none of them believed me, they were laughing! I stopped telling any stories about communism, it was an exercise in futility. The damage to these young people’s minds was so profound, not even direct contact with someone who actually lived under communism persuaded them. Why not?

Children were very impressionable and looked up to their elementary, middle, and high school teachers so much that once they got to college, they were already exposed to a heavy dose of “socialism, social justice, equity are grand” indoctrination.

[Comment: A better name would be ‘Commie Core’ and not ‘Common Core’. Think of the program as building the ‘communist corps’ of a future socialist state.]

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Court Refuses ‘Pregnant Man’ Thomas Beatie’s Divorce

An Arizona judge has refused to grant a divorce to a transgender man who gave birth to three children.

The judge said there was insufficient evidence that Thomas Beatie was male when he married; the state bans same-sex marriage.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Gay Propaganda Campaign Takes Offensive Turn

Offending the moral sensibilities of millions of Americans, Time Magazine is featuring cover stories showing two white homosexual couples kissing. The Right Scoop blog ran a “censored version of the offensive covers.”

John Aravosis, the homosexual activist who runs Americablog.com, said this is part of a propaganda campaign to normalize homosexuality. He said, “The kiss has been quite a powerful political weapon in the gay arsenal for a while now. And checking our archives, it’s rather amazing how important the ‘gay kiss’ has been to our political struggle over the years.”

The purpose is to desensitize people to homosexuality and increase acceptance of the lifestyle.

Media bias is also evident in the influence of the media-funded National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA).

The NLGJA says coverage of the homosexual marriage debate before the Supreme Court was “balanced—supportive even,” and that program hosts “felt compelled to disagree with them [opponents of homosexual marriage] on air.”

We noted the media’s failure to cover the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C…

Interestingly, it was Time Magazine which ran a 2008 story, “The Gay Mafia That’s Redefining Liberal Politics.” One of the rich members of the group was identified as Timothy Gill of Denver, the founder of Quark, Inc., a computer software company and a tech multimillionaire, who says he has singlehandedly “invested more than $220 million” in the cause of homosexual rights through his Gill Foundation…

Media bias is also evident in the fact that 13 of the top 15 newspapers in the country have editorialized their support for homosexual marriage. The pro-homosexual American Foundation for Equal Rights identified these publications as:

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Killing Us Softly

[WARNING: * Disturbing Content. *]

The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government. —Thomas Jefferson

Here is a story told to me by a dear pro-life friend about the passing of her husband’s grandfather. I’ve heard similar stories many times.

“After breaking his hip and getting a replacement at age 92, he was sent home with Hospice. For approx two weeks, Hospice told the family he was to have no water or food, not even ice, even though his 85 year old girlfriend snuck him ice. He would take it. He was cognitive and looked at you and still was laughing at our jokes. My husband used to always pray and read the Bible when he visited. If his grandfather even thought my husband was going to leave without a prayer, he would request him to pray for him.

“Three days before he was murdered, my husband went to sing hymns to him and his grandfather looked at him and tried to speak, but his mouth was so dry he couldn’t. Grandfather’s daughters were instructed to give him pain meds every two hours, a cocktail of morphine, Benadryl and another one which is a respiratory suppressant. The day before his death, I was massaging the back of his neck and head which rigidity had already begun to set in, he RESPONDED to my touch. The next day, Christmas Eve morning we were with him. When we got there he GRUNTED at my husband as if to say, pray for me! My husband did. Grandfather has just received his “pain” medicine 20 minutes before, and the hospice nurse gave him another syringe. I pulled my husband into the bathroom and told him that she had just finished him off and he’d be dead in ten minutes, Twelve minutes later, he was gone. I watched this man who did not want to die, suffer from thirst and hunger. I watched him be murdered by Hospice as his ignorant family stood by and allowed it.”

The above story is all too common in today’s society, whether it be in a hospital, nursing home, Hospice care facility, or the home of the individual. Hospice did not start out like this and was never intended to be a passive euthanasia, pro-euthanasia, or assisted suicide organization.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Only Parents Can Set Their Children Free From Common Core Indoctrination

If Common Core has its way the day will come when the parents of children indoctrinated by this hideous UN program will face a heartless, impossible to change enemy: their own children.

Millions of parents with school-age children will never know their children have been captured and led away. The name of the program set up for the kidnap of all time is so innocent sounding: Common Core. But in typical Marxist fashion, the name can be morphed into a myriad of others when it becomes expedient to keep parents in the dark.

Patriotic warriors like Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and CFP’s Ileana Johnson are shining light into the darkness. But if the children of the day are ever to be set free, it will take parents opening the steel gates that now confine them…

Middlemen advocates in the progressive infrastructure are now trying to palm off the universal standards of Common Core as a “state-led” initiative.

“No they were Gates-led, not state-led, writes Oak Norton at Deseret News. “The Gates Foundation pumped $20 million into the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State Superintendents Organization to create those standards.

“They did it to fulfill a contractual obligation stemming from Microsoft’s 2004 contract with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to create a global education system. (Italics CFP’s).

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Painting of Jesus Coming Down Under Pressure

A recently controversial painting of Jesus that had hung in school hallways in Jackson since 1947 is coming down. Jackson City Schools officials believed the law was on their side in defending the continued display of the painting against a lawsuit that said it is an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity.

But today’s decision to order the removal of the Jesus painting came down to the district’s bottom line.

The district voluntarily ordered the removal of the portrait out of fear that it could be saddled with paying significant legal fees and costs if it lost the lawsuit brought by two parents and a student.

“Our insurance company denied coverage, and we cannot risk taxpayer money at this time,” Superintendent Phil Howard wrote in a statement tonight.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Pink Lego is an Abomination. End This Gender Fascism

Take a look at the picture above. This is a Lego advertisement from the early Eighties, which has recently been circulating online. Beautiful, isn’t it? A cheeky-looking child wearing scruffy child’s clothes, proudly clutching a Lego creation which would resist any attempt at interpretation by an adult. The fact that the child happens to be a girl is neither here nor there…

           — Hat tip: JP [Return to headlines]

Public School Bans Cub Scout Pack

A federal civil rights complaint has been filed against the Salt Lake City School Board after a principal booted a Cub Scout pack from an elementary school.

About thirty 8 to 11 year-olds were told they could no longer meet at Mountain View Elementary School because the Boy Scout’s ban on gay members in leaders conflicted with the school district’s anti-bias policy.

The ban drew the ire of Michael Clara, a school board member and lifetime Boy Scout. Clara filed the federal complaint on behalf of two Latino parents.

“I believe it is an assault on the founding principles of our country for school officials to attempt to exclude a voice no less legitimate than its own from public school participation,” Clara told Fox News. “A marketplace of ideas devoid of competitive viewpoints engenders an insidious society of conformity, contrary to the fundamental precepts of our Constitution.”

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Should the GOP Dump Social Issues?

Recently reporter Thomas Edsall — who has spent most of the last 30 years covering politics for the Washington Post and the New Republic — had some advice for the GOP. He draws upon some recent polling data to argue that “the Republican Party can afford to marginalize . . . Christian right leaders because evangelical social conservatives . . . are not going to vote Democratic.” Thus, he reasons that Republicans can, as he puts it, “concede defeat in the culture war” in the hopes of picking up more socially liberal voters.

Mr. Edsall might want to check with Governor Mike Huckabee, who knows a thing or two about evangelical voters. Huckabee suggested that evangelicals will “take a walk” from the GOP if the party supports gay marriage. He might also want to consider the 1996 Presidential election, when Bill Clinton carried red states such as Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Missouri, and Louisiana.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

Dark Matter Possibly Found by $2 Billion Space Station Experiment

A massive particle detector mounted on the International Space Station may have detected elusive dark matter at last, scientists announced today (April 3).

The detector, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), measures cosmic-ray particles in space. After detecting billions of these particles over a year and a half, the experiment recorded a signal that may be the result of dark matter, the hidden substance that makes up more than 80 percent of all matter in the universe.

AMS found about 400,000 positrons, the antimatter partner particles of electrons. The energies of these positrons suggest they might have been created when particles of dark matter collided and destroyed each other.

NASA will hold a press conference detailing the AMS science results at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT) today.

           — Hat tip: Fjordman [Return to headlines]

Do You Believe Things Are Getting Better or Worse?

All politics are the politics of the future. The one cause that we all champion, regardless of our political orientation, is the cause of the future. All that we fight for is the ability to shape the future.

The fundamental political question is, “Do you believe things are getting better or worse?” Ruling parties tend to answer, “Better”, opposition parties tend to answer, “Worse”. The deeper answer to that question though lies in our perceptions of the past and the future.

The left tends to view the past negatively and future shock positively. It wants change to disrupt the old order of things in order to make way for a new order. It hews to a progressive understanding of history in which we have been getting better with the advance of time, the march of progress mimics evolution as a means of lifting humanity out of the muck and raising it up on ivory towers of reason through a ceaseless process of change.

The right often views the past positively, it sees change as a destroyer that undermines civilization’s accomplishments and threatens to usher in anarchy. It fights to conserve that which is threatened by the entropic winds of change. The conservative worldview is progressive in its own way, but it is the progress of the established order. It sees progress emerging from the accretion of civilization, rather than from the disruption of revolution…

The right’s organic order allows for freer societies because it stems from how people actually live. It is rooted in the past, rather than an ever-changing plan for the future. The left’s artificial order makes for societies that are fundamentally repressive, even when they allow for a limited degree of autonomy, because the hand of the planners is always on every man and woman.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

U.N. Overwhelmingly Approves Global Arms Trade Treaty

The United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday finally achieved its goal — with the support and assistance of President Barack Obama — of getting an approval for its first treaty on the global arms trade. The new treaty seeks to basically police the multi-billion dollar business in conventional arms and keep small weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers, since included in the treaty’s list of weapons covered are semiautomatic rifles and handguns.

The National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. pro-gun-rights, citizens group that had attempted to protect Americans’ Second Amendment rights from the treaty, said it was a sad day for the United States which under President Barack Obama’s command, joined the vast majority of U.N. member states by voting for the pact.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

United Nations Adopts Global Arms Trade Treaty

The U.N. General Assembly passed a landmark international arms trafficking treaty tying weapons exports to potential human rights threats. Among other things, the treaty prohibits countries from exporting conventional weapons in violation of arms embargoes, or weapons used to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or terrorism, the BBC said. It also requires countries to keep conventional weapons from entering the black market.

Iran, Syria and North Korea last week blocked an effort to approve the treaty by consensus and opponents said much of the language was too vague. Russia led a group of nations that abstained. The United States voted in favor of the measure despite pressure from the National Rifle Association, which opposed the treaty and said it would work to ensure it isn’t ratified in the U.S. Senate.

However, with or without U.S. ratification, as soon as 50 countries approve the treaty it will become international law.

U.S. diplomats said much of what’s in the legislation is in practice in the United States, where weapons companies are forbidden from selling to nations or groups likely to commit genocide.

           — Hat tip: JD [Return to headlines]

One thought on “Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/3/2013

  1. Today, sunday 4-7-2013 was to be the day Israel would wiped of the internet map.
    A so called worldwide coordinated action by Anonymous under the name ‘opisrael’
    As we all know by now this ‘major’ internet hack by Anonymous was a complete and total dud.
    Some affected Israeli websites experienced minor dificulties and that was it.
    To put insult to injury Israel turned the tables and hacked the ‘opisrael’ site which till this very moment (16:00 UTC) is stil under Israeli control.
    That’s what get if you mess with the best.

    My Title

    What those dumb ass hacker kids don’t realize is that the internet is not as anonymous as they believe. Anything you do or say on the internet can be traced back to your IP number. Anytime. You can’t even fart on the internet without leaving a trace.
    All it takes is huge computing power. Organisations like Mossad or CIA have that power.
    Basements full of computing power a hacker can only dream about.
    It’s just a matter of time those dumb kids wil be rounded up en dealt with.

    My Title

Comments are closed.