A coordinated series of bomb blasts in central Baghdad killed at least 21 people wounded 50 others. Two car bombs were detonated immediately after a suicide bomber blew himself up. In addition to the terrorists, at least twelve civilians and nine police officers were killed.
In other news, the governor of Michigan has appointed a bankruptcy lawyer as the emergency manager of the city of Detroit, which is in severe fiscal distress.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to BD, Bewick, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, IW, JD, Jerry Gordon, TV, 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.
Bank of Italy Tells Loss-Making Banks to Not Pay Dividends
Bonuses to executives, managers should also be cut
(ANSA) — Rome, March 14 — Italy’s central bank on Thursday asked Italian banks with balance sheets in the red for 2012 not to pay bonuses to managers or dividends.
In a statement, the Bank of Italy said that banks should not only eliminate bonuses to chief executives if 2012 results are loss-making but that they should also reduce bonuses to other employees.
The bank added that banks should not try to find other methods to “get around” the requested bonus-ban by using, for instance, salary increases or increases in variable compensation for future years.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
British Taxpayers Face £8bn Bill From QE, Admits Bank
Policymakers had previously insisted they expected to make money on the £375bn of gilts bought through QE. But, in a study published on Thursday, the Bank conceded there were scenarios under which the Government would have to bear a loss by the end of the decade.
The Bank stressed that QE was more likely deliver a £17bn profit by the time it is entirely unwound, and that the “narrow” measure of the programme’s profitability ignored the wider benefits to the public finances of lower government borrowing costs and larger tax revenues as a result of stronger economic growth.
However, the risk of taxpayer losses will fuel scepticism about QE, which senior Bank policymakers — including the Governor — have warned may no longer be so effective at stimulating growth.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt: Economic Collapse Would be Devastating, Ashton
Pressure for IMF package, human rights concerns
(ANSAmed) — STRASBOURG, MARCH 13 — The consequences of an economic collapse in Egypt would be devastating and Europe cannot allow this to happen, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday at the European Parliament.
Europe will therefore continue working alongside its international partners to push for the finalization of the International Monetary Fund arrangement, which would enable the EU to mobilize macro-financial assistance of 500 million euros, she said.
The EU foreign policy chief underscored concerns over the rights of women in Egypt, who suffer “violence and harassment”. She said that the EU would not remain silent about fundamental rights issues, but that “at the same time we have to help meet the socio-economic expectations, both the goals of the revolution and the aspirations of the Egyptian people”. Ashton noted the work of Stavros Lambrinidis, the EU special representative for human rights who reported “police abuse” and drew attention to the difficult situation of NGOs working in Egypt. She said that “we have stressed the importance of ensuring a favorable environment for civil society and encouraged the adoption of a new NGO law that ensures NGO transparency while respecting the independence of Civil Society from government control, that eliminates burdensome registration procedures, that does not subject NGO activities to prior government approval on the basis of their alleged ‘usefulness to society’, and that does not limit or demonize NGO funding”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
EU Summit: Inflexible Rules Foster Unemployment, Hollande
(ANSAmed) — BRUSSELS, MARCH 14 — Arriving at the EU summit, French President Francois Hollande said that a lack of flexibility in budget rules led to unemployment and that the priority now was growth. At the end of the European Socialist Party meeting, before arriving at the European Council, Hollande noted that a growth pact had been signed in June and that it should now be implemented to affect 2013 as much as possible.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Euro-MPS Reject Calls to Cut Vast Brussels Budget and Instead Demand Britain Stumps Up More Cash
David Cameron’s hard-fought deal on the EU budget was dealt a blow by Liberal Democrat MEPs last night when they voted for the package to be renegotiated.
MEPs have overwhelmingly rejected the seven-year £ 787 billion pounds deal thrashed out by national leaders last month after marathon talks lasting 32 hours.
The package had cut the EU’s budget by 3.3 per cent from 2014 to 2020 and was hailed as a great success by the Prime Minister.
But yesterday WEDS the European parliament in Strasbourg passed a wrecking resolution was passed by 506 to 161 — including 12 Lib Dems.
Although they did not explicitly reject the 3.3 per cent cut agreed by the Council at its marathon Brussels summit last month, the vote does mean the deal has to be thrashed out again.
The European Parliament has demanded conditions such as the settling of unpaid bills for this year — which could mean a 12 per cent rise in national contributions, or an extra £1.7 billion for Britain.
MEPs have also demanded that they be allowed to shuffle money between different budgets allowing them to splurge even when they manage to make savings.
They also argued that the European Parliament should be able to review the budget, possibly raising its spending in 2017, rather than being tied to a seven- year ‘austerity deal’.
They even called for tax-raising powers which critics warned would lead to British families having to stump up for every pet project dreamed up by the European Parliament.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Greece: Troika Talks Break Down, Loan Put Off
The two sides were edging toward a deal, says minister
(ANSAmed) — ATHENS, MARCH 14 — Troika representatives are due to leave Athens on Thursday with no final agreement having been reached with the coalition on a range of structural reforms but with the Greek side insisting that the pause in the talks will not lead to complications in the disbursal of its next loan tranche from the eurozone and International Monetary Fund. Talks between Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and officials from the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank lasted for a couple of hours on Wednesday night but there no conclusion was reached on matters including the reduction of civil servant numbers and a payment plan for firms and individuals who owe social security contributions. Despite the apparent impasse in the discussions, as daily Kathimerini reports, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras insisted that the two sides were edging toward a deal and that Greece’s next loan tranche of 2.8 billion euros was not in danger. “There has been significant progress in the talks with the troika,” Stournaras told journalists after leaving the talks at the Maximos Mansion, in which he also took part. “The negotiations will continue when the troika representatives return. There is no issue with the loan tranche,” he added. The finance minister indicated that the troika team would return to Athens at the end of the month or at the beginning of April, which means that Greece will not receive its bailout installment this month, as had been originally planned. Stournaras said that just “technical issues” remained to be resolved between the two sides but the indications were that there are still substantial differences on a range of concerns.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Billionaire Shoemaker Deplores Bankers as Well as Politicians
Rome, 13 March (AKI/Bloomberg) — Italian billionaire Diego Della Valle, head of luxury shoe brand Tod’s welcomed the wave of public disgust that swept established politicians from parliament last month and said it’s time to dislodge some top bankers as well.
“It’s clear that people said, ‘That’s enough, it’s time to change, show us a decent country,’“ Della Valle said March 6 in a Bloomberg Television interview.
“That also has to happen in the world that we represent, finance and business and the civil society that guides the country.”
Della Valle, 59, is picking fights with finance executives as banks curb lending and Italy slides deeper into recession. His own wealth has grown, with the market value of Tod’s more than tripling since the end of 2008, as Della Valle boosted sales in Italy and abroad.
In the interview, he renewed his campaign to prod the octogenarian chairman of one of Italy’s leading banks, Intesa Sanpaolo, Giovanni Bazoli, to retire, saying Italian firms need lenders with a global vision.
“These are people who put in their time without producing anything interesting for a serious country,” Della Valle said, speaking from Sant’Elpidio a Mare, where Tod’s is based. “We have to take the situation in hand and start saying with a nice, big chorus of voices capable of breaking through to these people: ‘Stop it, please, step aside because you have already caused enough trouble for the country.’“
Italy’s top financial-company managers are supported by a base of politically controlled non-profit investors known as banking foundations. At Banca Monte Dei Paschi di Siena the bailed-out lender, one foundation accounts for 38 percent of its shareholding. The top five investors at Milan-based Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s second biggest bank, are banking foundations.
Della Valle is taking inspiration from the Feb. 24-25 general election to push for a broader change across boardrooms to shake Italy from its economic stagnation. Unemployment, which has risen to a 13-year high, fueled the upstart campaign of ex- comic Beppe Grillo and denied re-election to career politicians like Chamber of Deputies Speaker Gianfranco Fini.
“If we don’t put the brakes on this and ask these people with the respect to step aside it will all start again as it was before,” said Della Valle, who gave up a directorship at Assicurazioni Generali , Italy’s biggest insurer, last year.
Tod’s was the biggest gainer on 40-stock FTSE MIB Index (FTSEMIB) from the end of 2008 through Tuesday on sales of its signature loafer with rubber spikes on the sole and brands like Hogan and Fay.
Intesa Sanpaolo fell 47 percent over the same period, while UniCredit, Italy’s biggest bank fell 59 percent. Troubled lender Monte Paschi is down 84 percent in that time.
The Intesa chairmanship is up for election at the bank’s annual meeting on April 22. Bazoli’s mandate started in 1982 when he was handed control of Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano, a predecessor to the company he now oversees. Della Valle called for Bazoli to step aside in December.
An Intesa spokesman didn’t have a comment.
Della Valle has retreated from financial company investments in the last two years. His resignation from Trieste, Italy-based Generali followed a clash with the insurer’s former chairman, Cesare Geronzi. In October 2011, Della Valle exited the shareholder syndicate controlling Mediobanca, Italy’s biggest publicly traded investment bank.
Della Valle retains board seats at Ferrari, newspaper publisher RCS Mediagroup and an Italian banking unit of BNP Paribas.
Di Vi Finanziaria, an investment vehicle controlled by Della Valle, owns a $2.4 billion stake in Tod’s.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Michigan Governor Appoints Bankruptcy Lawyer as Detroit’s Emergency Manager
Rejecting an appeal by some Detroit leaders, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan said Thursday that his administration was proceeding with plans to send an emergency manager to run the state’s largest city, and that he favors a lawyer who worked on Chrysler’s bankruptcy proceedings for the job.
“In many respects it’s a sad day,” Mr. Snyder said Thursday afternoon during a news conference in Detroit, which has been strained by annual cash shortages and $14 billion in long term liabilities even as residents have complained of fading, insufficient services. “But again I like to say it’s an opportunity.”
Mr. Snyder said he was recommending Kevyn D. Orr, a Washington lawyer and partner at Jones Day who has focused on restructuring businesses, to become Detroit’s first emergency manager. The governor’s recommendation all but ensures that Mr. Orr, who was part of the team that represented Chrysler in bankruptcy proceedings in 2009, will be chosen. Under state law, a board of leaders from several state departments formally hires emergency managers, and that board was preparing to meet later on Thursday.
| [Return to headlines] |
Monti Asks EU Leaders to Reflect on ‘Italian Case’
Anti-eurozone sentiments by political opponents discussed
(ANSA) — Brussels, March 14 — Outgoing Premier Mario Monti said that he would invite European leaders to reflect on Italy and its post-electoral impasse during summit meetings in Brussels Thursday and Friday.
“I will ask them to reflect both on the positives and negatives because the Italian case itself calls for reflection in general,” Monti said during his last appearance at an EU summit as Italian premier.
Following the country’s February 24-25 general election Monti warned that there is a danger populism in Italy that could derail the EU integration course.
Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left alliance came first in the elections, but failed to win a working majority in the Senate because of votes pulled by three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi’s centre right and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) of comedian Beppe Grillo.
Both Berlusconi and Grillo were accused of using populist rhetoric in the election campaign.
Grillo, whose anti-establishment M5S rocked the political establishment with a stunning show in the elections, has proposed holding a referendum on whether Italy should stay in the eurozone.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Five Million Jobless But Premier Rajoy Defends Reform
Record unemployment rate, but we will return to growth
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — In February the number of people in Spain without a job rose by 60,000 workers to reach 5 million jobless. However Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy on Wednesday defended his government’s labour reform in parliament and said it will not be changed. He also said that employment data in February was the best in five years, though negative. ‘Every time unemployment rises, and even if it does not increase and remains on the same levels of the past years, we cannot make a positive evaluation and I am not doing so’, said Rajoy. ‘This is why we are carrying out economic policies which we are convinced will soon lead Spain to growth’.
The premier’s optimism was criticised by the leader of the Psoe in the opposition, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, according to whom the government’s policies have contributed to the one million job losses last year and have already led half a million to lose their employment this year. ‘If economic policies and the labour reform will not be changed, new jobs will not be created next year’, warned Rubalcaba.
The Spanish economy will close the first trimester of 2013 with over 300,000 new jobless, a similar number to that recorded in the same period in 2012, according to the indicator Aml, Afi-Asempleo, drafted by managers of temporary work agencies which foresees that employment will shrink by a further 4,6% in March on an annual basis.
On the other hand, the ‘Baveridge curve’ representing the relationship between unemployment and the job vacancy rate per 100 inhabitants, indicates that while during the 2005-2008 period the average was over 20 jobless every vacant job, in the third trimester of 2012 the relationship was 107 unemployed per vacant place.
The Spanish government on Tuesday discussed how to invest 3,5 million euros in the next four years to support youth employment and promote companies. The plan presented by Rajoy, which includes 100 measures, provides for fiscal advantages and cuts to welfare contributions for self-employed young workers and companies hiring workers under 30. In the last five years of recession, the unemployment rate in Spain grew to 26% with over one in two youths without a job and thousands forced to move abroad to seek employment.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
25 Disturbing Facts About Psych Drugs, Soldiers and Suicides
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
Stimulants, antidepressants, anti-psychotics, sedatives and pain meds are the new “fuel” for America’s front-line forces. While the idea of sending medicated soldiers into battle was unthinkable just three decades ago, today it’s the status quo. And the cost in human lives has never been more tragic.
Here are 25 disturbing facts about psych drugs, soldiers and suicides. They are disturbing because everybody seems to be pretending there is no link between psychiatric drugs and soldier suicides. So soldiers and veterans keep dying while the Pentagon (and the VA) keep pretending they don’t know why. (Sources are listed at the bottom of this article.)
1) 33% of the U.S. Army is on prescription medications, and nearly a quarter of those are on psychotropic drugs
2) In 2010, the Pentagon spent $280 million on psychiatric drugs. That number has since risen.
3) There are now over 8,000 suicides each year by U.S. soldiers and veterans; that’s over 22 a day
[…]
25) Dr. Bart Billings, a retired Army Colonel and former military psychologist, refers to psychiatric drugs as a “chemical lobotomy” for soldiers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Biden Press Office Apologizes for Demanding Student Journalist Delete Photographs
Vice President Joe Biden’s press office has apologized to the University of Maryland following “pure intimidation” demands for a student journalist to delete photos he took of a domestic violence event featuring Biden.
College Park Patch reports that a credentialed student from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, Jeremy Barr, was snapping photos at the Rockville event when a Biden staffer began interrogating the student.
“Did you take any photos during the event,” Barr said he was asked by Biden staffer Dana Rosenzweig. “I need to see your camera right now,” she reportedly said after Barr confirmed he had taken photographs of the event that also featured Attorney General Eric Holder and Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bill Gates: Obama Needs to Have More Power
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the wealthiest American, said on “some days” he wishes the U.S. political system were like England’s, so that President Barack Obama could have “slightly more power.”
Gates was asked for his assessment of President Obama’s job performance during an interview at Politico’s “Playbook Cocktails” event.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Dem Group Labels Talk of DHS Bullet Buys “Extremist”
A prominent Democratic Party lobby group is targeting users of AOL’s email service with ads demanding they sign a petition calling on Sarah Palin to retract “dangerous rhetoric” about the federal government stockpiling ammunition in preparation for civil unrest.
The ad, which can be seen in the video clip above and appears after users send an email, was paid for by the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), a lobbying organization which represents governors affiliated with the Democratic Party and was instrumental in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory. Many former DGA staff members have gone on to hold prominent positions within the government.
The ad refers to a comment made by former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin on her official Facebook page last month in reference to the Department of Homeland Security’s mammoth purchase of some 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the last year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Exposed: How Bloomberg Planned to Seize Upon Gun Tragedy (Video)
It is documented — gun grabber Mayor Bloomberg crafted a premeditated plan to exploit shooting tragedies.
“You never want to a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that, is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”- Rahm Emanuel
An article published today in Politicker confirmed what the world already knows — that gun grabbers like Bloomberg, Obama and Feinstein anticipated that more shooting tragedies would occur and planned to exploit them.
Mayor Bloomberg readied a team to propagandize shootings in the wake of the Aurora massacre, which quickly focused on ‘holding candidates Obama & Romney accountable’ on guns, and launching the Demand a Plan celebrity-driven media campaign.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Feinstein Scolds Cruz for ‘Lecture’ On Guns (Video)
‘I’m not a 6th-grader … I’ve been up close and personal to the Constitution’
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a ban on the sale and manufacture of more than 150 types of semi-automatic weapons with military-style features Thursday.
The vote comes after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced bills earlier in the week to enact near-universal background checks and combat gun trafficking.
The bill was approved by the committee on a party-line, 10-8 vote, which came after a heated exchange between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Feinstein became furious at one point with Cruz for “lecturing” her on the Second Amendment and the use of certain language in the Constitution.
[Comment: She got upset because she knows full well what she is doing violates the Constitution.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Florida Residents Report Mysterious Black Military Aircraft
It used to be a favorite pastime of the establishment media and its snobbish intelligentsia to poke fun at the “black helicopter crowd,” who they dismissively wrote off as loons and conspiracy nuts. More recently, the Department of Southern Poverty Security has insisted most of them are white racists bent on destroying the country.
Now that the Pentagon and the feds have stepped up their effort to militarize state and local law enforcement and conduct in-your-face military operations at civilian airports in the dead of night and stage mock strafing of civilian traffic in populated urban centers, more and more people are seeing what was not long ago a snickering pejorative for scriptwriters with degrees from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
Ocala.com reported on Tuesday a number of people in and around Gainesville, Florida, seeing not only black military aircraft, but “mysterious military-style aircraft.”
[Comment: Probably practising curfew patrols for the upcoming economic collapse.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
LA Times Announces: White Men Are Terrorists
The establishment media wasted little time after the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding the mailed fist of the state crack down on Americans expressing opposition to an increasingly tyrannical federal government.
“There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat with the U.S. government. They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal,” a Los Angeles Times op-ed claimed on March 8, a couple days after the SPLC letter went out warning of another Oklahoma City terrorist bombing.
The rant published in the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the country — following up on the heels of the grand lady of Mockingbird propaganda, the New York Times — doesn’t mince words:
“They’re not jihadists. They are white, right-wing Americans, nearly all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.”
Despite the ethnic diversity of the patriot movement, the LA Times engages in brazen racism and deliberately singles out white people. This feeds into the SPLC’s absurdist propaganda arguing folks actively resisting constitutional violations perpetuated by the federal government — from the trashing the Second Amendment to the Fourth and beyond — are intimately linked to a minuscule and entirely marginalized white supremacist movement. By raising a fantasy specter of Klansman armed with AR-15s gunning for black and Latino people, the SPLC and the establishment media are actively colluding in an attempt to demonize and eventually destroy an increasingly effective political opposition.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
McCain and Graham, Irrelevant or Dangerous
Republican Senator prefers to attack Rand Paul, Ted Cruz for defending liberty rather than Barack Obama, Eric Holder for trying to destroy it, that senator has become irrelevant at best or dangerous at worst.
Senator Paul simply wanted an opinion from Attorney-General Eric Holder as to whether the President of the United States has the constitutional authority to use weaponized drones to kill American citizens, without due process, on American soil. (By the way, my 7-year-old grandson came up with a “no” answer long before Holder did.)
For this perceived outrage, the cantankerous McCain, who long ago chose to transform himself from an American hero into a political clown for the amusement of Washington media elites, granted an interview to the loony-left Huffington Post website to vent his displeasure. Therein, he referred to Senator Paul, Senator Cruz and Rep. Amash as “wacko birds.”
Amash, who has taken on McCain & company before, especially on Twitter, tweeted in response, “Sen McCain called @SenRandPaul, @SenTedCruz & me ‘wacko birds.’ Bravo, Senator. You got us. Did you come up with that at #DinnerWithBarack?” — a reference to McCain and Graham having dinner with the president just before their condemnation of their colleagues.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
New ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ Gives Monsanto Power Over US Government
There truly is no rest for the wicked, and Monsanto is at war once again against health conscious consumers with the latest ‘Monsanto Protection Act’, managing to sneak wording into the latest Senate legislation that would give them blanket immunity from any USDA action regarding the potential dangers of their genetically modified creations while under review. The USDA would be unable to act against any and all new GMO crops that were suspected to be wreaking havoc on either human health or the environment.
It’s a legislative weapon that could be passed as early as next week if we don’t gather enough support to force our Senators to eliminate the section. It all started in the late hours of Monday night, when lobbyists working for the Monsanto-fronted biotechnology industry managed to slide a ‘rider’ (through the deceptively worded Farmer Assurance Provision, Sec. 735) into the Senate Continuing Resolution spending bill that is currently on the table of the Senate.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Obama’s Green Money Scheme Exposed
America is waging war on two main fronts. The ongoing terrorist threat is obvious. Less apparent, but equally as dangerous, is the loss of freedoms through a well-organized, United Nations’ sponsored coup on America’s sovereignty. Local, state and federal governments are being infiltrated at a swift pace under the guise of “going green” under the U.N.’s Green Charter.
Long backed by President Barack Obama, it is a scheme that allows confiscation of private wealth and property. Only informed and proactive citizens can stop it. By wresting away control of local governments, the foreign threat with the backing of the Obama administration has spread quickly. It is known as the U.N.’s Agenda 21 and ICLEI. Actions to combat Agenda 21 have proven successful in numerous towns and cities from College Station, Texas to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, from Carver, Massachusetts to Amador County, California where citizens and local government officials have taken action and tossed it out of their towns.
[…]
There is a reason why this administration wants to bypass Congress and ignore Americans’ best interests. It is about money. A group of American and globalist elites have devised a game plan to reap vast personal fortunes at Americans’ expense. As an example of how your state is being infiltrated, the state of Colorado has been designated by anti-American activists as “The Jewel of ICLEI” and Agenda 21. Colorado is the beta test—the how-to-example for taking over a state’s resources including land, water supply, transportation, electricity usage, business permits and citizens’ personal property and wealth.
(To understand the threat, listen to the entire YouTube interview posted below titled: WARNING: Agenda 21, Soros, British Petroleum (BP America), Rockefellers and Others — Agenda 21 ICLEI: Global Governance. The following additional YouTube videos and various links further expose the danger. As an American under threat, your time is now to step up and be counted. Listen to and share the YouTube videos and articles posted below and then send a link of this article/website to fellow Americans and your local, state and national representatives so that they will have no excuse.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Proposed Texas Law Calls for Allowing Vaccination of Children Without Parental Consent
(NaturalNews) If you thought the so-called “great state” of Texas was a bastion of freedom, liberty, and minimal government intrusion, think again. Efforts are currently in the works in the form of two new Senate bills to seize parental sovereignty rights and allow minors living in the Lone Star State to consent to vaccinations.
Senate Bill 63, entitled “Relating to consent to the immunization of certain children,” would allow minors to consent to vaccinations without their parents’ permission, violating existing Texas statutes that prohibit such action. Sponsored by Senator Jane Nelson, a Republican from Texas’ District 12 near Dallas, S.B. 63 is a direct affront to the rights of parents to govern the vaccination choices of their children.
[…]
It all conveniently aligns with the United Nations’ infamous Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which basically declares that governments have more power over children than children’s own parents. Part of this sinister declaration, which is the driving force behind S.B. 63, claims that children can decide for themselves the chemicals they do or do not want injected into their bodies in the name of disease prevention.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Gun-free zone, Pacifists, The dreaded assault rifle or weapon of war or killing machine of mass death actually kills rather few Americans.
Every day another one of the stories comes in. A teacher panicked by a plastic gun, an army man on a cupcake, a t-shirt, a pop tart chewed into the shape of a gun or a finger gun hits the panic button. Supensions and lectures quickly follow as the latest threat to the gun-free zone, usually in the form of a little boy, is tackled to the ground and lectured to within an inch of his life.
Tellingly these incidents rarely take place in the inner city schools where teenage gang members walk through metal detectors at the start of the day. The safety officers in those schools, big weary men with eyes that look everywhere at once, don’t waste their time on toys. Not unless those toys are full-size, painted black and filed down to look like real guns.
It’s usually the schools where a shooting is wholly unlikely; where gun violence is not a daily reality, but an unlikely convergence of horror, that institutional vigilance hits an irrational peak as every school imagines that it could be the next Columbine or the next Sandy Hook.
[…]
This isn’t a precautionary attitude, but a pacifist one. Gun horror is not a productive emotion, but learned helplessness disguised as moral superiority. Rather than teaching children to hate killers, schools are instead teaching them to hate guns. And reducing murders to instruments rather than morals, children are left with no sense of right and wrong, only an instinctive horror of violence.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Southern Poverty Law Center’s War on Patriots Revealed
Groups of American patriots are under attack not only by the federal government and some state governments, but also by some so-called public-interest watchdogs such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to a number of pro-American activists such as religious leader and prolific NewsWithViews.com columnist Chuck Baldwin and constitutional attorney Larry Klayman founder of Freedom Watch and Judicial Watch.
On Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report that claims the number of people dedicated to federal government overthrow is increasing especially after actions taken by the administration of President Barack Obama.
[…]
“In other words, the SPLC is advising left-wing political hacks Holder and Napolitano to forget about Islamic terrorists, organized crime gangs, criminal aliens and other lawless groups and concentrate on patriotic American citizens who oppose Big Government, Statism, and New World Order actions by politicians,” said attorney and political strategist Mike Baker.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Surprise: High School Grads Can’t Read
As of 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, New York City spent $19,000 per illiterate student per year. If you had to pay that much tuition for a private school, and your kid could barely read a bubble-gum wrapper, you’d think you were being ripped off.
But it’s not just New York. In ten years, Wisconsin doubled its per-pupil spending on the public schools, from just under $5,000 in 1998 to over $10,000 in 2008. Government tests, though, find that only 32 percent of the kids in Wisconsin’s public schools can read properly. On the other hand, these kids do know how to demonstrate against the state’s evil plan to make teachers pay a wee bit of their own pension and health care costs. So it’s not like they’re learning nothing at all.
Public school kids learn a lot of cool stuff that has nothing to do with reading, writing, or arithmetic. They learn that you can be any “gender” you want, on any given day. They learn all about the evils of capitalism (it causes Global Warming, you know) and the ineffable goodness of socialism. They learn an enormous amount about homosexuality as a universal good. They learn that the Holy Bible is hate literature, that their parents’ Christian beliefs are obsolete and wrong, and that “religion” in general—except when it’s used by Democrat politicians to justify abortion, sodomite mockmarriage, and class warfare—is something vaguely obscene that must be rigorously kept out of public discourse.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Well, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is at it again. In their typical obsessive hate-filled paranoia, the SPLC has issued another baseless assassination piece against anyone whom they consider to be “right-wing.” They call their hit piece, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.” Of course, only “right-wing” leaders are so characterized. According to the SPLC, left-wing leaders are always the voices of reason and goodness. Barf!
The SPLC article lists several conservative leaders as examples of “hate and extremism.” They include Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), U.S. Representative Trey Radel (R-FL), former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel, FOX News radio host Todd Starnes, and ConservativeDaily.com’s Tony Adkins. “Even further to the right,” according to the SPLC, are Oath Keepers (founded by Stewart Rhodes), Judicial Watch’s Larry Klayman, and, yes, yours truly.
[…]
However, even more unfortunate is the fact that the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., also gives credence to the SPLC’s ultra-left-wing propaganda. This is the most disturbing part of the SPLC hysteria: the nation’s law enforcement agencies that receive instructions, bulletins, memos, briefs, etc., from the DOJ are watching the feds regurgitate the left-wing propaganda of the SPLC. This is why State police agencies, such as what we saw happen in Missouri’s MIAC report, end up characterizing conservatives as “extremist hate groups.” They got it from the DOJ, which got it from the SPLC.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
US Army Colonel Issues Warning About Remorseless “Killer Robots” (Video)
Award-winning military writer and former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer has penned an essay warning of the threat posed by remorseless “killer robots” that will be used to stalk and slaughter human targets in the near future.
Pryer worked in military intelligence after joining the US Army in 1992 and has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. He has won several prestigious awards since he began writing in 2009.
In an essay published by the United States Army Combined Arms Center, Pryer laments how the use of unmanned drones — which kill 50 innocent civilian for every suspected terrorist — are perpetuating wars and endangering America’s global reputation. He then makes a stark warning that the drone strike program is merely a pre-cursor to the kind of nightmare technocracy depicted in the Terminator movies.
“It seems heart-breakingly obvious that future generations will someday look back upon the last decade as the start of the rise of the machines,” writes Pryer, adding that the US government is developing, “robots so advanced that they make today’s Predators and Reapers look positively impotent and antique. These killer robots, though, will share one thing in common with their primitive progenitors: with remorseless purpose, they will stalk and kill any human deemed “a legitimate target” by their controllers and programmers.”
Pryer’s comments echo those of Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, who has repeatedly warned that the robots currently being developed under the auspices of DARPA will eventually be used to kill.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Confirmed! Newfound Particle is a Higgs Boson
A newfound particle discovered at the world’s largest atom smasher last year is, indeed, the Higgs boson, the particle thought to explain how other particles get their mass, scientists reported today (March 14) at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy.
Physicists announced on July 4, 2012, that, with more than 99 percent certainty, they had found a new elementary particle weighing about 126 times the mass of the proton that was likely the long-sought Higgs boson. The Higgs is sometimes referred to as the “God particle,” to the chagrin of many scientists, who prefer its official name.
But the two experiments, CMS and ATLAS, hadn’t collected enough data to say the particle was, for sure, the Higgs boson, the last undiscovered piece of the puzzle predicted by the Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.
Now, after collecting two and a half times more data inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — where protons zip at near light-speed around the 17-mile-long (27 kilometer) underground ring beneath Switzerland and France — physicists say the particle is the Higgs.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
In 1981 There Were Eight NHS Press Officers in Britain. Now There Are 82 in London Alone
The NHS is spending tens of millions of pounds a year on public relations at a time when frontline services are under threat.
In 1981, there were only eight press officers working for the entire Health Service. There are now ten times that number in London alone, a survey has found — 82 at the last count, on an average salary of £37,278.
Some £9.7million went on press officers’ salaries at hospitals and primary care trusts in the capital, while private PR firms were paid a further £3million.
The total cost of almost £13million would be enough to pay for 600 nurses.
And, as the total refers solely to London, it means that across the NHS as much as £100million may go on PR each year.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Italy on Solid Legal Ground in Marines Case, FM Terzi Says
‘International arbitration is the way to go and India knows why’
(ANSA) — Herzliya, March 13 — Italy is on solid legal ground in seeking international arbitration in the case of two Italian marines charged with killing two Indian fishermen, Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi told reporters in Israel on Wednesday.
The marines have been at the centre of a diplomatic row between Italy and India for shooting Jelestine Valentine and Ajesh Binki during an international anti-piracy mission off the southern Kerala coast in February 2012.
Already-strained relations between Rome and New Delhi notched up on Monday when the Italian government announced that marines Salvatore Latorre and Massimiliano Girone would remain in Italy and not return to India to face murder charges after being allowed to come home to vote in February’s general election.
“We have juridically solid reasons to proceed in the direction of international arbitration,” Terzi told reporters as he arrived at an international conference organized by the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS), an Israeli think tank. “The Indian government is amply apprised of all it needs to know about our reasons, as do many of our partners”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Center-Left MPs Slam Thorne’s Pro-M5S Speech to Students
New media good for Italian politics, Thorne tweets in response
(ANSA) — Rome, March 13 — Center-left MPs on Wednesday slammed US Ambassador David Thorne’s speech to Roman high school students in which he held up rabble-rousing comic Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) as an example to follow.
The M5S rose a huge protest vote in the recent general election to become the single biggest party in the House and hold the balance of power in the Senate. “You can take your country in hand and act, like the 5-Star Movement, for reform and change”, Thorne told students at Rome’s Visconti high school earlier today.
“If confirmed, the ambassador’s speech would be tantamount to grave interference in Italian affairs”, said newly elected MP Michele Anzaldi, who is from the Democratic Party (PD). He went on to call on Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi to demand an explanation from the US State Department.
“Thorne’s comments were misplaced and made with deplorable levity”, newly elected MP Rosa Maria Di Giorgi (PD) echoed him.
“If confirmed, Thorne’s words amount to a diplomatic incident.
I hope the US State Department will immediately distance itself from the ambassador’s statement”.
“The US Embassy does not support any political party. It dialogues with everyone and supports the use of social media as a tool for change”, the US embassy tweeted in response. “My words have sparked interest. New media use is positive for the Italian political system”, Thorne himself tweeted, while Grillo proudly posted the ambassador’s speech on his blog.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Beppe Grillo Calls M5S ‘French Revolution’ Without Guillotine
Tells Handelsblatt wants online referendum in Italy on euro
(ANSA) — Rome, March 13 — Beppe Grillo, leader of the Italian 5-Star Movement (M5S), called his populist and anti-establishment group’s hand in Italy’s current political uncertainty a “French revolution” but that Europe “should not be afraid”, in an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt published Wednesday.
Grillo also challenged Germans to explain why its country’s economy is uniquely thriving in the eurozone. M5S’s strong 25% voter-support at Italy’s parliament election in late February has thrown Italian government transition into gridlock.
“Europe shouldn’t be afraid,” said the movement leader, who explained that what is needed is a “strong inversion and more democracy”.
Grillo, whose political rallying tactics are based on Internet forums and street gatherings, proposed holding an “online referendum” on whether Italy should remain in the single currency, “just as there should have been a vote on the Lisbon treaty” — themes on which, he claims “our (Italian) constitution was ignored”. “We are the French revolution, without the guillotine,” Grillo declared, but then clarified that he is not anti-Europe. “I only said that I wanted a plan B for Europe. We must ask ourselves what has happened to Europe, why is there no common information policy, no common tax policy, no common immigration policy, and why only Germany has enriched itself,” Grillo explained.
“Italy is de facto already out of the euro,” Grillo continued, saying northern European countries will keep Italy in the eurozone only “until their banks get their investments back on Italian treasury bonds; then they’ll let us fall like a hot potato”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Ministry Removes ‘Solidarity’ Ribbon for Marines From Website Amid Diplomatic Row With India
Rome, 13 March (AKI) — Italy’s defence ministry announced on Wednesday it was removing from its website a banner bearing a symbolic yellow ribbon wrapped around the regimental badge of two marines at the centre of a diplomatic row with India.
“The yellow ribbon wrapped around the insignia of the San Marco Regiment Lion and symbol of the solidarity to the two riflemen Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, who were detained in India by local judicial authorities… will be removed today from the Italian Navy’s website,” read a message on the site.
Italy has reportedly asked India to set up a meeting of diplomats in order to reach “an amicable solution” over the case of Latorre and Girone, who it is refusing to return to India to stand trial for the killings of two fisherman in February 2012.
India has summoned the Italian ambassador in Delhi to express its anger over Rome’s decision announced on Monday, which the Indian government has termed “unacceptable”.
India’s Supreme Court allowed Massimilian Latorre and Salvatore Girone to go home to vote in last month’s elections. The marines were ordered to return within four weeks. The top court ruled in January they should be tried by a special Indian court.
But Italy argues that because the case is subject to international maritime law, it had been decided that the pair would not return to India when their leave permits expired.
Rome is arguing it wants its nationals to be tried in Italy, saying the incident took place in international waters and that New Delhi does not have jurisdiction in the case.
At the time of the shooting, the marines were guarding an the Italian oil tanker Enrica Lexie off India’s south-western coast.
Italy says that the Indian fishing boat had behaved aggressively and ignored warning shots from the tanker. The fishermen were reportedly unarmed.
Last year, Italy paid compensation of 10 million rupees (184,000 dollars) to each of the families of the fishermen.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Man Jailed for 14 Years for Trafficking Teenagers From the UK to Use as Prostitutes Across Europe
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
A man has been jailed for 14 years for his role in the ‘horrific’ ordeal of two teenage girls being trafficked via London to work as prostitutes in mainland Europe.
A court heard Odosa Usiobaifo, 35, from Enfield, north London, was involved in a ‘significant’ organised crime gang trafficking young women for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Usiobaifo was arrested after two Nigerian girls missing from local authority care in London were given false passports and tickets and placed on a flight to Spain.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pope Visits Church Residence to Pay His Bill
(AGI) — Vatican, Mar 14 — The new Pope visited the church of Santa Maria Maggiore on Thursday, in a police car with no escort. He also visited the church residence where he lived before the conclave to pay his bill “to set a good example,” said Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
He has long been fascinated by Islam and the culture of the Middle East.
Now it has emerged that the Prince of Wales is having lessons in Arabic.
The Prince told guests at a reception in Qatar today that the language ‘goes in one ear and out the other’.
But an aide revealed that he is so keen to learn it that he has been having private tuition for more than six months.
Being able to read Arabic would enable the Prince, who is passionate about encouraging dialogue between different religions, to read the Koran in its original form.
It would also mean he could decipher Arabic script during visits to mosques and museums of Islamic art.
Later in the day the prince got a chance to try out his Arabic when he interrupted some youngsters in an art class who were painting their names on the floor.
Unprompted, Charles had a go at reading them. ‘You’re a very good Arabic student,’ said Noor Eldeen Shazli, 13, to much laughter.
The Prince was in Doha attending the launch of the Qatar-UK Alumni Network, for Qataris who have attended British universities.
Dr Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada, chairman of the association and Qatar’s energy minister, asked the Prince if he spoke any Arabic, and the Prince said: ‘I tried to learn it once but I gave up. It goes in one ear and out the other.’
Dr Al-Sada told him: ‘It’s never too late to learn.’
One of the Prince’s aides confirmed that he has been having lessons in Arabic recently, adding: ‘He is enormously interested in the region.’
The Prince speaks good French, some German, and has also had lessons in Welsh.
All of the women at the reception were dressed head to toe in black, wearing a traditional shaila on their head and an abayya covering their body.
The Prince asked Dnya Al-Yahri, a 28-year-old Essex University graduate, ‘Did you dress like that [in the UK]?’
She replied: ‘No.’
The IT worker later said she and other Qatari women wore western clothes, with a headscarf covering their head, when they were students.
All of the men in the room wore a traditional white thobe from neck to foot, with a ghitra on their head secured by a band called an igul.
Later the Prince had a private audience with Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser, the second — and favourite — wife and official consort of the Emir of Qatar, who is regarded as one of the most powerful figures in the oil-rich state.
| — Hat tip: IW | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
Lewis Patterson, 22, armed himself with a double-edged axe while high on drugs, and along with two accomplices, threatened a 17-year-old boy who just happened to pass by them.
Hull Crown Court heard the gang, made of Patterson, Louis Coult and Christopher Matthews, struck him in the face and put the axe to his neck.
One of the thugs swung the axe, only narrowly missing the boy’s head.
It became embedded in a fence and Coult pulled it free, held it to their victim’s face and demanded he empty his pockets.
The boy handed over his wallet, which contained £10, before he was frogmarched to a cashpoint and withdrew £250.
Despite being arrested and charged with robbery, one of the men, Patterson, 22, went on to assault another victim after being released on bail.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Councils that dish out spot fines for feeding the ducks or putting up lost cat posters were accused last night of using the public as a ‘cash cow’.
Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles launched a ferocious attack on town halls for milking residents after a report revealed a five-fold increase in town halls’ use of penalty notices in a decade.
Nearly 1,400 fines are handed out every week for petty ‘offences’ such as handing out leaflets without a licence, dropping a cigarette butt in your own garden and overfilling rubbish bins, the study found.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
A council spent £23,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to gag reporting of a case where it had placed a four-year-old in foster care with a suspected paedophile.
Bristol City Council tried and failed to obtain a High Court injunction which would prevent embarrassing details of the case being made public.
Social services took nearly three weeks to remove the girl from a foster family, despite the father being under suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.
He later killed himself after police took a laptop away from the property which contained a cache of child abuse images.
Despite the little girl and the children of the suspected paedophile being automatically granted media anonymity, the council still tried to obtain a blanket gagging order.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** EXTREMELY Disturbing Content **]
These are the horrific injuries inflicted upon a young woman whose boyfriend flew into a rage when he was unable to withdraw money from a cash machine.
But despite the terrible wounds inflicted upon Loretta Butterworth, 22, by her boyfriend, Toby Hayden, 27, has been spared jail.
A woman who heard Miss Butterworth screaming ‘please help me’ said she saw Hayden holding her with one hand and hitting her face with the other.
His rage did not stop there and when police went to arrest him he spat in the face of one officer and tried to gouge the eyes of another.
Hayden was already serving a suspended prison sentence, but magistrates decided that not sending him to jail would be a tougher option.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: How Local Democracy is Being Crushed Under the Jackboot of the Government’s Mr Concrete
As if Middle England was not already angry enough with this Government, a new battle is commencing. After gay marriage, wind turbines and the London-Birmingham rail link through the Chilterns, comes the concreting of the English countryside.
Ministers insist that the country needs hundreds of thousands more houses, and that many of these must be built on rural greenfield sites. The Government has changed planning law, supposedly in the interests of economic growth, to impose ‘a presumption in favour of development’.
All over Britain, communities find themselves confronted with draconian demands from central Government to accept new housing — far in excess of anything local plans recognise as acceptable — which threatens to change their areas beyond recognition.
[…]
This Government is bent on a massive housing programme, which it believes will generate economic growth. Ministers talk glibly of ‘getting the planners off society’s back’.
Yet these are weasel words: the very reason this overcrowded island still has so much countryside is because planning officers have laboured for decades to protect it.
We shall get nowhere useful until the Government can admit that Britain’s population is currently growing at an unsustainable rate.
It would be far more profitable — and popular — for ministers to address this huge problem than to devise plans for new house-building on a monstrous scale, which will make the south of England, in particular, a hellhole for our children’s generation to live in.
[…]
This week, a Tory councillor in East Devon was exposed by a newspaper for boasting about his power to wave a wand for the developers — at a price.
The man, Graham Brown, said: ‘If I can’t get planning, nobody will … I don’t come cheap. If I turn a greenfield site into a housing estate and I’m earning the developer two or three million, then I ain’t doing it for peanuts’. There are, alas, others like Brown, together with an army of housebuilders thrilled at being granted licence to turn grass and cornfields into suburban semis.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
A Mother who posed as her 11-year-old daughter to trap an internet predator told last night of her shock after hearing he had walked free from court.
Matthew Jenart, 28, dodged jail after he admitted targeting the girl on Facebook and sending her messages asking for ‘naked fun’.
Yesterday the unemployed loner said he had ‘expected’ to go to jail for his actions, which can carry a maximum sentence of 14 years.
In a series of shocking messages, he posed as a local 15-year-old boy and asked for ‘naughty fun’, adding, ‘try it you will like it’.
But despite knowing his intended target was only 11, Jenart was allowed to walk free after Teesside Crown Court Recorder Robert Adams said he could not be sure of his intentions.
Jenart is now back at his home, which is within driving distance of his victim — and yesterday his Facebook page was still active.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Labour Suspends Yorkshire Peer Over Jewish Conspiracy Slur
LABOUR today suspended one of its peers as it launched an investigation into allegations that he blamed a Jewish conspiracy for his imprisonment for dangerous driving.
According to The Times, Britain’s first Muslim peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham blamed his prison sentence — for sending text messages shortly before his car was involved in a fatal crash near Sheffield — on pressure placed on the courts by Jews “who own newspapers and TV channels”.
The Muslim peer allegedly told an Urdu-language broadcast in Pakistan that the judge who jailed him for 12 weeks was appointed to the High Court after helping a “Jewish colleague” of Tony Blair during an important case.
Following publication of the remarks in The Times today, a Labour spokesman said: “The Labour Party deplores and does not tolerate any sort of anti-Semitism. Following reports in The Times today we are suspending Lord Ahmed pending an investigation.”
Lord Ahmed was suspended from the Labour Party for three months last year over reports that he offered a 10 million-dollar “bounty” for the capture of US President Barack Obama and his White House predecessor, George Bush.
The peer denied having made the comments, published in a Pakistani newspaper, and was reinstated after an investigation by Labour Lords Chief Whip Lord Bassam.
Pakistan-born property developer Lord Ahmed, 55, joined the Labour Party in his teens and was made a life peer in 1998.
In 2009 he was jailed for 12 weeks for dangerous driving after sending and receiving text messages minutes before his car crashed into a stationary vehicle on the M1 near Sheffield on Christmas Day 2007.
He was freed by the Court of Appeal after serving only 16 days of his prison sentence and later supported an AA/Populus poll into mobile phone use among motorists, saying he had “learnt the hard way” about the problem.
The Times obtained video and audio of an Urdu-language TV interview, believed to have been broadcast in April last year, in which he discussed the decision to sentence him at Sheffield Crown Court, rather than a magistrates’ court with lesser sentencing powers.
He allegedly said: “My case became more critical because I went to Gaza to support Palestinians. My Jewish friends who own newspapers and TV channels opposed this.”
Sheffield-educated Lord Ahmed became the first non-white chair of the South Yorkshire Labour Party, holding the position for some years. In 1998 he was appointed to the House of Lords by Tony Blair.
In June 2007 he criticised the honouring of Salman Rushdie with a knighthood because of what he saw as Rushdie’s “offensiveness to Islam”
| — Hat tip: Bewick | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
A number of ‘very high profile’ figures are to be arrested over new child sex abuse allegations, a top prosecutor has revealed.
Detectives investigating the Jimmy Savile scandal and other historic sex allegations are preparing a dramatic new wave of celebrity arrests.
In an extraordinary public statement, Nazir Afzal of the Crown Prosecution Service said child sex abuse inquiries are a ‘growing industry’ and more arrests are planned for the next few weeks.
Mr Afzal, who has specialised in prosecuting child grooming cases, said those due to be detained were not directly linked to Savile — regarded as Britain’s most prolific predatory paedophile.
Instead, he said, they were among the ‘others’ identified by detectives as having committed similar alleged offences.
‘This is a growing industry,’ said Mr Afzal. ‘There are more arrests scheduled over the next few weeks. Some are very high-profile figures.’
He added: ‘They are people whose names have come forward because of the high profile of child abuse in recent months. There are people you will be interested in.’
Mr Afzal’s comments came as he took part in a London seminar on tackling child abuse, organised by the Policy Exchange think tank.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Gagging clauses which have prevented hundreds of NHS whistleblowers speaking out are to be outlawed.
Departing staff will instead be given a new legal right to raise issues that could be in the public interest, such as patient safety, death rates and poor care.
Last night Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted that creating a culture of ‘openness and transparency’ across the NHS was vital to prevent a repeat of the Mid Staffordshire scandal, in which as many as 1,200 patients died.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said that so-called ‘compromise agreements’, under which NHS staff cannot raise anything embarrassing to their employers when they leave their jobs, would be barred with immediate effect.
‘There has been a culture where people felt if you speak up about problems in the NHS you didn’t love the NHS. Actually, it’s exactly the opposite,’ the Health Secretary said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Wind Farms Are Net Carbon Dioxide Emitters
(NaturalNews) Large British wind farms will actually release as much carbon dioxide as fossil-fuel power plants, according to a study conducted by researchers from Aberdeen University and published in the journal Nature.
The source of the emissions is not the windmills themselves, but the land on which they are being constructed.
“Much of the cheap land being targeted by developers desperate to cash in on wind farm subsidies is peat land in remote wild land areas of the UK,” said Helen McDade of the John Muir Trust.
Peat retains its carbon only when kept in its natural damp, boggy condition. But the development that goes along with big energy projects, from roads and rails to the windmills themselves, damages the peat and disrupts the flow of water, causing massive carbon dioxide release.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
UK’s Labour Party Suspends Lord Ahmed Over Alleged Comments About Jewish Conspiracy
Britain’s Labour Party has suspended one of its members in the House of Lords amid allegations he blamed a Jewish conspiracy for his prison sentence for dangerous driving.
Nazir Ahmed, 55, was jailed in 2009 for sending text messages shortly before his car was involved in a fatal crash.
The Times of London says that in an Urdu-language TV interview it has obtained, Lord Ahmed blamed his 12-week prison sentence on pressure put on courts by Jewish-owned media organization.
The Labour Party said Thursday it “deplores and does not tolerate” anti-Semitism and is suspending Ahmed pending an investigation.
Ahmed was also suspended from the party last year amid reports he offered a bounty for the capture of President Barack Obama — comments he denied.
| — Hat tip: BD | [Return to headlines] |
The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions 1941-1945
The Death Camps of Croatia- Visions and revisions , 1941-1945 chronicles the virtually unknown Genocide committed in unspeakable ways by the Ustashi fascists , Catholic priests and Bosnian Muslims of 700,000 Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies and dissident Croatians in the Jadovno and Jasenovac death camps during the period from 1941 to 1945 in wartime Yugoslavia in the Nazi-supported Independent state of Greater Croatia. Using recent archival research unveiled at the Jadovno Conference in 2011, the author reveals the catastrophic and grisly testimonies of how these atrocities were committed and the evidence destroyed. It is a masterful and scholarly expose of the hitherto revisionist history of the Holocaust committed in wartime Yugoslavia.
| — Hat tip: Jerry Gordon | [Return to headlines] |
Benghazi: Coptic Christians Denounce Torture and Attempts to Convert Them to Islam
44 of the 48 Christian vendors arrested in the market of Benghazi in February on charges of proselytizing have returned home. The Salafis forced them to say the prayer of conversion to Islam and spit on the images of Pope Shenouda III. Four of them are still in the hands of the Libyan police.
Cairo (AsiaNews) — Libyan Salafis are responsible for torture, attempts to forcibly convert and desecration of Christian imagery. This is according to 44 of the 48 Egyptian Coptic vendors on their return home. “They forced us to pronounce the al-shahaadatayn — said one of them — the proclamation of the Islamic faith and spit on images of Pope Shenouda III.” So far, the Egyptian government has not reacted to the episode that involved its citizens nor charges of religious discrimination. However, the relatives of the victims are demanding justice and accuse the Islamist government of protecting the Libyan Salafists.
Arrested in mid-February in the Benghazi market, accused of publicizing religious images and illegal immigration, the Coptic Orthodox were held for several days in a jail guarded by Salafi armed guards. They were released after several days of negotiations between the Egyptian and the Libyan governments accused on several occasions of failing to protect foreign nationals in its territory. Currently four Christians are still detained in Libya for further investigation.
The case has also sparked outrage among the population of Benghazi, which in October revolted against the Salafi militias accused of having organized the attack on the U.S. consulate in which the US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.
Further aggravating relations between Cairo and Tripoli, but also between the Government of Benghazi and its people, is the case of Ezzat Atallah, also Egyptian and Christian, who died last March 10 in a prison in the Cyrenaica capital in mysterious circumstances. Like his 48 fellow vendors, he was arrested by a Salafi militia on charges of publicizing religious images. According to the Libyan authorities the man, 45 years old and father of two, suffered from diabetes and heart problems and likely died of natural causes. To date, the family has denied the statements made by the government in Benghazi. In an interview with the Christian Middle East News Agency (Mcn-direct), Atallah’s sister points out that “my brother never had diabetes or heart.”
Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi cases of aggression or attacks on foreign minorities living in Libya have increased. The communities most affected include the Egyptians, Coptic Christians especially Catholics and Orthodox. In February, an armed group raided a church in the Cyrenaica capital and attacked two Coptic priests, Fr. Paul Isaac and his assistant. At the end of February, four foreigners — an Egyptian, a South African, a South Korean and a Swede with U.S. passport — were arrested on charges of distributing Bibles and other religious material. They are imprisoned in a prison in Tripoli, awaiting trial.
The presence of Islamic militants is also affecting the Catholic religious orders present for decades on Libyan territory, engaged in healthcare and looking after the elderly. In January, the Islamists prompted the flight of the Franciscan Sisters of the Infant Jesus from Barce and the Ursuline Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus from Beida. In October it was instead the turn to the nuns of the Convent of the Holy Family of Spoleto based in Derna, who were forced to leave Libya due to continuous threats from Islamic extremists, despite the opposition of the inhabitants of the city. (S.C.)
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Egypt May Ban Alcohol Sales at Duty-Free Shops
Already prohibited on national airline
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO, MARCH 13 — Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry may prohibit sales of alcoholic beverages in the 67 duty-free Egyptian airport shops operated by Egyptair, the flagship carrier. The decision is part of a crackdown on alcohol — prohibited by Islam — which has intensified since the Muslim Brotherhood took power.
The ban, ANSAmed was told by a Cairo airport source, may lead to heavy losses, given that the single largest source of revenue are sales of alcohol and tobacco. “There has been pressure to stop the sale of alcohol, and they are looking into whether to ban it entirely or to allow tourists to buy it,” the source said. Even before the Muslim Brotherhood won the elections, Egyptair had banned the sale of alcoholic beverages onboard its aircraft. Last year the airline also started allowing its flight attendants to wear headscarves.
The news of a possible ban on duty-free alcohol has come at an acutely difficult time for Egypt’s national carrier, which has suffered some 6 billion Egyptian pounds (about 700 million euros) in losses since the uprising two years ago. Aviation Minister Wael El Maadawi said that the losses were “large” but not “catastrophic”, and that the company had too many employees: 32,000, compared with the necessary 12,000.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Imam of Al-Azhar Hopes Papal Relations Can ‘Normalise’
Ahmed el-Tayeb one of most influential figures for Sunni Muslims
(ANSA) — Cairo, March 13 — Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, hopes the election of Francis I as pope can normalise relations with the Islamic world, the diplomatic advisor to one of the most influential figures for Sunni Muslims said Wednesday.
Francis’s predecessor Benedict XVI angered the Islamic world when in 2006 he quoted a past emperor who called Islam ‘evil and inhuman’.
Benedict’s appeals on the behalf of Christian minorities suffering attacks in the Muslim world were also seem by some as interference.
“Let’s hope now that relations return to normal,” the advisor, Mahmud Abdel Gawad, told ANSA adding that el-Tayeb will send Francis a telegram on Thursday.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Italy: Berlusconi Says Won’t Go Down Like Craxi
PD says would vote arrest
(ANSA) — Rome, March 13 — Former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi has insisted he will not meet the same fate as his one-time sponsor and personal friend, late premier Bettino Craxi, who was driven from power by anti-corruption probes and died in self-imposed exile in Tunisia in 2000.
The media-magnate-turned politician, whose burgeoning TV empire was shielded by Craxi in the 1980s, accused Milanese magistrates Wednesday of trying to bring him down as they did his controversial predecessor.
The Socialist prime minister of Italy from 1983 to 1987, Craxi was at the centre of the 1992-1994 Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) anti-corruption investigations carried out by Milan prosecutors. Fingered as the main culprit as Italy’s political establishment crumbled, he fled to Tunisia to avoid prison in 1994 and died at his Tunisian villa in January 2000.
Berlusconi has for years been saying allegedly leftist magistrates, mainly in Milan, are hounding him.
But Wednesday’s statement was his strongest direct comparison to his old friend and godfather of his second daughter Barbara, now an AC Milan director. “Rumors are rife that people are expressly and shamelessly talking about an operation Craxi 2”, Berlusconi told Panorama magazine, part of his media empire, which includes Italy’s three largest commercial TV stations and its biggest publishing group, Mondadori. “They couldn’t eliminate me by democratic means, that is through elections, so now they’re trying to use the justice system for political ends. They know I am the real obstacle on the Left’s path”.
Berlusconi’s defiant statement came as the main centre-left group, the Democratic Party (PD), for the first time said they would vote to approve Berlusconi’s arrest if a request with convincing evidence came in from prosecutors.
PD National Coordinator Maurizio Migliavacca told Sky Tg24 that his party would vote to arrest Berlusconi in any of the court cases currently open against him, if the prosecution showed the case against him was strong enough. Berlusconi is under investigation on suspicion of bribing former Senator Sergio De Gregorio to switch parties in 2006, a move which destabilized the centre-left government and contributed to its eventual collapse.
Berlusconi is also appealing a four-year conviction for tax fraud in the purchase of broadcasting rights by his Mediaset group, and, in his most sensational case to date, is on trial in Milan for allegedly paying for sex with an underage prostitute, a Moroccan nightclub dancer whose stage name was Ruby Heart-stealer.
He is also accused of later abusing his position as premier by pressuring police to release Ruby when she was detained on an unrelated theft allegation, saying he wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident because she was, as he then mistakenly believed, the niece of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. If convicted on both counts, he faces a total of 15 years in jail.
In another case, a Milan judge on March 7 sentenced him to a one-year jail term for involvement in the publication by his family newspaper Il Giornale of an illegally obtained wiretap concerning Italian insurance company Unipol’s almost-successful bid to buy Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in 2005.
The wiretap severely embarrassed then centre-left leader Piero Fassino.
On Wednesday Berlusconi was again defended by his party secretary, Angelino Alfano, who said judges had waged a “20-year war” against him.
Tensions between the premier’s centre-right People of Freedom (PdL) party peaked Monday when the PdL staged a demonstration outside the Ruby trial, stigmatised on Tuesday as “unprecedented” by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.
The PdL launched the demo after judges in the Ruby trial for a second time sent doctors to verify if an eye problem for which the premier has been hospitalised justified his not attending the final stage of the closely watched case.
Judges on Tuesday granted Berlusconi’s plea that his medical condition — the eye infection and high blood pressure stemming from treatment — constituted a “legitimate impediment” to his showing up for the trial.
On Wednesday they demanded a new sick note from the ex-premier’s doctors, and adjourned the trial until Monday.
A verdict was initially expected March 18, upping pressure on the ex-premier in the aftermath of Italy’s inconclusive general election, but that date will now be pushed back, court sources said.
Berlusconi came narrowly second to the centre left in last month’s election but has been blackballed by both centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who faces the tough task of forming a government, and anti-establishment comedian and activist Beppe Grillo, whose 5-Star Movement rode a huge shock protest vote to become the biggest single party in the House and hold the balance of power in the Senate.
No party has a majority in the upper house and pundits have widely predicted Democratic Party (PD) leader Bersani’s efforts to woo Grillo supporters to attain a confidence vote will fail.
One scenario sees another election this summer and the possible replacement of Bersani as PD leader by the much younger, more media-savvy and centrist mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who polls say has a wider appeal.
Grillo meanwhile invited Berlusconi to imitate Craxi, saying this would be better for the health of Italy and the ex-premier.
“Berlusconi is scared of ending up like Craxi, but in reality it would be lucky for him,” Grillo said on his blog.
“He could escape to Tunisian beaches full of Rubies without having the daily ball-breaking of the magistrates.
“He should let himself get arrested as soon as possible without any extenuating circumstances and take flight before the arrest.
“He will gain in health terms. He will heal from his uveitis (an irritation and swelling of the uvea, the middle layer of the eye) and the Italians will finally heal from the orchitis that he has inflicted on them for 20 years”.
Orchitis is an inflammation of the testicles.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Brotherhood Reject UN Violence Against Women Document
Free choice of marriage partner and gay rights objected to
(ANSAmed) — CAIRO ,MARCH 13 — The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have called on all Muslim countries to reject the U.N. draft document against violence against women. The group said in a statement posted on its website that the document contains articles that “go against Islam and the Sunnah, which will ruin Muslim morality and destroy the family” .
The document is expected to be endorsed at the end of a U.N.
Commission on the Status of Women meeting this week.
The Brotherhood finds particular issue with the articles which “allow girls sexual freedom and the choice of a marriage partner, and which give rights to gays, protecting them and respecting them like they protect prostitutes, which goes against Islam”. The group have asked women’s organizations to “remain faithful to their religion, our society’s traditions and the pillars of social life”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Muslim Brotherhood Hopes New Pope Will be More Tolerant Than Predecessor
Cairo, 14 March (AKI) — Commenting on the election of Francis as the new head of the Roman Catholic Church, Egypt’s ruling Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement said it hoped he would be a more tolerant pontiff than his predecessor Benedict XVI.
“We hope that the new pope will be more tolerant and far-seeing than the last one,” Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan told Adnkronos International (AKI).
Argentinian cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio, who has taken the name Francis I, is said to have been the runner-up in the conclave that elected cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
“The previous pope had an approach [to inter-faith relations] that was at times provocative and his words appeared to attack the Prophet Mohammed,” said Ghozlan.
A speech delivered by Benedict in Regensberg, Germany in 2006 sparked a deadly wave of rioting in the Muslim world when he cited a 14th-Century Byzantine emperor who criticised Islam as a violent faith and labelled Mohammed “evil and inhuman”.
“We hope that Pope Francis is an open-minded and tolerant man, who will work for world peace…and respect between religions, in accordance with Christ’s teachings,” Ghozlan added.
Ghozlan also said he hoped to see improved relations between the Vatican and Cairo’s al-Azhar Institution, one of the highest authorities in Sunni Islamic learning.
The al-Azhar suspended a twice-yearly dialogue with the Vatican in January 2011 after Benedict XVI called for greater protection of Christians following a series of attacks on Christians and churches in the region.
Bergoglio had not been seen as a frontrunner in the conclave to elect a new pope after 85-year-old Benedict XVI abdicated last month saying he lacked the physical and mental strength to continue to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
Bergoglio was elected in the conclave’s fifth round of voting on Wednesday.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Centre-Right Gov’t in Place Ahead of Obama Visit
US President tapes interview for Israeli TV
(ANSAmed) — TEL AVIV, 14 MARCH — At little over a month after Israel’s general elections Benjamin Netanyahu has put together a new governing coalition. It comes in the nick of time as the clock ticked on a deadline set by Shimon Peres to form a new cabinet and US President Barack Obama prepares to visit the country in a week. Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman’s Likud party and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party make up the nationalist core of the coalition, while centrist Yesh Atid party — led by former journalist Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party comprise the remainder. Obama has said that he won’t be bringing any new proposals on the Israeli-Palestinian situation on his visit. “The president will encourage parties to resume dialogue and negotiations to achieve a ‘two-state’ solution”, a White House spokesperson said. He appealed directly to the Israeli public during a lengthy interview on Israeli TV channel 2 set to air Thursday night. But whether Netanyahu is the ideal partner with whom to reignite the peace process remains in doubt. On the one hand he has given up two right leaning Orthodox parties to open the field to centrists Yesh Atid and Ha-Tnua, whose impact could radically alter Israeli life. As well as the Ministry of Finance Yesh Atid will take on education, scientific research and health, while Tzipi Livni will be ‘a Minister of Justice’ and ‘Peace Protest Coordinator’.
But the future fate of the Palestinian peace process rests with Likud and Jewish Home. Avigdor Lieberman — suspended from office over an impending fraud and abuse of office investigation next week, is confident of a return to foreign affairs in the next few months. Political hawk Moshe Ya’alon, will replace Ehud Barak as Israel’s defense minister.
Meanwhile Jewish Home will control the Housing and Trade ministries, linked to controversial construction projects in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Also playing a role in the new government is Yair Shamir, the son of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Likud.
Shamir, the new Minister of Agriculture has already let it be known that he is taking a hard line on the Palestinian peace process.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
David Ha’ivri: “Obama is Welcome, But He Won’t Change Anything”
American President Barack Obama will be making his premiere visit to Israel next week. This will be the first time that he has visited here since he was first elected, over four years ago. The teams in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office and other administrative branches of government here are working very hard to ensure a pleasant stay for Mr. Obama. In the news, we read that he will have dinner with Israel’s new beauty queen, Yityish Titi Aynaw, a young lady who was born in Ethiopia and emigrated to Israel as a child.
We are not sure, however, if he will visit Israel’s most holy place, the Temple Mount, since the Islamic Hamas organization has issued a severe warning that a visit there would be “a diplomatic catastrophe.”
According to some reports, the American president plans to insult Israel’s academic community by excluding students of Ariel University from his address to Israeli university students. I had actually suggested that the president take a tour of Shomron to see the Barkan Industrial Park, the university and our organic farms and wineries. It’s a shame that he will be missing out on this tour.
I won’t be here during his visit, as I will be leading a delegation to the EU parliament in Brussels. Our group, headed by Shomron Regional Director Gershon Mesika, will be meeting members of the European Union Parliament to defend the products manufactured in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), in light of the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton’s statements calling for labelling and boycotting products from Judea and Samaria.
Many international officials are not aware of the benefits produced by the Jewish communities for both Jews and Arabs in this region — the development and workplaces that they provide. We who live here are convinced that if the public and policy-makers had a more even picture of the reality on the ground, their opinions on the future of this area might be very different.
If President Obama and Catherine Ashton really care about the people who live here, they should be encouraging the expansion of Jewish communities (settlements) and support investment in projects that would bring more workplaces to the region…
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
At Least 50 French Citizens ‘Waging Jihad in Syria’
As many as 80 French citizens are fighting with rebel groups in Syria, according to a report in French daily Le Figaro published Wednesday.
The number is far higher than the “handful” said by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls to be operating alongside Islamists in Mali, or the estimated number of Frenchmen who went to Bosnia, Iraq or Afghanistan to wage “jihad”, or Muslim holy war.
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Daniel Pipes: Erdogan’s Decade as Prime Minister of Turkey
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has served longer than any person as prime minister of the Republic of Turkey, today marks his completion of a full decade in that office, having entered it on March 14, 2003.
Born in February 1954, he is now 59 years old. And while he has a potentially long political career ahead of him, he reportedly suffers from some serious ailments that could cut it short.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Iran Steps Up Weapons Lifeline to Assad
Iran has significantly stepped up military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in recent months, solidifying its position alongside Russia as the government’s lifeline in an increasingly sectarian civil war, Western diplomats said.
Iran’s acceleration of support for Assad suggests the Syrian war is entering a new phase in which Iran may be trying to end the battlefield stalemate by redoubling its commitment to Assad and offering Syria’s increasingly isolated government a crucial lifeline, the envoys said.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Iraq: Coordinated Attack in Centre of Baghdad Kills 21
(AGI) — Baghdad, Mar 14 — Bomb blasts that appear to have been coordinated killed at least 21 people in the centre of Baghdad, in a area with several government offices. Around 50 people were injured in the attack according to police reports. The casualties include 12 civilians and six police officers. At least two car bombs exploded, one of them near the justice ministry, after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the interior ministry offices.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
Museum Wars: Ankara Demands Artifacts From Berlin
German museums and archaeologists fear that Turkey is punishing them for not repatriating contested artifacts. In a SPIEGEL interview, Turkish Culture Minister Ömer Çelik explains why Turkey is demanding both the artifacts and an apology.
A dispute is heating up between Turkey and Western countries, with ancient artifacts at stake. On one side, Ankara vehemently insists museums, including German ones, should return valuable archaeological treasures that Turkey alleges are wrongly in their possession. German archaeologists, on the other hand, refuse categorically to comply, saying the disputed items entered German collections legally, most of them over a century ago.
This battle over antiquities is affecting relations between the two countries. High-ranking officials at major museums in Berlin say the Turkish government has broken agreements concerning cooperation between the countries and is deliberately making it harder for German archaeologists to work in Turkey. The latter are worried that, in 2013, they may for the first time be denied coveted excavation permits.
Speaking with SPIEGEL last year, Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees the state-owned museums in Berlin, harshly criticized the Turkish government. “Much is being lost because Turkey doesn’t have an established system for preserving historical artifacts, as Germany does,” Parzinger said. He also accused Ankara of increasing arrogance, saying that cultural heritage “is the last thing they think about.”
Parzinger’s comments provoked outrage in Turkey. “His message is: ‘They have no idea what they’re doing and don’t take care of things, so we’ll take care of them instead for the sake of the common good,’“ raged the Turkish daily Hürriyet.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Saudi Arabia: Billions Earmarked for Madinah
The holy city of Madinah will have a major facelift shortly as a large number of development projects are being implemented there at a cost of more than SR 100 billion. Crown Prince Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, yesterday visited an exhibition of Madinah projects organized by the Madinah Development Authority.
The exhibition showcased the new expansion ordered by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah for the Prophet’s Mosque, which will increase the mosque’s capacity to more than 1.6 million worshippers. The expansion project, the largest in the mosque’s history, is estimated to cost more than SR 75 billion including SR 25 billion to be disbursed on land acquisition.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Syria: France & GB ‘Arm Rebels Even Without EU Backing’
Fabius: “lifting arms embargo only hope for political stability’
(ANSAmed) — PARIS, 14 MARCH — France and Great Britain will ask to bring forward the next European Union (EU) meeting on the weapons embargo to Syria, and if a consensus isn’t reached will arm rebel fighters themselves, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on radio show France Info. “We can’t accept this state of imbalance”, he said. “Iran and Russia are arming the Assad regime while the rebels don’t stand a chance of defending themselves. Lifting the embargo is one of the only ways of bringing political stability to the situation”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Friction Rises: Italian Ambassador Told Not to Leave India
Diplomatic row after marines accused of homicide not sent back
(ANSA) — New Delhi, March 14 — A diplomatic rift between India and Italy over two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen widened Thursday when India’s Supreme Court ordered the Italian ambassador to New Delhi, Daniele Mancini, to “not leave the country”.
The order follows the Italian government’s decision not to send the marines back to India after they were granted a permit to come home to vote in last month’s general elections.
The court also wrote to the two marines, Massimilano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, asking them to clarify their position, ANSA sources said.
The marines, who have been held in India since February 2012, were allowed to return to Italy for one month for national elections held February 24-25.
Latorre and Girone, who are charged with homicide for alleged shooting the fisherman while on an anti-piracy mission, were supposed to return to India later this month.
The Italian government has always denied that India has jurisdiction over the matter, as the incident took place in international waters off the country’s coast.
In its letter to the Italian ambassador, the Indian Supreme Court said Mancini “violated” a “sworn declaration” presented on February 9 to the Indian government as “a guarantee of the marines’ return”.
Along with the order to not leave the country, the Supreme Court ordered the ambassador to offer explanations for Italy’s actions by March 18.
An earlier deal, which allowed the marines to return to Italy for Christmas, was respected by both governments and was seen as a positive step — as well as a sign of goodwill — towards a diplomatic solution.
Commenting the developments on Thursday, Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid said that a decision regarding the matter would “be taken by the Supreme Court in collaboration with the central government”.
The Indian government, Khurshid said, “is following the situation in collaboration with the Republic’s central prosecutor”. In separate statements to journalists, Khurshid said: “the most important thing is to safeguard the dignity and the feelings of the India”.
Some members of the Indian political establishment seem to be using the diplomatic tussle over the marines to gain leverage ahead of national elections scheduled to take place later this year.
On Thursday, Subramanian Swamy, president of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, presented a petition to the Supreme Court asking for legal action against the Italian ambassador for the crime of “contempt of court”.
The current government is led by the Congress Party, whose president, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian wife of Rajiv Gandhi, a former Congress leader and prime minister assassinated in 1991.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Pakistan: Two Female Czech Tourists Abducted in Southwest
Quetta, 14 March (AKI) — Armed gunmen seized two female Czech tourists in Pakistan’s troubled southwest province of Baluchistan late on Wednesday, local media reported.
Balochistan’s interior minister Akbar Hussain Durrani confirmed the women’s kidnapping by gunmen aboard a jeep on the road from Iran to the provincial capital Quetta Pakistani daily The Nation reported on Thursday.
Pakistani security forces were in pursuit of the jeep, Durrani was cited as saying. The Czech foreign ministry has confirmed the kidnapping, according to media reports.
The tourists, named in local news reports as Hana Humpala and ‘Antonie’ were abducted in the Chagi district about 120 kilometres from the Iranian border and had entered into Pakistan from Iran at the Taftan border crossing.
Durrani said women were being escorted by a tribal policeman when they were abducted. The guard was also taken captive but was later freed.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. Islamist militants, Baluchi separatist gangs and criminals with links to both have been accused of previous kidnappings in Baluchistan, some of which have ended with the killing of hostages.
| — Hat tip: C. Cantoni | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
Nine South African police officers charged with murdering a Mozambican taxi driver who was dragged from a police vehicle were denied bail yesterday.
Most of the suspects kept their heads bowed as they were photographed in the dock at Benoni Magistrates’ Court, east of Johannesburg.
They are accused of killing taxi driver Mido Macia, 27, who died after he was tied to a police van and dragged through the street last month.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Pirate Attack on Italian Merchant Ship Thwarted in Aden Gulf
No injuries or damage reported, says navy
(ANSA) — Rome, March 14 — A Somali pirate attack on an Italian merchant ship sailing Thursday from Djibouti to Oman was thwarted by marines, an Italian Navy spokesman said.
Six pirates driving speedboats attempted to board the vessel sailing near the Gulf of Aden when they were spotted by an offshore patrol boat.
A navy spokesman said that “neither the crew nor ship have reported damage and the ship is now out of danger”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
The Gruesome Reality of Racist South Africa
By Arnold Ahlert
For decades, the country of South Africa was the focus of an international rallying cry against the injustices of apartheid. On June 17, 1991, South Africa’s Parliament abolished the legal framework for the practice of racial persecution. In 1994, Nelson Mandela and his Marxist African National Congress (ANC) assumed the reins of power. The international community looked away, satisfied that justice had prevailed. They continue to look away, even as South Africa has degenerated into another racist pit, best described by an Afrikaner farm owner: “It’s politically correct to kill whites these days.”
In July of 2012, Dr. Gregory Stanton, head of the nonprofit group Genocide Watch, conducted a fact-finding mission in South Africa. He concluded that there is a coordinated campaign of genocide being conducted against white farmers, known as Boers. “The farm murders, we have become convinced, are not accidental,” Stanton contended. “It was very clear that the massacres were not common crimes,” he added — especially because of the absolute barbarity used against the victims. “We don’t know exactly who is planning them yet, but what we are calling for is an international investigation,” he added.
The number of farm murders, or “plaasmoorde” as it is called in Afrikaans, is staggering. Over the last decade, it is estimated that at least 3000 Boers have been killed. Estimating the number of murders is necessary because the ANC has banned crime statistics from being compiled, claiming they scare off foreign investment. Moreover, the world knows little about the savagery that accompanies those killings. Many victims, including women and infant children, are raped or tortured before they are killed. Some have boiling water poured down their throats, some are burned with hot pokers, and some are hacked to death with machetes, or disemboweled. Several others have been tied to their own cars and dragged for miles.
The ANC, whose leader Jacob Zuma was reelected with over 75 per cent of the total voting delegates at the ANC National Conference held in Bloemfontein last December, denies that genocide is occurring, insisting that such attacks are part of the larger crime problem. Yet a report filed by the South African Institute of Race Relations notes that while crime has ostensibly declined between 1994 and 2011, “substantial numbers” of police stations have manipulated their crime statistics. The report sub-headline underscores the corrupt nature of crime statistics in the country: “Is this a true reflection of the crime statistics in South Africa? Who knows!” it states.
What is known is that the ANC celebrated in 100th year anniversary with a song led by President Zuma himself. “Dubula iBhunu” or “Shoot the Boer” was a line in the lyrics of an apartheid-era song, “Ayesaba Amagwala” (“the cowards are scared”) that violates the South Africa constitution prohibiting the “advocacy of hatred that is based on race … and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.” Yet Zuma apparently felt no compunction to refrain from singing it, because the ANC considers it an integral part of the anti-apartheid movement that is part of their heritage.
In 2010, Julius Malema, then leader of the ANC Youth League, revived the practice of singing the song after many years. After the South Africa High Court ruled it was hate speech, the ANC appealed. Last October, the ANC and AfriForum, a lobby group that wanted the song banned from public performance, reached an out-of-court settlement.
Dr. Stanton concluded that Malema’s revival of a song advocating murder moved South Africa from the fifth stage on his genocidal scale to stage six. When the South African judiciary ruled it to be unlawful hate speech, Genocide Watch put South Africa back at stage five. When President Zuma was caught on tape January 2012 singing, “We are going to shoot them with the machine gun, they are going to run/You are a Boer, we are going to hit them, and you are going to run/shoot the Boer…” South Africa was raised to stage six once again.
Stage six is known as Preparation: “Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is expropriated. They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.”
The sixth stage is followed by stage seven: Extermination…
| — Hat tip: TV | [Return to headlines] |
Foreign Media Take Look at Francis’s Ties to Dictatorship
New pope accused of inaction during ‘Dirty War’
(ANSA) — Rome, March 14 — Not yet 24 hours into his reign as Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio is facing media scrutiny for the role he played during Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship in the late 1970s.
Articles critical of Bergoglio’s role during the dictatorship years appeared Thursday in papers ranging from the New York Times to Spain’s El Mundo and even Argentina’s Pagina 12. While Bergoglio took a hard line against recent Kirchner governments accusing them of economic policies which didn’t help relieve vast social imbalances in Argentina, the New York Times pointed out that he was “less energetic” in taking on the dictatorship, which under the leadership of Jorge Rafael Videla was responsible for crimes against humanity including kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial murders of activists, political opponents and their families.
The NYT recalled how Bergoglio was “accused of being aware of the abuses of the ‘Dirty War’ and of having not done enough to stop them while 30,000 people disappeared, were tortured or killed by the dictatorship.” Leading U.K. daily the Times took an even harder stance, leading its first page with the headline: “The friend of the people who was at ease with the dictators”.
BBC Mundo went a step further in an analysis of the new Pope titled: “Jorge Bergoglio and the shadow of the military government” which cited the cases of priests Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, kidnapped in May, 1976 and held for five months in the Escuela Mecanica de la Armada, the secret center from which the flights of death — in which opponents of the regime were taken out over the Pacific Ocean and dumped from planes — took off. In an email sent by Gabriela Yorio, the sister of Orlando (who died in 2000), to Pagina 12 shortly after the election of Francis, Yorio wrote: “I can’t believe it. I am so distressed so angry I don’t know what I can do. I see Orlando on my bedside table; for so many years he had said ‘he (Bergoglio) wants to be Pope.’ He (Bergoglio) is the expert in shutting things up.”
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Spain-Morocco: MSF Report Details Anti-Migrant Violence
Sub-Saharan migrants ‘trapped’, rounded up and deported
(ANSAmed) — MADRID — Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) denounce the violence sub-Saharan migrants are subjected to in their attempt to reach Spain and Europe in the group’s latest report, ‘Violence, Vulnerability and Migration: Trapped at the Gates of Europe’. MSF teams in the eastern region of Morocco, including Nador alongside the Spanish enclave of Melilla, treated 1,100 migrants injured in 2012 by Moroccan and Spanish border police. In the report, presented today in Madrid, the NGO said that there had been an increase in police round-ups in which the migrants’ few remaining belongings are destroyed, and “indiscriminate deportations” from Morocco to Algeria of sub-Saharan migrants, including pregnant women and children. The migrants who try to climb over the double metallic border fence around Melilla are subjected to “double the violence”.
“The renewed cooperation efforts between Morocco and Spain which, according to these countries, are focused on the fight against cross-border crime, illegal migration and drug trafficking are having a serious impact on the physical and mental health of sub-Saharan migrants,” explained David Cantero, MSF Head of Mission in Morocco, in presenting the report to the media. “Migration policies privilege internal security criteria over respect for fundamental human rights”. Since April 2012, MSF have treated “broken arms, legs, hands, and jaws as well as broken teeth and concussions, amongst others. These injuries are consistent with migrants’ accounts of having been attacked by the security forces,” said Cantero. One of the most urgent and significant problems outlined in the report is the sexual violence experienced, for the most part, by migrant women and girls.
It is impossible to determine the exact proportions of this violence, however MSF’s medical data reveals an alarming situation. From 2010 to 2012, MSF teams treated almost 700 survivors. These women and girls require specialised care and are not receiving adequate assistance or protection from the authorities.
In addition to highlighting the increase in violence in this past year, the report also shows the difficult circumstances endured by sub-Saharan migrants, many of whom are forced to live in precarious conditions out in the open and beg in order to survive. Almost half of the 10,500 medical consultations conducted by the MSF teams between 2010 and 2012 were for pathologies related to bad living conditions. Migrants’ mental health is also affected, with patients showing symptoms of anxiety, depression and psychosomatic problems, amongst others, and this may very well lead to the decimation of the populations “trapped at the gates of Europe”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
A suspected Sudanese war criminal who claimed to have slaughtered so many people that he ‘lost count’ is living off British benefits.
Unemployed Mohamed Salim boasts that he is unsupervised by the authorities and never visits police.
The alleged killer now lives in a leafy street in Birmingham, a far cry from his former life in Sudan, where he claimed that he had been a member of the violent Janjaweed militia.
Salim, 27, arrived in the UK in 2006, and claimed in an anonymous interview with BBC’s Newsnight programme that he, along with the brutal gang, were paid by the Sudanese government to pillage and kill innocent people.
But he does not have to leave the country — as an immigration court in Birmingham has ruled that his life could be at risk if he returned to Sudan, and this would be a breach of his human rights.
Now he lives in Birmingham, where he is an avid West Bromwich Albion supporter and goes to college to learn English for free, he told the newspaper.
He likes to go to bars in Birmingham to watch football matches and says there are more opportunities in the UK.
He said: ‘My life here is normal. I much prefer it in England than in Sudan.
‘I came here because I listened to friends who said it was good to live here and claim asylum here. I don’t pay to live in this house.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Gov’t Wants Volunteers to Wear ‘White Guilt’ Bracelets (Video)
Has political-correctness gone too far?
In Wisconsin, volunteers in AmeriCorps are encouraged to cope with their “white privilege” by wearing a white bracelet, while reminding themselves to examine their status in society and talking with ‘friends of color’ to encourage their transformation.
[Comment: be sure to check out the flow chart that shows white people how to think “correctly”.]
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Ivy League Offers ‘Prostate-Pleasuring’ Lessons
University workshops explore everything from ‘Dirty Talk’ to ‘Fornication 101’
[WARNING: ** Disturbing Content **]
Add pleasuring your prostate to skills you probably didn’t know you could learn in college.
This is Sex Week at the Ivy League’s prestigious Brown University. .
One of the workshops the university is offering is called “The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure.”
Others include: “Fornication 101”, “Dirty Talk”, “Queering the Toybox”, “Sex
Week Finale: Lace and Leather Burlesque Show”
The description of “The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure” asks “Are you curious about prostate play?” It promises to “give you all the info you need to see for yourself why more men and their partners are discovering how much fun prostate stimulation can be.”
University workshops explore everything from ‘Dirty Talk’ to ‘Fornication 101’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Positions of Pope Francis — From Gay Marriage to Poverty
As Cardinal of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio spoke out
(ANSA) — Buenos Aires, March 14 — >From abortion to human rights, from condemning gay marriage to condoning baptism of children of unmarried mothers, from slamming social indifference to tackling poverty — these are some of the best known positions taken publicly by Pope Francis when he was still Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.
– THE CRIME ‘HABIT’. “Little by little we get used to seeing and hearing through the media the crimes of contemporary society presented almost with a perverse joy. We also get accustomed to living with violence that kills, that destroys families and feeds wars and conflict.”
– AGAINST DISREGARD OF HUMAN RIGHTS. “The suffering of innocents and the peaceful never ceases to hit us, the disregard of the rights of the most vulnerable people or populations are not so far from us; the empire of money with its demonic effects — drugs, corruption, the trafficking of people and even children — together with material and moral misery have become the current currency”.
– ABORTION IS NOT A SOLUTION. “We must listen, accompany and understand from the place where we are in order to save two lives. Respect the smaller, defenseless human being, and adopt measures that can save his life, allow his birth and be create in the search for paths that carry him to his full development”.
– ASSUMPTION OF RESPONSIBILITY. “No one assumes responsibility for what needs to be done and for what has been done. It seems almost an unconscious game, the ‘no one did it’ has become, in the last analysis, a truth: perhaps we have truly managed to become and to feel ourselves to be ‘no one’“.
– GAY MARRIAGE. “We must not be naive: it is not about a simple political discussion, it is about purporting to destroy God’s plan. It is not a simple legislative project — that is only the tool, or rather a move to father the lie, to confuse and fool God’s children”.
– THE CRISIS. “The social-economic crisis and the consequent increase of poverty has its roots in policies inspired by certain forms of neoliberalism that consider earnings and the laws of the market as absolute parameters, at the expense of the dignity of people and populations”.
– BAPTISM FOR CHILDREN OF UNMARRIED WOMEN. “In our ecclesiastical territory there are priests who refuse to baptize the children of unmarried mothers, because they were conceived outside of the holiness of marriage. These are the hypocrites of today, the ones who clerics the Church, those who distance God’s people from salvation”.
– POVERTY VIOLATES RIGHTS. “Human rights are violated not only by terrorism, repression and murder, but also by the existence of extreme poverty and unjust economic conditions, which are the roots of great inequalities”.
| — Hat tip: Insubria | [Return to headlines] |
Super-Dense Celestial Bodies Could be a New Kind of Planet
Space telescope’s discoveries may be the remains of wandering ice giants.
Mysterious dense bodies outside the Solar System could be the remnants of ice giants similar to Neptune that wandered too close to their suns, according to results presented this week at a meeting on exoplanets at the Royal Society in London.
Among the most puzzling finds of NASA’s Kepler space mission to find exoplanets, which launched in 2009, are bodies too heavy for their size. In some of the rare cases in which astronomers can estimate both the mass and the size of distant planets discovered by the probe, the objects have radiuses similar to that of Earth but are denser than pure iron.
No conventional theories about planet formation can account for such densities in planets of this size. “There is no way to explain that in the Solar System,” says Olivier Grasset, a geophysicist at the University of Nantes in France.
Grasset and his collaborators now say that the strange bodies could be the “fossil cores” of planets that were once much larger, an idea that was first proposed by researchers in 2011. These planets would have been ice giants that formed in the outer parts of a star system and then migrated inwards — as their orbits were affected by interactions with surrounding gas and dust — perhaps getting as close to their suns as Mercury is to ours.
The hotter temperatures closer to the stars, Grasset explains, would evaporate the outer layers of the planets, which are made mainly of volatile components such as hydrogen, helium and water. The leftover cores would consist of rock and metal, just like the bulk of Earth, and could weigh up to several times as much as our planet, making them what scientists call super-Earths.
But these cores formed under the weight of their planets’ outer layers, under pressures of around 500 gigapascals — 5 million times atmospheric pressure on Earth — and typical temperatures of about 6,000 kelvin. As a result, the materials in these cores should be more compacted, and denser, than Earth.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |