All U.S. troops who have been sent to Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa will be quarantined for 21 days before they are sent home. According to the Defense Department, the troops will be isolated at an airbase in Italy for the required period before returning to the United States.
In other news, the British government has decided that it will no longer contribute to any search-and-rescue operations to aid illegal migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe,
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Steen, 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.
(NaturalNews) In recent days, the stock market has been like an economic roller coaster, rising one day before falling — dramatically — the next. And on those down days, the market often seems as though it has slipped into a free-fall, dropping hundreds of points in just a few hours.
Only to rise again before the final bell.
How is that possible? According to John Crudele of the New York Post, it’s only possible through government intervention aimed at stemming losses and, most likely, to shore up confidence in a) the U.S. economy; and b) the leaders (elected and unelected) who are running it:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Finance Ministry Eyes 10% Cuts to Russia’s State Spending as Economic Outlook Worsens
With sanctions, oil price falls and the ruble devaluation making Russia’s official growth forecasts look increasingly overconfident, the Finance Ministry will draw up contingency measures to shave 10 percent off state spending in 2016 and 2017, business daily Vedomosti reported, citing undisclosed government sources.
Such a drastic reduction in spending could save the government about 1.5 trillion rubles ($36 billion) in planned expenses, the newspaper said.
The budget predicts a return to 3 percent growth in 2016 from 0.5 percent this year. But the price of oil, Russia’s key export, has slumped by a quarter since July, and the Russian currency has fallen by 20 percent over the same period, leading U.S. investment bank JPMorgan to predict on Monday that Russia will see negative growth of 0.8 percent next year.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Renzi to Thrash Out Budget Compromise With EC
Italy-EU may agree to 0.3% not 0.1% structural deficit cut
(ANSA) — Rome, October 24 — Premier Matteo Renzi said Friday in Brussels that debate at the European Union summit that just ended was “tough and intense, as always”. There are “no particular worries or concerns” over Italy’s 2015 budget, the premier added. “We will close what needs to be closed in the next few hours,” Renzi told reporters after the meeting of EU leaders.
An agreement with the EU may see the Italian budget’s structural deficit reduced by 0.3% instead of the 0.1% in the original budget document, sources told ANSA. Renzi would not comment directly on the report, but said only: “We will be close, you’ll see”.
Italians should know his government’s structural and economic reforms “are right for the country” and are not being implemented on demand by the European Union.
“This is a government that respects everyone but won’t stop for anyone,” he went on, adding that Italy must stand tall in Europe.
“We need a stronger, prouder, more determined Italian presence,” Renzi said. “Italy gives Europe 20 billion euros a year and gets 10 billion back. Our strength and authority are undoubted, and we are not here to be lectured or reprimanded”. The premier went on to say he is confident he can negotiate his way out of any EU-imposed sanctions for breaking fiscal rules. “Sanctions don’t just get imposed at a snap of the fingers,” Renzi told reporters. “They require months of talks and negotiations, and I am very good at those”.
Any procedure, he said, would take off in November with the new European Commission headed by Jean-Claude Juncker. “I think…there will room for an understanding,” Renzi said. The Renzi government’s 2015 budget features a 36-billion-euro adjustment, with 18 billion euros in tax cuts and 15 billion euros in spending cuts.
This includes abolishing the labour-tax component of regional business tax IRAP, and scrapping social contributions for new workers hired on open-ended contracts for their first three years with a company up to a limit of some 8,000 euros a year.
As well, the budget would give families with children born or adopted between 2015 and 2018 an 80-euro monthly bonus. It will be available to families with income of up to 90,000 euros a year, but all families with five or more kids will be able to apply for it no matter what their income.
Renzi has said that around 11 billion euros of financial coverage for the cuts will come from allowing Italy’s deficit-to-GDP ratio to drift up towards the 3% threshold allowed by the EU.
But the EC may decide that this means Italy is most doing enough to bring down its massive public debt of over two trillion euros.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy at Risk of ‘Deflationary Spiral’ Says S&P
Danger of impact on consumer spending and investments
(ANSA) — Rome, October 23 — Italy is among a group of eurozone countries in danger of suffering a “deflationary spiral” that will hit prospects of economic recovery, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said in a report on Thursday. Italy went into deflation for the first time in decades in August, when the annual inflation rate was -0.1%, a figure that dropped to -0.2% in September. S&P said the low inflation or deflation registered in Belgium, Greece and Spain and Italy could “lead to a higher propensity to save” and hit consumer spending and investments.
This would have an effect on prices, the agency said, “increasing the risk of a vicious deflationary spiral”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ECB Stress Test Implementation Penalised Banks, Says MPs
(AGI) Rome, Oct 26 — Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) feels penalised by the way the European Central Bank ran the stress tests, the Siena-based bank said in a long statement published on Sunday. “The outcome of the test applied to the bank, which has recently implemented the reorganisation plan approved by the European Commission, was penalised by the way the Comprehensive Assessment was made”, the statement said. It continued: “The results of the Comprehensive Assessment test confirmed the soundness of the bank’s asset structure, which absorbed the impact of the asset quality review thanks to the capital increase of June 2014.” ..
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
It turns out that Kaci Hickox is a registered democrat and Obama supporter who works for the CDC. “The nurse currently quarantined in New Jersey is an employee for the Centers for Disease Control and a registered Democrat with a history of left-wing advocacy,” reports GotNews.com…
The timing of Hickox’s quarantine, her ties with the party in power at the White House, the deliberate hiding of her ties to the CDC and the scrubbing of her LinkedIn.com profile all raise legitimate suspicion that her quarantine complaints have all been staged as a P.R. stunt to promote opposition to state-level Ebola quarantine efforts.
President Obama is already pressuring the Governors of NJ, NY and IL to reverse their quarantine protocols. “The Obama administration has expressed deep concerns to the governors of New York and New Jersey and is consulting with them to modify their orders to quarantine medical volunteers returning from West Africa,” reports the NY Times…
All this brings up the obvious question: Why is President Obama working so hard to dismantle state-level quarantine efforts?
The mandatory quarantines announced by New Jersey and New York are the first sensible thing any government has yet done to prevent the spread of Ebola in America. Pressuring state Governors to reverse these medical isolation protocols seems to be a deliberate effort to encourage the worsening of the pandemic. (The only reason Nigeria escaped the Ebola pandemic is because the country closed its borders and invoked mandatory quarantines.)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) NY Daily News is reporting today that Dr. Craig Spencer ran around New York City “after first telling authorities he self-quarantined himself.” The paper also says Dr. Spencer “hit the [bowling] lanes in Williamsburg.”
Dr. Spencer recently returned from Guinea, one of the worst-hit Ebola outbreak nations in West Africa. Today he was “rushed to a hospital with suspected Ebola symptoms” which reportedly include nausea and a 103-degree temperature. Media reports say Dr. Spencer has been in New York City for a period of 10 days, first entering the country through the JFK airport.
According to news reports, Dr. Spencer is now confirmed to have tested positive for Ebola…
What sort of lapse in judgment is happening with these people who come back from Ebola-infected nations and then run around high-population cities, potentially exposing others to Ebola? As much as Dr. Spencer might be lauded for his efforts to help halt the spread of Ebola in Africa, those efforts do not stop upon arrival in the USA. Once you go to Africa and work on the front lines of Ebola, you have a moral duty to isolate yourself from the public for at least 21 days after your return, and a 42-day self-quarantine is actually far wiser.
By running around in public, Dr. Spencer was rolling the dice with other people’s lives.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ebola: A Conspiratorial Analysis, Part 1
I am stating below some apparently unconnected facts. It will be your job as a reader to find the common thread connecting them.
Fact: In the past forty years, most of American presidents, vice-presidents, Secretaries of State, National Security Advisors, CIA Directors, Supreme Court judges, high ranking Pentagon officers, Federal Reserve Bank and IRS directors are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Most high circulation newspapers, magazines, TV networks and publishing houses are CFR corporate members. Also, most influential journalists are CFR members. This verifiable fact has made many Americans suspect that the CFR is the true Invisible Government of the United States.
Fact: The CFR is the creation of the Rockefellers and other Wall Street bankers.
Fact: Many key CFR members believe that population growth is the greatest threat to planet Earth.
1952. Frederick Osborn (CFR), John D. Rockefeller III (CFR), and John Foster Dulles (CFR), found the Population Council in New York with financial assistance of the Rockefeller family. Its first trustees include Lewis Strauss (CFR), financial adviser of Laurance Rockefeller (CFR), and Frank W. Notestein (CFR) as scientific adviser. The Population Council’s principles hold that population growth is a source of instability, not only in the Third World, but also in the U.S., and one of its avowed goals is to “discourage births among the socially handicapped” in the United States.
1960. April. Foreign Affairs, the CFR’s official organ, publishes “Purpose and Policy,” an article by Nelson Rockefeller (CFR), where he warns about the “population explosion.”
[Comment: Connecting the dots: Servando Gonzalez lays out all the dots — the picture they form is not pretty.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-CBS Reporter: Government Agency Bugged My Computer
A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer.
In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.
“This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,” Attkisson quotes the source saying.
She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.
Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”
The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”…
| — Hat tip: Diana West | [Return to headlines] |
Ex-Counterterror Official: “We Don’t Have Enough FBI Agents Who Understand Islam”
Former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that the FBI does not have enough Muslim agents or agents who understand Islam.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Feds Scramble for Risky Vaccine
Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, is not a policy wonk, but she knows a lot about flying in and out of countries and the risks that go with air travel. She notes that just one Ebola case in the U.S. resulted in almost a thousand people being monitored for possible exposure to the virus.…
According to the CDC, human testing of an “investigational vaccine to prevent Ebola virus disease” is now beginning. The so-called “fast-tracking” process is underway. Perhaps this was the intention all along.
As Barbera Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center argues, “A logical conclusion is that some people in industry, government and the World Health Organization did not want the Ebola outbreak to be confined to several nations in Africa because that would fail to create a lucrative global market for mandated use of fast tracked Ebola vaccines by every one of the seven billion human beings living on this planet.”
It looks like the CDC was much faster in approving human trials of a vaccine than in stopping Ebola from coming into the U.S. in the first place.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How Boston is Rethinking Its Relationship With the Sea
Sea levels are rising, the land is sinking. It’s going to become a big problem for some cities on the US East Coast, so in Boston people are thinking the unthinkable — copying Venice and Amsterdam, and becoming a city of canals.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Is Obama’s Ebola Czar an Advocate of Human Depopulation?
(NaturalNews) Ron Klain, before he became President Obama’s latest czar (Klain is the “Ebola czar”), was chief of staff to a pair of Democrat vice presidents, Al Gore and the current VP, Joe Biden. His appointment by Obama has been praised high and low by liberal politicians. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has called his appointment an “excellent choice.”
But as was noted by critics of the choice when he was named, Klain has no medical experience whatsoever: He’s been a Democrat Party hack his entire career, and this latest appointment is seen by some as just another rung on the ladder of Democrat Party power.
To counter that criticism, the Obama Administration said they turned to someone with loads of managerial experience, to make sure that the efforts to contain the deadly virus in the U.S. would be coordinated and efficient. And that sounds good — except for new evidence that has surfaced which appears to indicate that Klain has very unorthodox views (though not for environmental activist academics and political figures) on global population.
In a recent interview, Klain was asked what he thought might be the top issue facing the world; “it turns out that the new Ebola czar, whose responsibility is to quash the spread of Ebola and save lives, is seemingly an advocate of population and resource control,” SHTFplan.com reports. Here are Klain’s own words:
I think the top issue facing the world today is how to deal with the continuing growing population in the world and all of the resource demands it places on the world.
And burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia that lack the resources to have a healthy, happy life. I think we’ve got to find a way to make the world work for everyone.
‘Has Klain been appointed for a specific purpose?’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
ISIS in America: Radicalized in the Heartland
MINNEAPOLIS — Islamic State has engaged in a reign of terror across the Middle East, raping, pillaging, and beheading its way to a new caliphate.
Now a growing number of U.S. citizens are leaving America to join the brutal ISIS army. These recruits are being radicalized on U.S. soil and they may eventually return home.
It’s hard to imagine America’s heartland as a breeding ground for terrorism. Yet when news emerged that two U.S. citizens had been killed in Syria fighting alongside ISIS, the path led back to, of all places, Minnesota.
The two men were part of a growing number of young Muslims from Minneapolis and St. Paul who have answered the call of jihad (“holy” war).
At least a dozen young Muslims from the Twin Cities area have left their homes to travel to the Middle East and join ISIS. Some of them worshipped at the al-Farooq Mosque in a quiet suburb of Minneapolis.
An Egyptian-American man allegedly recruited young Somali Muslims from the mosque and helped send them to Syria.
Mosque officials say they banned Amir Meshal earlier this year when they learned he was preaching jihad. The suspected terror recruiter remains at large.
“There is an organization that makes this happen,” former sheriff Bob Fletcher told CBN News. “But usually there is one principal person that I call ‘the Guide’ that can take this person in this ideological state and guide them to Syria or wherever it might be.”
Fletcher is the former sheriff of Ramsey County, which includes the city of St. Paul. He now works with Somali leaders to battle radicalism in their Twin Cities community that’s seen dozens of young men travel overseas in recent years to join terrorist groups.
“They need to procure travel documents; they need to raise money, usually somewhere in the area of $4,000-$5,000 to help facilitate all the travel that takes place and plus, they want to have money,” Fletcher explained.
“And they need to make sure someone is purchasing the tickets — that requires a credit card of some sort. And they need a driver and a facilitator to get them to the airport because they need to make sure they get on the plane versus not getting on the plane,” he said.
The recent deadly attacks against Canadian soldiers and the Canadian parliament by ISIS sympathizers were another reminder of the chaos that just a handful of terrorists can cause on Western soil.
| — Hat tip: Erick Stakelbeck | [Return to headlines] |
Jeanne Shaheen’s Ebola Opportunities Team
In this year’s midterm elections, New Hampshire’s Scott Brown is taking on the slickest Democratic politician since John Edwards.
Incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen presents herself as a regular mom who “rearranges the dishes in the dishwasher if it is packed by someone else” — as she told The Boston Globe when she ran for governor.
But then she backs policies that only Fidel Castro’s mom would like.(And based on her immigration stance, I think we all know it’s her Guatemalan maid who’s packing the dishwasher.);
[…]
Several doctors have privately admitted that the enterovirus 68 that has already killed or paralyzed a dozen American children is coming from the border-surge kids. None will say it for attribution. They don’t want to be audited by Obama’s IRS.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) The first sensible idea we’ve seen yet on halting the spread of Ebola in America has just been shut down for political reasons. The State of New York has now reversed its mandatory Ebola quarantine rule under pressure from the CDC and White House which both seem fervently determined to see Ebola spread across the United States.…
This took place less than 48 hours after a CDC-connected operative with a dual background of nurse and public relations specialist was planted in a New Jersey quarantine facility so that she could take to the air in a widely-publicized complaint claiming the 21-day quarantine was violating her civil rights. Natural News has now confirmed the mainstream media largely failed to mention the nurse’s ties to the CDC and additional efforts were made over the weekend to scrub the nurse’s LinkedIn.com page which previously disclosed those ties. (The truth is now being memory-holed…)
Using tactics like the nurse quarantine theatrics, the CDC, NIH and White House have waged a relentless public relations production in an attempt to absurdly claim that quarantines, flight restrictions and border security are useless tools in the fight against Ebola. The level of deception and balls-to-the-wall lie-making has reached an astonishing new low in all this, as anyone with any education in virology and epidemiology knows that quarantines, isolation and border security are in fact the only things that really work to halt exploding pandemics from invading new areas.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
NYC Officials: Ebola Patient Rode the Subway Just Hours Before Level-4 Biohazard Infection Confirmed
(NaturalNews) Ebola is now confirmed in New York City. I’ve just finished watching the press conference with Cuomo, de Blasio and Dr. Mary Travi Bassett, and what I’m hearing from these people is extremely irresponsible to public safety.
For starters, every official in the press conference repeated over and over again that there was near-zero risk of anyone contracting Ebola from Dr. Spencer, even though he visited bowling alleys, rode in an Uber car and traveled in the NYC subway system just hours before being confirmed positive with Ebola. Yet as Dr. Bassett explained, once Dr. Spencer had a fever, he was “removed from his home in an orderly manner” by health workers who were “wearing full protective gear.”
Why is full protective gear necessary if Dr. Spencer isn’t contagious as they claim? Logically, you can’t have it both ways: either Dr. Spencer is contagious and the gear is necessary, or he’s not contagious and there’s no reason to wear the gear. But if there’s no reason to wear the gear, then why were health workers wearing the gear?
Essentially, NYC officials think we are all just so incredibly stupid that we won’t notice this glaring contradiction…
Secondly, Dr. Bassett confirmed that Dr. Spencer rode on the A Train, the No. 1 train and the L train, all part of the New York subway transit system. But none of the New York health officials expressed any concern whatsoever about the fact that an Ebola carrier was running around the NYC subway system. This is a disingenuous and even dangerous P.R. strategy to try to downplay the severity of what’s really happening: a level-4 biohazard virus with no known treatments or cures is now on the loose in New York City.…
At the beginning of the press conference, New York Governor Cuomo stated, “Ebola is hard to catch.” But if it’s so hard to catch, then how did Dr. Spencer catch it? He obviously was not aware that he caught it, which means Ebola spreads so easily that it can infect you without you even knowing it.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Quarantined Nurse Can Go Home if C.D.C. Approves, Christie Says
A nurse who recently returned from West Africa and was quarantined for the past three days in a tent behind a New Jersey hospital despite having no symptoms associated with Ebola will be allowed to return home to serve out the rest of her mandatory quarantine.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, in a brief interview, said that he expected her to be transferred Monday morning after doctors and federal officials signed off on the plan.
The treatment of the nurse, Kaci Hickox, has drawn withering criticism from both public health officials and the nurse herself. Ms. Hickox lives in Fort Kent, Maine.
| [Return to headlines] |
The Hot Zone was written by Richard Preston after he conducted dozens of interviews with virologists, scientists and doctors, many of which spent time on the front lines in Africa, hunting for the origins of Ebola. One scientist spent so much time looking for Ebola carriers in caves that he was jokingly called “Dr. Bat S#!t.” The book also documents the outbreak of Ebola Reston in a U.S. Army primate laboratory, and it describes the heroic efforts to contain that outbreak.
But one of the most disturbing and fascinating passages in the book appears on page 310 in the soft cover print edition. This passage appears to be an aggregation of the thinking of the many scientists interviewed by Preston. (I don’t think these words are the direct opinion of Preston himself.) Keep in mind that at the time this passage was written — the 1990’s — the world population stood at only around five billion people. AIDS had just recently emerged, and global concern about deadly viral pandemics was on the rise.
Here’s what Preston wrote in 1994:
Humans are “an infection” and Ebola is Earth’s “immune response”…
This classification of humans as a disease “infecting” the planet is surprisingly prevalent among many scientists and environmentalists today. — From their point of view, it is difficult to observe the global destruction of the biosphere, the pillaging of natural resources and the collapse of natural freshwater resources without reaching the conclusion that there are simply too many people on this planet who are consuming too many limited resources.
This realization has given rise to the discussion that the circulating strain of Ebola observed today may indeed be a bioengineered weapon whose purpose is to radically reduce the world population of human beings. After all, some of the most influential people in the world — like Bill Gates and Ted Turner — continue to openly call for sharp reductions in global population in order to save the planet from the destructive ways of the human race.
World’s top virologists warn that this Ebola is far more dangerous than any previous Ebola Ebola expert
Dr. Michael Osterholm has also gone public with a worrisome declaration that this strain of Ebola is far worse than any strain of Ebola we’ve witnessed before. Click here to watch his video where he describes why today’s Ebola strain is so different and so much more dangerous than any previously known strain.
On top of that, former U.S. Army virologist Dr. Jahrling has just gone public with a similar warning about the increased danger of the circulating strain of Ebola. As WashingtonsBlog.com reports:
Another top Ebola expert — chief scientist at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and discoverer of the Reston strain of Ebola (Dr. Peter Jahrling) — said last week that this strain of Ebola appears to be more virulent than other strains we’ve seen, producing a much higher viral load much quicker than other strains.
Is it possible that this strain of Ebola is far more dangerous precisely because it has been tinkered with — “weaponized” — with a specific purpose in mind?…
The idea that Ebola might be a genetically engineered bioweapon was openly discussed by a top Liberian scientist named Dr. Cyril Broderick, who published a front-page story in the Liberian Observer containing the astonishing statement, “Ebola is a genetically modified organism (GMO).”
That article is still viewable at this link, in which Broderick goes on to assert that the U.S. Dept. of Defense has been using African women and children for bioweapons experiments.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Silicon Valley: US Firm “Grossly” Exploits Indian Workers at a Dollar an Hour
US labour regulators fine Electronics for Imaging, a California-based company that grossly underpaid eight workers from Bangalore for 122 hours of weekly work without overtime pay. The company ignored the state’s minimum wage law, and paid the workers in rupees.
Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) — US labour authorities fined a Silicon Valley company for “grossly underpaying” eight workers from India.
California-based Electronics for Imaging paid the workers US$ 1.21 per hour, and forced them to work 122 hours a week without overtime pay.
“This is worse than anything that I ever saw in any of those Los Angeles sweatshops,” said Michael Eastwood, assistant district director of Department of Labour.
The authorities imposed a fine of more than $43,000 in back wages and penalties.
The eight workers were brought to the US on a special project to help the company move its headquarters from Foster City to Fremont.
Reports say the firm paid the Indian workers the same wages they received in their normal jobs in the Indian city of Bangalore — and continued to pay them in rupees.
Under US laws, foreign workers must be paid at least the minimum wage, with overtime for working more than 40 hours a week. In California, the minimum wage at the time was US$ 8 per hour.
The company said it “unintentionally overlooked” US laws on wages and overtime.
Tens of thousands of Indians work in Silicon Valley, mostly in high-tech companies.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Ten Glaring Ebola Contradictions Told by Government Authorities Who Think We’re All Just Stupid
(NaturalNews) New York Governor Cuomo began yesterday’s Ebola press conference by gently waving his hand at reporters and uttering, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
When that didn’t work, he pulled out a pocket watch and let it swing back and forth like a pendulum, slowly repeating “Ebola is hard to catch. Ebola is hard to catch. You are feeling sleepy…”
As anybody with a brain has figured out by now, everything we’re being told about Ebola by government authorities is a distortion, a contradiction or an outright lie. But what are the best lies and contradictions we’ve heard so far?
Here’s the list:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Diminishing Two Party Political System
Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama once said, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two political parties’ candidates!” Who chose Obama and Romney to run? A Gallup Poll came up with the stunning finding that a full 65% of respondents said their choice was neither of the two “chosen’ candidates. We got Tweedledee or Tweedledumb because the two-party system is designed on the Hegelian dialectic that results in a one-party state that promotes globalism and the prophesied one world government.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
I came to realize that what Pat Buchanan had said was really true: “There are not two political parties in Washington, D.C., just two wings of the same bird of prey.”
One of the highlights of that awakening came when I interviewed David Schippers, who was the lead counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in the Bill Clinton impeachment hearings. He told me that as he pleaded with Republican leaders in the Senate (Trent Lott, Ted Stevens, etc.) to look at the evidence that his legal team had gathered, one of the “good guy” Republican senators said, “David, we don’t care if you have a video tape of the President raping a woman, then standing up and shooting her dead, we are not going to vote to remove this President from office.”
Schippers, a lifelong Democrat, was absolutely stunned. You can imagine. Schippers was a tough, no-nonsense, right-is-right, law-and-order kind of guy. He was the guy who took on the Chicago mafia — and won. He was an honest Democrat who was willing to unveil the criminality of a corrupt Democrat. Now he was watching a group of Republican senators in Washington, D.C., make the mafia look like good guys.
Schippers wrote a book of the whole sordid ordeal called, “Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton’s Impeachment.” It was published by Regnery Publishing. If you’ve never read it, you should do so immediately. The real story will shock you. And you will discover that, no, the Republicans are NOT always good guys — or even the “lesser of two evils.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) U.S. troops ordered by the President to Ebola-stricken West Africa are going to be sent with the best protective equipment available, right? That might be what you’d expect from the most powerful, best-equipped fighting force that the world has ever seen, but you’d be wrong.
In fact, according to reports, troops from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division who are being sent to the Ebola zone won’t be getting full protective hazmat clothing and suits for their mission. As Britain’s Daily Mail reported:
Instead, the troops will be given only masks and gloves to protect them from the potentially fatal virus, General David Rodriguez said at a Pentagon briefing…
Yet, Uncle Sam is buying tens of thousands of hazmat suits for its diplomatic personnel at the State Department
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Washington State School Shooter Invited Victims to Cafeteria: Officials
(Reuters) — The student in a Washington state high school shooting rampage who fatally fired at two 14-year-old girls and wounded three more classmates before taking his own life had arranged for the group to meet at the cafeteria at lunch, officials said on Monday.
Freshman Jaylen Fryberg walked with a handgun into the cafeteria at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, north of Seattle, on Friday and took aim at a table where two cousins and three close friends were gathered, police and family members said.
“The shooter had arranged for a meeting of friends during lunch in the cafeteria,” the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “A witness confirms that the five victims were seated at the table when the shooter opened fire, striking the victims before turning the gun on himself.”
The sheriff’s office also confirmed that the handgun, a .40 caliber Berretta, was purchased legally, registered, and owned by one of his family members, though officials are still investigating how he obtained the weapon…
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What Congressmen Are Told About Ebola
Why is the United States not closing all flights from the affected areas, and why is it still issuing travel visas to citizens from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea?
The Congressional Research Service has been driving the legislative debate since 1914, giving our Congressmen information on various topics. The latest report on October 3, 2014, entitled, “Ebola: Basics about the Disease,” by Sarah Lister, Specialist in Public Health and Epidemiology, provides the following information obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Will Voter Frustration Lead to Republican Victory or Defeat?
Democrats are raising and spending six-times as much as their political opponents for 2014. Take a good look at just the Top 20 super-PACs, which shouldn’t even exist according to McCain-Feingold.…
Actions will determine the outcome of the 2014 elections, not words, or wishes, or opinions or even money. The outcome of this election will impact the direction of our country after, in numerous critical ways.
Politics is a TEAM sport. The best trained and most unified TEAM will win.
In the past and even today, 30% of the people have been running roughshod over the other 70%… Not because they have a better plan for America, or because they are better funded, although they are much better funded.
They have been successful because they are 100% united in their efforts and they are 100% committed to forever “changing America.” Unfortunately, they are committed to making America something it never has been and never should be.
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12 Straight Years of Liberal Governments Made Canada a Rat’s Nest for Jihadists
Any day now Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be blamed by the lib-left and their running dog media hacks for this week’s terrorist attacks in Ottawa and Quebec.
That’s because the lib-left, who always throw politics rather than effective stopgap measures at Islamic terrorism — which they refuse even to name — will move quickly to blame the terrorist attacks on Canada’s participation in the current combat mission in Iraq.
The lib-left will do this even though there is documented proof on the books that terrorists in droves had swarmed Canadian borders long before Canada even joined Barack Obama’s Coalition of the mildly willing performing dubious airstrikes against ISIS:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Potheads defend their addiction by insisting that marijuana can make people lazy, dumb or hungry, but not violent. However, the case of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the Canadian Islamic terrorist killer, proves otherwise.
Zehaf-Bibeauwas an Islamist, as well as a pothead. In another notorious case of jihad, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was not only a dope smoker but a dealer.
It appears that Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was implicated in a Jewish triple murder case in which thousands of dollars’ worth of marijuana and money were left covering the bodies. All three victims’ throats were slashed.
It may be too early to draw a direct connection between jihad, marijuana, and mass murder, but it is worth considering whether consumption of the drug can alter the mind to such an extent that jihad becomes appealing to some mentally unstable individuals…
Trayvon Martin, the black juvenile delinquent shot and killed after he assaulted anti-crime activist George Zimmerman, also smoked marijuana regularly.
The latest White House fence-jumper, Dominic Adesanya, had a “substance abuse” problem as well. A clearly deranged individual, he told officials he smoked marijuana “sometimes, but not everyday.”
Do we see a pattern here?…
The UPI wire service reports that a Dutch study on the effects of marijuana use on teenagers found “the higher the frequency and amount of marijuana use, the more aggressive behavior the teenager showed.”
However, the pro-marijuana movement is hoping that the public doesn’t draw a connection between marijuana and violence, and is counting on more legislative victories.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Canadian PM Calls Possible Terrorist Attack a Possible Terrorist Attack
Although the incident was tragic, it was refreshing to see Prime Minister Harper use the “t” word when describing an incident that took place in Quebec. Had what happened occurred south of the border, it would have been called an unfortunate car accident or at best, an incident of road rage.
The incident occurred Monday morning in a strip mall located in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, about 40 km. southeast of Montreal. Two members of the Canadian Forces were walking in the parking lot of the mall when it was alleged they were deliberately struck by a Nissan Altima.
An office run by Veterans’ Affairs and the Department of National Defense to assist wounded members of the military is located in the strip mall.
After striking the soldiers the vehicle took off. It was reported the driver called 911 and told the operator what he had done. He said he did it because “he was acting in the name of Allah.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Belgium: Things to Bear in Mind When Eating Insects
It’s a new trend: eating insects. They are healthy and full of protein, and they could be solution to the global food shortage and the burden we are putting on our planet to produce food and, especially, meat. However, there are certain considerations to be made before you start eating insects yourself.
The High Council for Public Health and the Federal Food Agency have worked out a list of recommendations, as an increasing number of Belgian stores are selling insects.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Britain Risks Fines if it Refuses to Pay EU Tax Bill: Commission
Britain must contribute an extra 2.1 billion euros ($2.66 billion) into the EU budget or face fines, the European Commission said on Monday, after a furious David Cameron insisted that London would not pay.
“There will be a moment when the Commission will start imposing … fines on the amounts that are due,” interim EU Budget Commissioner Jacek Dominik said when asked what would happen if the British premier stuck to his guns and did not pay by a December 1 deadline.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Comet Stinks of Rotten Eggs and Cat Wee, Finds Rosetta
What does a comet smell like? Pretty awful, as it turns out. Data from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe has revealed that eau de comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a mixture of rotten eggs, cat urine and bitter almonds.
This bad smell is actually good news. The molecules behind the odours — hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and hydrogen cyanide — are mixed up with frozen water and carbon dioxide, so Rosetta’s spectrometers weren’t expected to detect such a variety until the comet approached the sun and warmed up. Formaldehyde, methanol and sulphur dioxide are also in the mix.
“It’s really fabulous. You wait 10 years and all of a sudden it’s there,” says Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland, who is in charge of Rosetta’s electronic nose, otherwise known as the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA). “What’s surprising is we already have extremely rich chemistry at this distance from the sun.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Dental Health in Roman Britain Studied
Only five percent of Roman Britons had severe gum disease, despite the prevalence of infections, abscesses, and tooth decay in their smiles, according to a study conducted by a team made of researchers from King’s College London and London’s Natural History Museum. They examined 303 skulls recovered from a cemetery in Dorset. Most of these people had died in their 40s sometime between 200 and 400 A.D. “The amount of severe gum disease around today is around one third of the population. But much to our surprise these people didn’t have a lot of gum disease, but they did have a lot of other dental problems,” Francis Hughes of the dental institute at King’s College London told BBC News.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Exor Largest Italian Employer With 306,000 Workers
Only 26% work in Italy, reverse of 25 years ago when 80% Italian
(ANSA) — Milan, October 23 — Exor SpA, the Agnelli family’s investment company that manages its holdings in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and CNH Industrial was the largest employer in Italy last year, according to a study released Thursday.
More than 306,000 workers were employed last year by Exor through CNH, which was formed by Fiat and produces industrial and agriculture equipment, and Fiat itself, the Mediobanca survey said.
But only about 26% of those work in Italy, the survey added. The company last employed more than 306,000 people in 1989, but at that time the distribution of workers was considerably different.
Then, about 80% of total employees worked in Italy.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Finland: Nordic Walking Four Times More Effective Than Gym Workouts
Nordic walking, the sport of walking briskly with bespoke ski poles, has been shown to be several times more effective for improving physical endurance than fitness training in a gym and its health benefits have been noted extensively. Even so, the Finnish invention is largely recommended as a fitness option to only females and the elderly at present. To address this issue, a campaign has been launched to pump up the sport’s image.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
First Scottish Tax in 300 Years Seen Cooling Housing
Buyers and sellers of homes in Scotland are rushing to close deals before the first new tax in 300 years imposed by a government in Edinburgh takes force in April.
The regional parliament approved the tax on property transactions using powers granted to it by the U.K. prior to Scotland’s failed bid for independence in September. The levy hits buyers of expensive homes the hardest, while sparing Scots purchasing the cheapest housing.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Fluoridated Water Calcifies Your Arteries: Study
(NaturalNews) A major promoter of heart disease in the U.S. today could be a chemical that the government has been intentionally dumping into the water supply for decades on the premise that it prevents tooth decay. Fluoride, according to a new study published in the journal Toxicology, shows demonstrated cardiotoxic effects, which include the calcification and hardening of arteries.
Researchers from the University of Zaragoza in Spain looked at the effects of water fluoridation on the progression of vascular calcification in renal (kidney) disease. The team used real-world concentrations of fluoride as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for optimal oral health — 1.5 milligrams per liter (mg/L) — administering this amount to rats via water in the same way humans would receive it.
It was observed that, for five days, the rats, all of whom had experimental chronic kidney disease (CKD), experienced calcification of their aortic smooth muscle cells. The rats also experienced further declines in renal function as a result of exposure to fluoride, demonstrating the nephrotoxicity of this common water additive.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
France Falls to Germans in Nude Swim Tourney
France is known for its clothing-optional beaches, but this weekend it was an international nude swimming competition that drew au naturel swimmers. But the French took second behind the Germans in overall medals.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Emilio Fede Reportedly in Fake Porn Photo Probe
Allegedly doctored photos to damage Mediaset execs
(ANSA) — Milan, October 23 — Milan prosecutors are investigating former TV news anchor Emilio Fede on suspicion of criminal association and slander, La Stampa newspaper reported Thursday.
The probe reportedly kicked off three months ago and involves the alleged use of doctored pornographic photos to spark “a red-light scandal” to the detriment of several executives at Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset commercial broadcaster, where Fede used to work.
Investigators are reportedly also probing Fede’s personal trainer, former boxer Gaetano Ferri, on suspicion of attempting to extort the ex anchorman.
Fede was convicted last year along with Nicole Minetti, Berlusconi’s former dental hygienist and an ex-Lombardy councilor, and former talent scout Lele Mora, of procuring girls and organizing “bunga bunga” sex parties at the ex-premier’s Arcore residence.
Fede and Mora were both given seven-year prison sentences and banned for life from public office while Minetti was sentenced to five years in prison and banned from office for as many years.
They are out of jail pending appeals.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Old Elite Will Not Reclaim Democratic Party, Says PM
(AGI) Florence, Oct 26 — Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Sunday warned some members of his Democratic Party (PD) that they would not be allowed to take charge. Responding to Saturday’s remarks by one of these members, Rosy Bindy, who called a PD meeting in Florence between leaders and the public “embarrassing”, Renzi said: “We respect those in parliament with different opinions and we respect their messages however offensive they are. But we will not allow the old ruling class to take back the PD.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Prime Minister Renzi ‘Lacks Arguments’, Union Chief Says
(AGI) Turin, Oct 26 — Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s refusal to address trade union qualms over the so-called Jobs Act “proves that he lacks arguments,” Sasanna Camusso, the head of Italy’s largest trade union, said on Sunday. On Saturday, with close to a million people rallying in Rome in protest at the government’s labour package, the prime minister vowed to plough ahead with reforms.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Union Leader Says Government is Entrepreneur-Driven
(AGI) Turin, Oct 26 — Susanna Camusso, leader of Cgil, Italy’s largest labour union, said she believed the current government constantly reminded everyone that entrepreneurs were its main source of inspiration. She made the comment in response to a journalist asking her whether this is a Confidustria-driven government.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Alitalia to Fire Almost a Thousand Employees
(AGI) Rome, Oct 25 — Dismissal letters will be sent on Oct. 31 to the 994 Alitalia employees who did not sign up for the voluntary mobility scheme. The agreement will be signed on Saturday evening between Alitalia and the unions FIT CISL Uiltrasporti and UGL Trasporto Aereo. FILT CGIL will not be signing the agreement reached on July 12 at the Labour Ministry. About 700 have already left the company, including those who have gone into voluntary mobility and those who have reached pensionable age.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Unions Incensed After ‘Surreal’ Meet With Govt Ministers
‘They had no mandate to debate or negotiate’ says Camusso
(ANSA) — Rome, October 27 — The leaders of Italy’s four main labor union federations were incensed Monday after a meeting with government ministers, ostensibly to discuss the government’s proposed 2015 budget, turned out to be what they said was a one-sided exercise.
The government sent its labor, economy, and civil service ministers to the table without a mandate to negotiate, respond, or even schedule further meetings, the union leaders said.
“They had no mandate to debate anything with us,” said CGIL chief Susanna Camusso. “This government does not intend to share or even measure itself with us,” she said. “What happened today boiled down to ‘send us an email’. It was surreal”. UIL leader Carmelo Barbagalllo echoed her, saying “the ministers had no mandate to answer us”. “We expect a real debate. We have so many questions that need answers,” Barbagallo added. “If we get a hearing we will be glad, otherwise we will act accordingly”.
“Today’s meeting was between those who talked and those who listened,” said CISL secretary-general Anna Maria Furlan. “Today they just listened. It was not a negotiation”.
“The lack of debate will certainly bring us to a negative opinion of the relationship between government and labor,” said UGL Secretary Ermenegildo Rossi. “The crisis should bring about a pact between all sides, instead they told us to send them an email”.
One of the items unions disagree with is the government’s proposed severance pay advance — on an optional basis — to employees in an effort to boost lagging internal consumption.
“Today’s workers will be tomorrow’s impoverished senior citizens,” Furlan said.
As well, the unions fear that regional spending cuts requested by the government as part of its spending review will likely translate not into less waste and more efficiency, but in more taxes and fewer public services. They also disagree with the IRAP regional business tax cut, saying it should be extended only to companies that make investments, and that the government has not included enough money for social welfare and funds.
“We will evaluate your indications,” Labor Minister Giuliano Poletti reportedly said at the end of the meeting.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: PD Rebels Deny They Will Splinter Off From Renzi’s Party
‘Premier is looking to clash to justify early elections’
(ANSA) — Rome, October 27 — Left-wing dissenters within Premier Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) took pains Monday to distance themselves from the possibility of splitting away from the ruling center-left party.
Renzi launched a stinging attack on the dissenters after several took part in a massive rally in Rome organised by the left-wing CGIL trade union federation, which has historic ties with the PD but is against the government’s Jobs Act labour reform.
The Jobs Act would soften the rules on unfair dismissal to encourage firms to take on staff, which labor says is just another way to scale back workers’ rights without creating jobs.
Renzi won a Senate confidence vote on the bill earlier in October.
“I want to fight my battle from within the PD rather than forming a small, splinter extreme-left party,” said Lower House MP Cesare Damiano, a former labor minister during the Romano Prodi government of 2006-2008.
“I won’t vote for the Jobs Act in a confidence vote, but I’m not leaving the PD,” said Lower House MP Stefano Fassina, who was junior economy minister during the preceding, short-lived administration of fellow PD member Enrico Letta.
“Given that the premier is systematically seeking out a head-on collision, I believe (he is looking) for an incident to justify snap elections”.
Fassina was echoed by Pippo Civati, who came in third against Renzi in the 2013 PD primaries for party secretary and candidate to the premiership.
“Renzi is steering us to (another general election) otherwise he would not have engaged in a duel on such a scale with his own party,” Civati told La Repubblica newspaper, adding that he is still on the fence about whether or not to leave the PD.
“I will decide in the coming weeks,” he said.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Renzi Attacks PD Left, CGIL After Party Divisions Exposed
Premier not scared of ‘new party’
(ANSA) — Rome, October 27 — Premier Matteo Renzi launched a stinging attack on the left wing of his Democratic Party (PD) after two major events at the weekend exposed the deep divisions within the group.
Several rebel members of the centre-left PD took part in a massive rally in Rome organised by the left-wing CGIL trade-union federation against the government’s Jobs Act labour reform, which seeks to soften the rules on unfair dismissal to encourage firms to take on staff.
Speaking at an annual conference Renzi has held for several years in his native Florence, the so-called Leopolda, the premier said he had no fear of a possible split that would see members of the left wing of the party forming a new party.
He also ridiculed the rebels’ and CGIL’s defence of the current labour regulations, outlined in the 1970 Workers Stature.
Renzi said the world had changed and “jobs for life no longer exist”.
He added that applying rules from the 1970s to the modern world was like trying to use a roll of film in a digital camera or trying to use tokens on an iPhone.
He also said he would not give the PD, which won over 40% of the vote in May’s European elections, back to the old class of party leaders, who he said would take its popularity back down to around 25%. But CGIL leader Susanna Camusso stood her ground on Monday.
“The premier does not know what he’s talking about when he says steady jobs no longer exist,” said Camusso, who has said the CGIL may call a general strike after Saturday’s rally, which the union said one million people took part in.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Senegalese Man Confesses to Stabbing Ex-Girlfriend to Death
Blames ‘fight’ when she refused to return
(ANSA) — Catania, October 27 — A 27-year-old, Senegalese man confessed to murdering his former girlfriend, Veronica Valenti, 30, who was found lifeless in her car Sunday night in the Sicilian city of Catania, ANSA sources said Monday. Gora Mbengue spontaneously admitted to them that he stabbed the woman during a fight, because she refused to resume their relationship following his arrest. Police believe that the murder was premeditated. According to their reconstruction, Mbengue brought the knife with him to an appointment, and he allegedly struck her numerous times on the left side of her abdomen and in the back the moment she refused him.
Residents of the zone where the crime took place reported a violent fight followed by African-looking man leaving the scene.
Mbengue has been taken to prison.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: MSC Cruises Denies Wrongdoing After Exec’s Assets Seized
Vago, Zuccarino suspected of falsifying income
(ANSA) — Naples, October 27 — MSC Cruises on Monday denied wrongdoing by its executives after judicial authorities seized 33 million euros in assets from CEO Pierfrancesco Vago and from the president of the board of directors, Francesco Zuccarino.
Vago is suspected of failure to declare income while Zuccarino is suspected of falsifying his declared earnings. “The charges are baseless and brought in clear violation of international norms,” the cruise company said in a statement. MSC Cruises has offices in 48 countries and is part of the Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Company, the world’s second-largest container shipping operator.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Netherlands: When the Questions Become the Crime
by Abigail R. Esman
More problematic is that it reaches a point where discussion or debate is impossible because the questions themselves become a crime.
Such laws not only run counter to the basic principles of democracy; they are, in many instances, representative of a duplicitous selective application of the law. Why are the prosecutors not going after Yasmina Haifi, who tweeted that ISIS is a Zionist plot? Is the criminalization of hate speech now dependent only on whom you hate?
The people are entitled to a country in which they can voice their frustration and be heard.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Hotel Workers Used by Police to Catch Guests Buying Sex
With the help of tips from hotel staff in northern Sweden, police there are now hoping to catch sex buyers in the act, according to Swedish Radio P4 Norrbotten.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: David Cameron Shoved by ‘Jogger’ In Leeds
Security around Prime Minister is breached outside Leeds Civic Centre when member of public pushes David Cameron
David Cameron has been shoved by a protester in Leeds in a massive security breach.
A member of the public confronted Mr Cameron outside Leeds Civic Hall and was seen pushing the Prime Minister before police were forced to step in.
The Telegraph understands Mr Cameron was leaving the venue when the man — who was walking on the other side of the road — “darted” across to accost the prime minister.
The moment was captured on a mobile phone camera…
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UK: Jihadis ‘Infiltrating UK Parliament Tours’
Islamists have been on tours of the Houses of Parliament in London in order to scope out the building, a British intelligence source has revealed.
The revelation has led to some MPs calling for the number of visitors to parliament to be restricted in the wake of the shooting in the Canadian parliament last week.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
World Underestimated Virus, Says New Ebola Coordinator
The international community has “underestimated” the ebola crisis, the EU’s new ebola coordinator Christos Stylianides said in a press conference on Monday. Stylianides will travel to the affected region in November. “My presence will underline that fear and insulation is not an option.” Over 10,000 people have now been infected.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: The New Face of Tahrir Square: A Journey Through the Streets of Cairo
Three years after the 2011 revolution, the capital still bears the marks of the revolt that shook Egypt. Chaotic traffic; crumbling buildings that flank luxury hotels; ongoing work on the square, the symbolic heartland of democracy; well-to-do Heliopolis. One Cairo resident: “We support this new government because we want to build a better country.”
Cairo (AsiaNews) — “Cairo never sleeps. Don’t let yourself be taken by surprise”, says my driver Fouad, 57, indicating with a nod the traffic congesting the streets of the Egyptian capital. It is six o’clock in the evening, darkness has already fallen, and the toxic river of traffic that is swarming around his car knows no rules. Occasionally, someone hazards to cross the street: there are no pedestrian crossings and the traffic does not give precedence, so they are forced to make a run for it. No car will stop to let him pass. A motorbike creeps between vehicles backed up in irregular rows: a young man without a helmet, dressed in western style clothes, behind him a girl sitting “side saddle” and wrapped up in a niqab.
Yet, Fouad was not just speaking about the relentless traffic — which is the same day and night — but to the general atmosphere in Cairo. It’s been a little over three years since the revolution that shook Egypt to the core. From the fall of Mubarak on February 11, 2011, to the government led by President Mohamed Morsi, until his overthrow and the establishment of a new government, the country of the pyramids has lived many different lives.
Tahrir Square, the heart of the revolts of the past three years and the symbolic center of democracy in Egypt, it is now an open-air construction site, where workers of all ages are busy building a large underground car park. Work on the project began just before the start of the “Arab Spring”, but was halted because of the riots. Work resumed with the formation of the al-Sisi government.
Behind the square, behind the Egyptian museum, stands the “skeleton” of Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) building. The walls blackened by the flames that ripped through it during the 2011revolution; the dark windows are like big eyes hollow; its doors hanging on by their hinges or completely gone. “It’s still there, it won’t budge — asserts Fouad jokingly — but it reminds us of what has been and what we’ve been through.”
However, on closer inspection, much of the capital seems to repeat the same pattern of Tahrir Square: luxury five-star hotels surrounded by crumbling buildings; construction sites that have been suspended for years; billboards of McDonald’s next to the insignia of local cafes open 24/7. The only exception seems to be Heliopolis, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city, which is home to the presidential palace, the headquarters of the armed forces and some of the most important Catholic churches in the city.
The area of Tahrir Square is already far away, when Fouad says, as if speaking to himself: “We support this new government because we want to build a better country, that is an example of peace for its many realities, but also for the rest the world”.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Tunisia’s Ennahda Party Admits Defeat in Legislative Polls
Tunisia’s leading Islamist party, Ennahda, has accepted defeat in Sunday’s election, and congratulated its secular rival Nidaa Tounes on winning most parliamentary seats, a senior Ennahda official said on Monday.
“We have accepted this result, and congratulate the winner,” Lotfi Zitoun, a senior Ennahda party official told Reuters.
Zitoun said the party reiterated its call for the formation of a unity government, including Ennahda, in the interest of the country,according to AFP.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Government to Officially Recognize Palestine “Shortly”
The Social Democratic-led government informed the Parliamentary committee on foreign affairs today that they intend to make the formal decision to recognize the state of Palestine “shortly”, reports news agency TT.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Iran’s Non-Muslims Face Prison, Execution, Despite ‘Reform’ Claims, Says New UN Report
Iran’s regime conducted a raid on an Easter service and arrested Christians, subjected Christian converts to death threats and psychological abuse and shut down licensed churches, according to a UN report that will be submitted to world leaders on Tuesday.
While persecution of religious minorities is nothing new in the Islamic Republic, the 28-page catalog of horrors compiled by Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Right in the Islamic Republic of Iran, undermines the claim that President Hassan Rouhani has ushered in a new era of tolerance.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Maximum Punishment for Iran Acid Attackers
(AGI) Tehran, Oct 26 — The perpetrators of the acid attacks against four women in Isfahan should be punished with death by hanging. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said: “they are inhuman acts committed by evil people.” Mr. Rouhani has long been engaged in a direct confrontation with religious and political hard-liners. “The government,” the president said, “has instructed the ministries of Interior, Justice and Intelligence to conduct an investigation.” .
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
A female Kurdish fighter who became a poster girl for the Kobane resistance movement after a picture of her making a peace sign was retweeted thousands of times on Twitter has reportedly been beheaded by Isis.
The message was retweeted over 5,000 times, but there are now claims Rehana, who fought for the Kurdish YPJ, or Women’s Defense Unit, may have been killed after gruesome pictures began circulating on Twitter of an Isis fighter purportedly holding aloft her head.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: NGO: ISIS Beheads Four Civilian Hostages in East
Members of Shaitat tribe accused of backing Assad
(ANSAmed) — BEIRUT, OCTOBER 27 — The Islamic State (ISIS) has publicly beheaded in eastern Syria, at the border with Iraq, four civilians, members of an influential local Sunni tribe already targeted by ISIS in the past, the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday. The four were accused of cooperating with the Syrian regime. The NGO said the four were members of the Shaitat tribe.
A reported 700 members of tribe last August were killed by the jihadists. Many of them were beheaded.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Turkey World’s Second Highest TV Series Exporter After US
Turkey has become the second highest exporter of TV series in the world after the US, with over $200 million annual exports to over 100 nations, says the head of exporters’ assembly
The popularity of Turkish television series has skyrocketed over the last decade, particularly in Middle Eastern and southern European countries. Turkish series have been exported to over 100 countries, contributing to a boom in the country’s domestic television industry.
In 2012, Turkish soap opera exports were worth around $200 million, up from just $10,000 in 2004, according to TIM data.
“The cinema and TV industry is of crucial importance for Turkey, which has become an effective power in its neighboring cultural area,” Büyükeksi noted.
One particular success story is “The Magnificent Century,” which focuses on the life of the 16th century Ottoman Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. The show proved hugely popular both in Turkey and internationally, being broadcast in 43 countries and watched by over 200 million people.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Last U.S. Marines Leave Their Afghan Headquarters
Every last Marine has left Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, headquarters of the U.S. Marine presence in Afghanistan for the past six years.
Dozens of flights over the last 18 hours ferried Marines and equipment — packed tightly into KC-130’s and helicopters — to Kandahar Air Field in the neighboring province. The troops will spend several days there before flights are arranged to send them home.
At dawn, Marines vacated the guard posts along the perimeter of Camp Leatherneck, turning them over one by one to pairs of Afghan soldiers. This marks the official withdrawal of the U.S. Marines from the conflict in Afghanistan.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Last British Troops Leave Helmand
The last UK troops have left Helmand in Afghanistan, as a poll suggests 68% of respondents thought the operation was not “worthwhile” for Britain.
The BBC poll of 1,000 UK adults found 42% thought Britain was “less safe” as a result of the 13-year campaign.
The end of UK combat operations was announced on Sunday, as the main British base Camp Bastion was handed to Afghan control.
The final troops left by air on Monday, with the last holding the union jack.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan Should be on Trial: Will Asia Bibi Get a New Day in Court?
She was working as a farmhand that fateful day in 2009, harvesting berries to help support her family. Sent to get water by the other women she toiled alongside with, her thirst got the better of her. Picking up an old dirty tin cup from the ground, she filled it with water from the well and drank greedily, before returning with water for the other workers. If only she could have predicted that this simple action would cause her to be arrested, imprisoned, and would most likely cost her life, her thirst probably would have disappeared.
Spotted by a neighbor with whom there had been a long running feud over some property damage, an argument developed between the Muslim women and the lone Christian woman from the small isolated Punjab province in Pakistan. They angrily told her that it was forbidden for a Christian to drink the same water as a Muslim, and some of the other workers considered her to be unclean because she was a Christian. Her response to the derogatory insults to her faith? “I believe in my religion and in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind?”
By defending her faith, the 35 year-old wife and mother, Asia Bibi, may well be the first woman in Pakistan to be hung by the neck for blasphemy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Al-Qaeda Declares War on China, Too
Al-Qaeda has joined the Islamic State in calling for jihad against China for its Uyghur policies.
Al-Qaeda central appears to have joined the Islamic State in calling for jihad against China over its alleged occupation of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
China Launches Its First Round-Trip Mission to the Moon
China has launched its first round-trip mission to the moon with a robotic spacecraft, a mission that will pave the way for the country’s planned lunar sample-return program.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Chinese Campus Brothel That Gave Students Discount for Sex ‘Run by University President’
A university campus hotel that operates a barely disguised brothel and offers discounts to students for sexual services is allegedly owned by the head of the institution, according to a Chinese newspaper report.
The Beijing Times reports that the “Guangxin International Hotel” has been operating on the campus of the Wuchang University of Technology in Wuhan, a medium-sized school of around 13,000 students, for a number of years.
According to a student who tipped off the paper, the “hotel” — situated atop one of the university’s canteen buildings — is in fact a brothel.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Colossal Volcanic Eruption Could Destroy Japan at Any Time: Study
Japan could be nearly destroyed by a volcanic eruption over the next century that would put nearly all of its population of 127 million people at risk, a new study says.
“It is not an overstatement to say that a colossal volcanic eruption would leave Japan extinct as a country,” Kobe University earth sciences professor Yoshiyuki Tatsumi and associate professor Keiko Suzuki said in the study, released publicly on Wednesday.
The experts said they analyzed the scale and frequency of volcanic eruptions throughout the archipelago over the past 120,000 years and calculated that the odds of a devastating eruption at about 1 percent over the next 100 years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Japan Could be Destroyed Within the Next 100 Years in Giant Volcanic Eruption, Scientists Claim
Japan could be wiped off the face of the earth by a massive volcanic eruption some time in the next century killing almost all of its 127million inhabitants, according to a new study.
Experts analysing the eruption patterns of volcanoes on the island nation say it is ‘not an overstatement’ to predict that a natural disaster could leave the country ‘extinct’.
Scientists at Kobe University looked at a massive volcanic crater on Kyushu Island, which has erupted seven times in the last 120,000 years.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
More Than 2,000 Chinese Pharmacy Students Caught Cheating in Licensing Exam: State Media
More than 2,000 pharmacists from Xi’an cheated in the national licensing test, state television reported on Sunday night.
The candidates wore earpieces through which answers to the test questions were transmitted via radio.
The scam earlier this month was uncovered when invigilators detected abnormal radio signals from an illegal frequency.
“It is the worst scandal over the past few years,” Du Fangshuai, the chief of Shaanxi testing authority, told state media. “We’ve caught 2,440 candidates in total at seven test centres. At one centre there were 700 candidates cheating at the test.”
The total number caught cheating accounted for almost one in 10 of the 25,000 candidates who sat the test in the province.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
South Korea Seeks Death Penalty for Ferry Captain
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean prosecutors on Monday demanded the death penalty for the captain of a ferry that sank earlier this year, killing more than 300 people, blaming his negligence and failure to rescue passengers in need for the massive loss of life, a court official and news reports said.
Prosecutors also requested life sentences for three other key crew members during a trial at the Gwangju District Court in southern South Korea, a court official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media about the sentence requests. He said prosecutors asked for sentences of up to 30 years for 11 other crew members.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Teenager’s Sex Tour of China Sees Her Bed a Man in Every City
A TEENAGER has become a social media sensation in China for her planned sex escapades which will see her bed a different man in EVERY city.
Claiming she has already travelled eastern China by having men fund her in exchange for sex, she said: “It is sort of like hitch hiking. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) One of Africa’s biggest struggles in regard to farming is the soil’s lack of nutrients, a factor that’s exacerbated famine across the continent. Together, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation shared a particular interest in “reducing poverty and hunger in Africa” through a program called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
Launched in 2006, the $180 million five-year program sought to provide African farmers with Western-style agricultural techniques, including reliance on fertilizer and weedkillers and planting single crops, such as corn.
AGRA concentrated efforts on setting up 9,000 dealers within 5 kilometers of farmers to sell them agricultural supplies, primarily chemical fertilizers, reports NewScientist. Nearly 3,000 inspectors were appointed under the initiative to monitor soil health and advise farmers on how much fertilizer to use.
While some African farmers say their yields have doubled under AGRA, others beg to differ.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
(NaturalNews) The truth is finally coming out about the Ebola crisis and its real purpose, which appears to be to sell more vaccines. As it turns out, the drug industry has had Ebola vaccines in the pipeline for years, but it has been waiting for just the right time to release them for maximum profits, unveiling just a little bit more about the true agenda behind all the current Ebola fear-mongering.
Nearly a decade ago, researchers from Canada and the U.S. collaborated on the development of a vaccine for Ebola, which they tested on monkeys. Based on these tests, the vaccine was found to be 100 percent effective, and the results were published in the well respected journal Nature Medicine.
It was assumed at the time that the vaccine would be released commercially to stop the disease’s spread in places like West Africa — but it wasn’t. The reason is that there was no profit to be made in releasing the vaccine at that time. Instead, Big Pharma decided to shelve the project until a later date when demand for the vaccine was higher, and more money could be made.
“Its development stalled in part because Ebola is rare and until now outbreaks had infected only a few hundred people at a time,” explains The Boston Globe. “Most drug companies have resisted spending the enormous sums needed to develop products useful mostly to countries with little ability to pay.”
Once the panic level is high enough, Big Pharma will release Ebola vaccine…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Boko Haram Kidnaps 30 in Northeast Nigeria
Kano, Nigeria (CNN) — Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped at least 30 boys and girls from a village in northeast Nigeria during the weekend. The abductions appear to be the latest in a string of recent kidnappings by Boko Haram that dims hope for the anticipated release of 219 schoolgirls held by the group since April following a controversial ceasefire declared by Nigerian authorities.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: ‘All US Troops Back From Liberia to be Checked for Ebola’
30-strong contingent isolated in Vicenza
(ANSA) — Rome, October 27 — All US troops coming back from Ebola-hit Liberia are to be checked for the virus before arriving on home soil, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has decided according to CNN and CBS.
The news came after it was reported that some 30 US soldiers returning from Liberia are being placed in isolation in the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza, home to a large US air base.
The soldiers apparently were met by Carabinieri in full hazmat suits. If the policy remains in effect, everyone returning from Liberia — several hundred — will be placed in isolation for 21 days.
A Pentagon spokesman calls it “enhanced monitoring”. The decision applies only to soldiers returning from Liberia, the country hardest hit by the virus which has claimed nearly 5,000 lives in West Africa.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Plain Stupid: Obama Sending Troops to Ebola-Ravaged Africa
Continuing to allow airplane flights into America loaded with people streaming out of Ebola-ravaged Africa must be about the dumbest act that Congress, the Center for Disease Control and Barack Obama could possibly perpetrate on the American people.
To send 3,000 of our young men and women over to Ebola-ravaged Africa with some kind of insane idea that we could stop the epidemic, must the second dumbest idea of Barack Obama and his band of incompetent advisors. Anyone with a room-temperature IQ and an ounce of common sense would take logical action in the face of such a virulent virus.
As a superintendent of a school system, you wouldn’t invite sick students with chicken pox, small pox, mumps, measles and polio into your school. You would mandate they stay home to protect the students and teachers in your school. Why? Infectious diseases guaranteed to jump from student to student!
If I stood at the helm in the White House: I would immediately stop all flights into the United States from Africa. I would not subject one single American to Ebola unnecessarily.
The president’s authorizing a call-up of the reserves or the National Guard to fight a virulent disease like Ebola in Africa with no idea of the outcome — must rank up there with the movie, “Dumb and Dumber.” Instead of saving Africa from itself, those 3,000 troops may well become disease vectors themselves that bring Ebola back to America in greater numbers, or, simply kill a bunch of our country’s finest soldiers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Starving Liberians Threaten to Break Out of Ebola Quarantine as Food Supply Runs Out
(NaturalNews) Rumors continue to circulate from speculating sources that the Ebola pandemic in Africa is one giant hoax. This conspiracy theory undermines the pain, disease and starvation that West Africans have been facing. An Associated Press photo taken from Monday, October 20, shows that the pandemic continues, with men in protective suits about to cart off a potential Ebola-stricken patient. It’s no joking matter; West Africans in Liberia continue to suffer — their villages overrun by disease. The newest update on the Ebola front lines shows that quarantine measures in an impoverished area are unprepared, and men and women are starving because of it. West Africa’s state radio is reporting that quarantined individuals are running out of food and are threatening to break out of isolation quarters.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Swedish Doctor Put ‘Ebola’ Patient in Taxi
A Stockholm doctor breached national guidelines by sending a girl suspected of having the Ebola virus to hospital in a taxi, it has emerged.
The child — who is understood to have recently returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo — had a fever and had been vomiting for more than a week when she was seen by the doctor at a medical centre in southern Stockholm in September, according to news agency TT.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
The Ebola “Monster” Is Peaking; The Real Ones Are Not
Endemic diseases that don’t make headlines, like tuberculosis, malaria, and infectious childhood diarrhea, each kill more people every two days than have died of Ebola in 28 years.
In what’s called “Farr’s Law,” dating back to 1840, all epidemics follow a roughly bell-shaped curve. As the most vulnerable victims are nabbed first, one existing case leads to more than one. But eventually each new infection causes only one other, and then less than another. That’s why ultimately all, since before the Plague of Athens (433 BC) are self-limiting. They peak and fall without benefit of a CDC, WHO, vaccines, or effective treatments.
Which is not to say that humans cannot influence an epidemic to make it curve and decline more rapidly. But even in the modern era, by the time the authorities realize what’s happened, the epidemic may well have peaked. AIDS infections in the U.S. did so in 1985, yet the federal government campaign didn’t kick in until two years later.
But the CDC and WHO both ignored Farr’s Law in their calculations, with CDC explicitly stating its incredible presumption that cases would continue to double at the same rate they did in August during the exponential phase, every 20 days, all the way out till January. In fact, the October 8 WHO situation report shows doubling stretched to every 60 days, and by October 15 every 68.
Thus, those spooky published estimates are already crumbling. The CDC gave a range of 550,000 to 1.4 million cases as of January 20 of next year, but widely ignored was its other estimate of 8,000 — 21,000 cases by September 30. Yet fewer than 7,500 cases were reported by then, including “probable” and “suspected.” Likewise requiescat in pace a published model highlighted by the esteemed journal Science estimating 10,000 cases by 24 September, and hundreds of thousands in the months thereafter.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
America and Western Countries: Becoming the World’s Refugee Camps, Part 5
Today, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Somali Muslim immigrants, nearing 100,000 in numbers, disrupt normal life in that state. Muslim cab drivers won’t transport anyone carrying beer. They won’t pick up anyone who uses a seeing-eye dog. They won’t pick up anyone carrying pork products. They push for Sharia Law to be implemented in schools. Cashiers at Target stores won’t touch packaged bacon. They demand footbaths be provided and Hilal food. They demand prayer time at work five times a day. They push for their language to be extended into the community.
This video shows our dilemma spreading from city to city across America:
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Could Lawsuit Stop Obama’s Toxic Plan for Amnesty?
The criminal impostor in the White House is planning to give amnesty to tens of millions of liars, cheats and thieves — illegal aliens.
Some of the top dogs in the GOP like Johnny Boehner are also on board to serve their masters like the anti-American U.S. Chamber of Commerce, mega corporations and anti-American job billionaires (Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook) who buy their favors like hookers on a street corner. Why, those sell-outs can hardly wait to gain control of the U.S. Senate to further screw highly educated college graduates who can’t find work other than flipping burgers and experienced Americans in the high-tech industry in favor of cheap labor:
GOP Leaders Clamoring for More ‘High-Tech Immigration’ if Party Wins Senate: “Though there is a surplus of American high-tech workers, companies like Microsoft are laying off 18,000 American workers — while pushing for more foreign workers.“
Leadership my arse. Their middle names should be Benedict Arnold.
I can’t tell you how many letters I receive from highly skilled, experienced IT workers who lost their jobs for cheaper labor and now work at Staples. There’s nothing wrong with working at Staples, McDonald’s or as a janitor at a school or high rise. An honest days wage for an honest day of work. But, bringing in millions of foreign workers costing Americans jobs (I also always include naturalized Americans) IS anti-American and it’s all for more money. How many more billions does Bill Gates and Zuckerberg need?…
Thousands of American workers being laid off while companies like Microsoft are salivating in anticipation of getting more cheap workers if Republicans take back the senate. Is anyone listening about the Seventeenth Amendment and the direct election of U.S. Senators and how it has killed the states and over the past few decades American jobs?…
35 terror training camps now operating inside U.S. — Government does nothing to impede expansion of ‘Soldiers of Allah’ network
WASHINGTON — “A radical jihadist group responsible for nearly 50 attacks on American soil is operating 35 terrorist training camps across the nation, but the U.S. government refuses to include the organization on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists. Jamaat ul-Fuqra, known in the U.S. as “Muslims of America,” has purchased or leased hundreds of acres of property — from New York to California — in which the leader, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, boasts of conducting “the most advanced training courses in Islamic military warfare.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Mexican Open-Borders Billionaire Carlos Slim, Again World’s Richest Man
Note that this group of billionaires includes both Republicans and Democrats. And they don’t even have to be American. Another open-borders billionaire is Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
One of Slim’s nicknames is el Rey Midas, from the ancient Greek legend of the king whose touch could transform anything to gold.
Carlos Slim’s wealth amounts to 5-7% of the entire economy of Mexico. Carlos Slim has a vested interest in continued mass Mexican emigration to the United States, leading to an ever-growing Hispanic population that depends upon government services which in turn enriches his own enterprises.
Slim is against a secure border between the United States and Mexico, he wants Mexicans to be able to migrate to the U.S. and he doesn’t think we should be selective about the Mexicans we let in the country.
Did you also know that Slim owns part of the New York Times?
The biggest portion of Slim’s holdings is in telecoms . Obviously, having millions of Mexicans in the United States communicating with millions of Mexicans in Mexico is profitable for Slim.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Sacramento Illegal Alien Terror Rampage Raises Question About US Immigration Enforcement
Last Friday’s rampage in Sacramento was a terrorist action of a different sort.. It involved an illegal alien, double deportee with multiple identities and possible connections to Sinaloa, his hometown in Mexico, the center of one of that country’s most notorious and lethal drug cartels. The perpetrator Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte and his wife went on a rampage equipped with AR-15 assault rifles and pistols. As the Sacramento Bee (SacBee) reported, that rampage “resulted in the deaths of two sheriff deputies, injuries to a third deputy and a gravely wounded motorist in a carjacking during a 30 mile crime spree.’ All triggered by a polite problem police inquiry of the perpetrator and his wife at a local Motel 6. The AP report noted that there were over 2 million deportations last year and that the perpetrator of the terror crime spree , Monroy-Bracamonte, fulfilled two of them , “anyone who poses a public safety threat; anyone with a serious immigration history; and recent border crossers. Monroy-Bracamonte would appear to be a prime candidate on the first two counts.”
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and Thomas Winkowski, acting head of the Immigration Custom Enforcement, may have some questions to answer about what the Sacramento rampage revealed before the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chaired by Californian, Darrel E. Issa.
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Jihadist Threat, EU Demands Tighter Border Checks
Madrid to send special anti-terror agents
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — Europe has asked Spain to boost border checks in Ceuta and Melilla to prevent jihadists from entering the country. Interior ministry sources said Monday that the request was issued by Brussels on October 9 during the last EU Council of Justice and Home Affairs.
Madrid last summer sent 200 Guardia civil agents to prevent immigrants from illegally entering and does not reportedly mean to further boost border surveillance. However, it will train agents so they can “identify terror elements”, the sources said.
Over the past few months, at least four suspected Islamist extremists were able to cross the borders of the two Spanish enclaves in Morocco.
Out of the 33,913 illegal immigrants who entered Spain in 2013, some 2,638 (8% of the total) did so through the border of Melilla while 1,623 others (4.7% of the total) crossed into Ceuta, almost double the number from the previous year.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
UK Axes Support for Mediterranean Migrant Rescue Operation
Britain will not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, claiming they simply encourage more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing, Foreign Office ministers have quietly announced.
Refugee and human rights organisations reacted with anger to the official British refusal to support a sustained European search and rescue operation to prevent further mass migrant drownings, saying it would contribute to more people dying needlessly on Europe’s doorstep.
The British refusal comes as the official Italian sea and rescue operation, Mare Nostrum, is due to end this week after contributing over the past 12 months to the rescue of an estimated 150,000 people since the Lampedusa tragedies in which 500 migrants died in October 2013.
The Italian operation will now end without a similar European search and rescue operation to replace it. The Italian authorities have said their operation, which involves a significant part of the Italian navy, is unsustainable. Despite its best efforts, more than 2,500 people are known to have drowned or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year.
Instead of the Italian operation, a limited joint EU “border protection” operation, codenamed Triton and managed by Frontex, the European border agency, is to be launched on 1 November. Crucially, it will not include search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean, just patrols within 30 miles of the Italian coast…
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
Black Pastors Slam Supreme Court Marriage Protection Non-Ruling; Where Are the White Pastors?
A number of black Christian pastors and church leaders on Thursday slammed the United States Supreme Court justices for turning down a case that would once and for all settle the dispute and divisiveness created by the issue of same-sex marriage. The National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders characterized the court’s decision — “not to hear the case” and send it back to the lower courts — as cowardice on the part of the nine members of the nation’s highest court.
Unfortunately, white Christian pastors have been mostly silent, except for a few such as Chuck Baldwin and Doug Giles, according to Samuel Jenkins a church elder from New Jersey. “This court is on the verge of re-defining marriage and yet most churches ignore it,” said Jenkins…
“While the mainstream news media — who act as the propaganda machine for gay and lesbian groups — attempts to portray opponents of same-sex marriage as being elderly, white Republicans, the truth is that a overwhelming majority of blacks and Latinos oppose anything but traditional marriage. It’s only in the white community in which you find most of the support for same-sex marriage,” notes political strategist and attorney Victor Rygardt.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
According to Dr. Lawrence Dunegan, Dr. Richard Day (former National Medical Director of Planned Parenthood) in March 1969 announced that in terms of controlling population, ‘Everything is in place, and nobody can stop us now…This time we’re going to do it right.’ Dr. Dunegan then recounted that Dr. Day pronounced the following things were planned: contraceptives would be dispensed at school; abortion would become legal and paid for by tax dollars; homosexuality would be promoted as no longer to be considered abnormal behavior; hard-to-cure diseases would be created; a hard-to-detect means had been developed for inducing heart attacks (assassinations); drug (including alcohol) addiction would be promoted so the unfit would die; euthanasia would be more accepted as the cost of medical care would intentionally be made burdensomely high; divorce would be made easier; ID badges would become more prevalent (eventually implanted under skin, and perhaps a transmitter in dental fillings); all salary payments and purchases would be conducted electronically by computer in one banking system; major world religions (especially Christianity) would have to change into a new world religion, and the churches will help bring it about; more airplane and rail accidents, as well as building and bridge collapses, would occur to create an atmosphere of instability; terrorism would be used to make people demand international controls; and economic interdependence would help lessen national sovereignty, as people would become citizens of the world.”
[Comment: Dr. Dennis Cuddy’s series of article is very informative.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
It is now beyond question that Christianity is under direct assault in the culture war. “The city of Houston has issued subpoenas demanding a group of pastors turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity to Annise Parker, the city’s first openly daughter of Sodom mayor. And those ministers who fail to comply could be held in contempt of court.”
Video of the Sermon:
Contempt of court means not only fines, but it could mean time behind bars. “The Houston Chronicle reported opponents of the ordinance (a bathroom bill) launched a petition drive that generated more than 50,000 signatures — far more than the 17,269 needed to put a referendum on the ballot. However, the city threw out the petition in August over alleged irregularities. After opponents of the bathroom bill filed a lawsuit the city’s attorneys responded by issuing the subpoenas against the pastors.”…
What the mayor and city council did violated the oath which they made before taking office, making themselves perjurers. They ought to be immediately removed from office. The fact that they have not been removed says to me that the people in that city do not understand the seriousness of the mayor and city council’s crime.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How do I even begin this column?
It starts with a major American city electing a lesbian as its mayor. The city then goes on to ram through a “transgender rights” ordinance giving certain desperately messed-up men the “right” to use women’s rest rooms. By now we have already entered the Twilight Zone, but it gets worse.
Naturally the city — Houston, Texas — finds a lot of opposition to this bizarre and unnecessary legislation. Led by various churches, some 50,000 Houstonites sign a petition against the ordinance. The mayor and her henchmen declare the petition irregular and invalid, although it has several times as many signatures as needed.
So the case is going to go to court: and next thing we know, the mayor’s legal team takes the unprecedented step of subpoenaing the sermons preached in their least favorite churches. The mayor claimed the authority to search the sermons for objectionable remarks against herself and her policies, hoping to find some means to destroy the pastors and cripple the churches for their opposition.
In no time at all, this incredible overreach provoked a nationwide uproar, prompting the mayor and her lawyer to back down, sort of. They don’t want the sermons anymore. But they still want to vet the pastors’ “speeches.”
We know from painful experience that these incidents are like waves that creep a little farther up the shore each time until they finally wash away the castle.
What we are seeing here, and in many other places throughout the country, is a focused effort by statists and their “gay” shock troops to destroy the moral authority of Christianity in America. It is not possible for two contradictory moral codes to reign supreme in one nation. One must be trodden down by the other.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
How’s Romans 13 Working for You, Pastors?
I guess I don’t understand all the hubbub. Why are Houston’s pastors objecting to turning over their sermons to the government? Haven’t they told all of us to “obey the authorities?” Doesn’t Romans 13 demand that we obey un-Godly government?
That is what I thought of when I heard the pastors get all riled up about the lesbian mayor in Houston demanding to see their sermons. Hand it over, girls. The government is established by God to do good…remember?
It made me chuckle. Aren’t these guys supposed to be “watchmen”? Isn’t it part of their job to see the wolf coming and warn the folks? Instead, they have told us that God wants us obeying lesbian mayors…unless it directly involves them.
I’m sorry, but there is a part of me that wants to tell them that they got what they deserve. Funny, isn’t it? They only get mad when THEY are the ones violated.
The time to close the barn door has long since passed. They thought they were safe hiding from the world inside their stained-glassed fortresses. The devil’s spawn has found where they hide and they have finally breached the wall.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
More Black Babies Are Aborted Than Are Born Alive; MSM Manipulates Society to Promote Genocide
(NaturalNews) In a recent column for TownHall.com, pro-life advocate Ryan Bomberger, who is African American, detailed the hypocrisy of black politicians and, specifically, the Congressional Black Caucus, regarding African American women and abortion.
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation 44th Annual Legislative Conference was held with Planned Parenthood’s participation to bash the recent U.S. Supreme Court “Hobby Lobby” decision, in which the high court upheld a 10th Circuit Court ruling that said the retailer, which is owned by a Christian family, does not have to pay for certain “day after” abortion treatments. BET Network co-hosted the event with Planned Parenthood, “the nation’s largest abortion chain,” which never misses “an opportunity to target the black community,” Bomberger wrote.
The pro-lifer went on to point out that the Hobby Lobby decision, contrary to claims made by pro-abortion groups, does not reduce women’s access to birth control — it only upholds a closely held company’s First Amendment rights when they have religious objections to paying for abortifacients. The case never addressed the other 16 forms of contraception.
However, Bomberger wrote, the conference had nothing to do with birth control; rather, it was “spin control with a racial twist.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Queering of the Republican Party
I know there are really sincere Americans who still believe the Republican Party is different than the Democratic/Communist Party USA. Perhaps they believe so based on their state party platform, but the GOPs “leadership” continues to have a choke hold on” their way or the highway” while stomping on true conservatives and decent Americans who belong to tea party chapters around the country:
Leading Republicans Move to Stamp Out Challenges From Right
WASHINGTON — “ As conservative activist groups stirred up trouble for establishment Republican Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, party leaders in Washington first tried to ignore the insurgents, then tried to reason with them, and ultimately left it to primary voters to settle the matter.” (Insurgents?)
“This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to undermine their credibility. The goal is to deny them any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.
“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
I thought Boehner and McConnell were part of the “right” in politics.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Elon Musk Warns AI Could Wipe Out Humanity
(NaturalNews) Humanity’s quest to outsmart the Creator by developing robots of a higher and more adaptable level of intelligence could prove disastrous for the survival of our species, says Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk.
Speaking at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in San Francisco, Musk told Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson that artificial intelligence (AI), at least as it is currently advancing, threatens to destroy human life by making robots inherently smarter and more intuitive…
“The advances [quantum AI] brings are not only quantitative in terms of greater speed, but also qualitative: adapting better to environments where the classic agent does not survive. This means that quantum robots are more creative.”
In Musk’s view, the potential for robots designed in this way to turn evil is great, potentially resembling the Terminator robot from the popular Arnold Schwarzenegger movies that deviated from what its creators intended.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Rise of Robot People in the Post-Cybernetic Age, Part 2
The science of Cybernetics is the study and application of regulatory systems and is being applied to biological, computer, social, economic, communication, and other systems. Cybernetic analysis takes place within a closed signaling loop and it can be applied to artificial intelligence, robotics, neuroscience, and social control. Although Cybernetics has been applied to Quantum Physics and consciousness, its inherent flaw is that it is based on a faulty premise: that Mankind, society, and all systems operate within a “closed signaling loop.”
Cybernetic theory leads to the conclusion that men and women, the Earth, and the cosmos are one giant integrated computer-like system which can be programmed like a computer. The inevitable result of Cybernetic belief systems is the attempt to program men and women by a largely invisible group of programmers who are often referred to as the scientific elite. The French physicist Andre-Marie Ampere used the word “cybernetique” in an 1834 paper on the science of civil government. Jay Forrester developed electronic control systems for the U.S. Navy and later applied these concepts to social organizations, corporations and cities. Forrester was one of the original organizers of the MIT School of Industrial Management and the MIT Sloan School of Management. Forrester is also credited as the founder of System Dynamics. W. Edwards Deming, known as the originator of Total Quality Management, was influenced by System Dynamics.
The net effect of Cybernetic Theory is the perception that all people, society, and the world itself are computers or machines that can be programmed or reprogrammed. The ignored consequence of Cybernetics is that people are viewed as robots, so that Cybernetics and all of its spinoffs such as “System Dynamics” and Total Quality Management result in widespread dehumanization.
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Why the Welfare State Isn’t Well and it Isn’t Fair
Throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries Socialism had a fairly precise definition, a somewhat clear program, and a generally agreed-upon goal. The definition of Socialism was some variant of Karl Marx’s well known statement, “From each according to the ability to each according to their need.” Socialism’s program was the nationalization of all means of production, exchange, and distribution. Socialism’s goal was the use of all three in a comprehensive plan to bring about some chimera of social justice.
There were two general schools or roads socialists followed to utopia, Marxism and Fabianism. Both were variants of Socialism. They differed mainly in their stated ultimate ideal of a Socialist State and how to get there.
The Marxists said they believed that in a fully Socialist State the State itself would wither away, and all that would be left was a classless society basking in the sunshine of social justice for all. The method advocated by the Communists to achieve this social nirvana was revolutionary change leading to a dictatorship of the working class (proletariat) which ruthlessly exterminated the old society and built the new.
The Fabians saw their road to social justice leading through a highly centralized government built up gradually by democratic means slowly gaining control of the levers of power and gradually implementing its program of bureaucratic control until complete social justice was achieved.
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Why Your Cat Thinks You’re a Huge, Unpredictable Ape
“How the hell is your cat supposed to know that you’re yelling at him because you want him to stop scratching the couch?” Buffington says. Without the cognitive ability to connect your outburst to their scratching, cats see only chaotic aggression. “To the cat, you’re this crazy primate who is attacking him for no reason,” he says.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |