A British salesman named Musa Barnes has been charged in court with terror offenses arising from videos he made celebrating the murder of Lee Rigby. Mr. Barnes refused to sit down during his appearance in court. He has been denied bail.
In other news, during a television appearance, the attorney for one of the Benghazi whistle-blowers said that 400 American missiles — which were supposed to be transferred by the CIA from Libya to the Syrian rebels — went missing from the “annex” on September 11, 2012. He maintains that the USA is trying desperately to recover them before they can be used to shoot down airliners or commit other acts of terror.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Fjordman, JD, JLH, McR, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
UK Wage Decline Among Worst in Europe
Wages in the UK have seen one of the largest falls in the European Union during the economic downturn, according to official figures.
Figures from the House of Commons library show average hourly wages have fallen 5.5% since mid-2010, adjusted for inflation, which is the fourth-worst decline in the 27-nation bloc.
By contrast, German hourly wages rose by 2.7% over the same period.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
University of California Study: National Debt is Really $70 Trillion
James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, just published his best estimate of the federal government’s “off-balance-sheet” liabilities, in which he concludes that the real national debt, popularly estimated to be $16.9 trillion, is in fact more than four times larger: $70.086 trillion. This is because of decisions to leave out certain unfunded liabilities when the national debt is counted. He explains:
This paper examines the growth of federal liabilities that are not included in the officially reported numbers. These take the form of implicit or explicit government guarantees and commitments … housing, other loan guarantees, deposit insurance, actions taken by the Federal Reserve, and government trust funds…
The biggest items in this category come from Social Security and Medicare which, if current policy is maintained, will require enormous sacrifices from future taxpayers.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
18 Little-Known Gun Facts That Prove That Guns Make us Safer
The American people deserve to know the truth about gun control.
Passing strict gun control laws will not make us all safer. In fact, as you will read about below, even a study conducted at Harvard found that the more guns a nation has the less crime it tends to have. In other words, there is a very strong positive correlation between more guns and less crime. This is the exact opposite of what the mainstream media would have us believe, but it makes sense. You see, the reality is that criminals really, really, really don’t want to get shot. When you pass strict gun control laws, you take the fear of getting shot away and criminals tend to flourish. Just look at what is going on in America today. The places with the highest crime rates are the major cities where strict gun control laws have been passed. In some of those cities the police are so overwhelmed that they have announced that they simply won’t even bother responding to certain kinds of crime anymore. The truth is that the government cannot protect us adequately, and that is one reason why millions of preppers are arming themselves and gun sales have been setting new records year after year. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and many of our politicians seem absolutely obsessed with trying to restrict our constitutional right to own guns. They are waging a relentless campaign to try to convince the American people that guns are bad. But is that actually the case? Of course not. The following are 18 little-known gun facts that prove that guns make us safe…
And did you know that there is now an official propaganda manual that has been put out for gun control advocates? This manual actually encourages gun control advocates to emotionally exploit major shooting incidents to advance the cause of gun control…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Tyranny comes in many forms but one sure sign of tyranny is when those elected to govern pass laws that impose tax burdens and limit freedom for all, except themselves. By this measure, Obamacare is an excellent example of tyranny.
The Administration is currently spending $684 million of our tax dollars on a massive, daily ad campaign to convince uninsured Americans to call Obamacare exchanges and buy health insurance at a cost of between about $5,000 per person and $11,000 per family per year.
While $684 million is being spent on this feverish, last minute attempt to convince the unwilling to fork over what is a veritable fortune for many in this troubled economy, the President is working in secret with House Speaker David Bohner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ensure that members of Congress and their aides do not have to pay for their Obamacare insurance coverage.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Bulger Guilty in Gangland Crimes, Including Murder
James (Whitey) Bulger, the mobster who terrorized South Boston in the 1970s and ‘80s and ran the city’s notorious Winter Hill Gang, was found guilty of involvement in murders and other crimes. Mr. Bulger, 83, faces a sentence of life in prison.
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Court Staffer Fired for Helping Wrongfully Convicted Man
Sharon Snyder is 70 years old. She’s a great grandmother and has been working at a Missouri court for 34 years. In 2011, she gave an imprisoned man trying to overturn a 27-year-old rape conviction a public document to help him seek DNA tests. Last month, those DNA tests helped Robert Nelson go free. And then Snyder was fired. A Jackson County Circuit judge says she violated court rules by helping Nelson and his family—even though they could have obtained the document she provided them with themselves if they’d known what it was and where to get it, the Kansas City Star reports.
“The document you chose was, in effect, your recommendation for a Motion for DNA testing that would likely be successful in this Division,” the judge wrote in his dismissal letter. “It was clearly improper and a violation of Canon Seven … which warns against the risk of offering an opinion or suggested course of action.” Snyder was nine months away from retirement when she was fired. “I lent an ear to his sister, and maybe I did wrong,” she says. “But if it was my brother, I would go to every resource I could possibly find. I think I might have been the answer to his prayers.”
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Exposing the Media-Manufactured Racism of the Trayvon Martin Story
Arthur Weinreb’s book, ‘Racism and the Death of Trayvon Martin’: Legal Insights into the Trial of George Zimmerman’, recently released by Smashwords Copyright 2013, is the literary answer to a new mural entitled ‘We are all Trayvon Martin’ unveiled inside Florida’s Capitol in Tallahassee over the weekend.
‘We are all Trayvon Martin’ features a man shooting a hooded figure in the back of the head. “At 10 feet long, there’s also room for the bleeding visage of Martin Luther King Jr. and the words “we are all Trayvon Martin” in multiple languages,” writes Robert Laurie in his column.
Weinreb argues far more eloquently and convincingly in his book that we could all be George Zimmerman, accused of media-hyped racism in a tragedy that has nothing to do with racism.
A Not Guilty verdict notwithstanding, Zimmerman will spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder. His is a story that never ends. Ditto for Weinreb’s ‘Racism and the Death of Trayvon Martin’. Reading the book teaches us that what happened to Zimmerman will happen again. And again and again.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Feinstein: You’re Not a Real Journalist Unless You Draw a Salary
California Senator Dianne Feinstein has proposed an amendment to the Media Shield Law — an irrelevant law ignoring protection already afforded by the First Amendment — that would limit the law’s protection only to “real reporters,” not bloggers and other upstart alternative media types.
A real reporter, declared Madame Feinstein during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, is “a salaried agent” of a media company like the New York Times or ABC News, not a shoestring operation with volunteers and writers who are not paid.
Feinstein voiced her concern “that the current version of the bill would grant a special privilege to people who aren’t really reporters at all, who have no professional qualifications,” like bloggers and citizen journalists.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
First Dog Bo is Airlifted to Obama Holiday Home
When President Barack Obama goes on holiday to the seaside things can get complicated.
Rooms have to be found for dozens of Secret Service agents, someone has to carry a selection of presidential basketballs, and of course the family dog needs his own state-of-the-art aircraft.
Arriving in the idyllic coastal retreat of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, Mr Obama left behind him in Washington DC high profile debates over the budget, government surveillance and his health care reforms. Instead, he will spend the next eight days playing golf, going to the beach, and buying books from the Bunch of Grapes bookstore.
In the air he swapped his suit and tie for khakis and a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, while Mrs Obama wore a yellow-and-white summer dress.
Bo, the president’s Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane.
It was the first time the Ospreys have been taken on holiday by a US president.
More than 70 hotel rooms, each costing up to $345 (£220) a night, have been booked out for Secret Service agents, who took charge of luggage including two large mesh bags full of basketballs.
The Obamas are staying in Chilmark on the western tip of the island, an area that is dotted with multi-million dollar homes. The neighbours include actor Ted Danson and the singer Carly Simon.
On several previous visits the Obamas had stayed at the 28-acre Blue Heron Farm, but it has since been sold to Britain’s most celebrated architect, Baron Foster of Thames Bank.
The president has therefore had to downsize to a $7.6 million, 5,000-square foot retreat on nine acres which is owned by a businessman friend from Chicago. It includes a basketball court.
As a result Mr Obama will be staying closer to public roads which will have to be closed as his motorcade heads for the golf course of bookshop.
The Martha’s Vineyard Times newspaper warned residents to expect “extraordinary and lengthy up-island detours”. Local officials also emailed residents, saying: “Anyone aggrieved by this closing should email or call the White House.”
Jay Carney, White House spokesman, said: “Obviously, when you’re President of the United States, you carry a little baggage when you travel. And that’s true whether it’s on a summit, international meeting, a domestic trip, or for a vacation. I know he’s looking forward very much to some down time with his family. I’m sure he’ll see some friends.”
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Former NSA Boss: Government Will Continue Surveillance, So Get Used to it
Former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden went on Face the Nation Sunday and told America the NSA’s Fourth Amendment busting surveillance program is “lawful, effective, and appropriate.” He made it clear Obama did not say during a Friday news conference he would implement “operational changes” to the NSA program.
The former Air Force General, now a consultant with the folks who brought us naked body porno scanners at airports around the country, the Chertoff Group, said oversight of NSA surveillance is “already quite good” and “there have been no abuses under him or under his predecessor,” although Obama “does have this issue of confidence, this issue of transparency.”
“The president is trying to take some steps to make the American people more comfortable about what it is we’re doing,” Hayden continued. “That’s going to be hard” because “some steps to make Americans more comfortable will actually make Americans less safe,” he said. In other words, if the government decides to obey the Constitution it will result in terrorism.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Hyperloop: San Francisco to L.A. In 30 Minutes
Serial entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk unveiled design plans for his Hyperloop — a superfast transport system that could cut the travel time from Los Angeles to San Francisco to 30 minutes.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
IRS Refuses to Answer Congressman on AR-15s for ‘Standoff Capability’ (Video)
“Do they need a SWAT team to make sure you’ve paid your taxes?”
The IRS has refused to answer Congressman Jeff Duncan’s question on why IRS agents are training with semi-automatic AR-15s designed for “standoff capability”.
Back in May, Congressman Duncan (R-SC) visited the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Maryland as part of his investigation into the Department of Homeland Security’s large scale ammunition purchases.
While at the facility, Duncan witnessed eight or nine IRS agents using AR-15s at a 100 yard indoor firing range, leading him to wonder, “Why in the world do we have IRS agents with long gun capability…why are they training with that…why do IRS agents need that capability?”
Duncan noted that the style of firearms training the IRS agents were taking was called “standoff capability,” meaning they could target an individual from a long distance away.
“Why do IRS agents need standoff capability?” Duncan asked at a recent public forum. “They should be checking my tax forms, they should be doing audits.” The Congressman questioned why the federal agency couldn’t call on US Marshals or local law enforcement if they were visiting a potentially dangerous criminal.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Man in Coma After Black Mob of 50 Pummels Him
A White St. Paul, Minnesota, man is in a coma today, fighting for his life after a black mob beat him, stripped his clothes off and left him for dead. Even if he recovers, he will have permanent brain damage.
Ray Widstrand thought he had nothing to fear from moving into a black neighborhood on the East Side of St. Paul. This young white guy and aspiring filmmaker thought he had nothing to fear when he decided to take a Sunday night stroll through his adopted part of town.
Nothing to fear from a crowd of 50 black people fighting outside a nearby party. So he stopped to check it out. Soon, however, the mob’s attention turned on him.
“The first person who struck him had hit him with a can in a sock,” said one witness in a police report. “The man went down and a ‘whole bunch of little eastside boys’ began to kick the man. She saw them strip him of his pants and go through the pockets.”
When police arrived, the black mob scattered, leaving only Ray behind.
“He had blood coming from his nose and mouth and was unresponsive,” said the police report. “As of August 8th, the prognosis for recovery is slight, and should he live, he will suffer permanent and protracted loss of brain function.”
Four black people have been arrested so far.
At a press conference, Ray’s father said his son did not feel the neighborhood was dangerous. Ray was a good person, a gentle person, a sweet person, said his friends and family. He liked comic books and posing in superhero outfits for gag photos. As an aspiring filmmaker, Ray contributed the opening sequence of a local cable-access news-talk show about “meeting neighbors, making friends.”
This 26-year old free spirit took people as he found them. He hoped for the same.. Others in St. Paul know better. At least in that neighborhood.
“This is not super uncommon,” said Bob Fox in the reader comment section of the Pioneer Press. “I have seen a white guy or two get surrounded and beat down and robbed quite a few times. Around the bus stops at 5th and Minnesota and 6th and Minnesota are the worst. Damn right it is a hate crime. They attack like a pack of wolves.”
Many of the episodes of the black mob violence in the Twin Cities region — and the officials denials they are happening at all — are documented in “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence and How the Media Ignore It.”
“Some people think they can be safe in a dangerous neighborhood,” said Marlin Newburn, a former prison psychologist and author of the upcoming book: “Send Your Kids to Jail: A Manual for the Mutant Parent.” “They are like infants. Preadolescents truly feel themselves as 10 feet tall and bullet proof, and the infantalized teen or adult feels the same way: They do not believe what they have not personally experienced.”
Earlier this year in Chicago, a jury said much the same thing. The city of Chicago paid $22.5 million to the family of a white woman that city jailers released into a black neighborhood. Soon after meeting with a crowd of black people, she was tossed from a seven-story building. Some still say she jumped to avoid a violent attack.
During the trial, Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson said it can be routinely expected that white people in black neighborhoods are in danger. He called it RAT: Routine Activity Theory. The judge explained RAT by saying the woman “was a white female in a predominantly black, poor neighborhood (and) she had a much higher risk of predatory victimization.”
Judge Frank Easterbrook went on: “She is white and well-off, while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and, thus, a potential target for crime.”
The woman had approached a black resident of a nearby housing project for help but was turned away.
“The woman got on my floor and tried to get in apartment,” said one resident to the Chicago ABC affiliate. “I said, ‘No, white and black don’t mix.’“
The City of Chicago tried to say that RAT was thinly disguised racial profiling. But at the trial, RAT and race were everywhere — no matter how hard the city worked to keep it out. No matter how dedicated local media were to ignoring it.
If Ray depended on the local media for information, he would not have been aware of an epidemic of racial violence in the Twin Cities region. Many examples of this violence are documented, often with video tape, in “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence and How the Media Ignore It.”
Last year, a rash of more than a dozen cases of black mob attacks in downtown Minneapolis left at least one man with severe brain injuries as well.
A St. Patrick’s Day mauling from 20 black people left a graphic artist with serious brain injuries and no short-term memory.
An hour before he was beat and kicked into the Intensive Care Unit, 20 black people assaulted an out-of-town couple at the exact same intersection. The Star Tribune was squeamish about reporting the race of the criminals, but City Pages was not:
Melissa screamed as three separate youths came at Kirk, throwing punches. Kirk says he was able to dodge the blows. He remembers one of the assailants smiling while he threw punches, “like it was fun.” As people on the street started to take notice of the attack, the mob dispersed, leaving Kirk one-on-one with a man he says was over 6 feet tall.
“I dodged several of his punches before he ran off,” Kirk said, adding that he himself didn’t punch anyone. “I believe that if it wasn’t for my wife’s screaming I would have been seriously injured.”
Thankfully, he ended up with nothing more than a swollen neck. Melissa, a 33-year-old school teacher, was pushed, and one of the assailants burned her hand with a cigarette, she says.
After the mob dispersed, Kirk and Melissa made their way back to the Marquette. There, they talked to a police officer about the incident.
Wrote Melissa in an email: The “cop wasn’t that interested in taking a report, since we didn’t have descriptions — just African-American. … [I] wonder how many people have been attacked, since our story isn’t even part of the stats.”
There were others, lots of others, at the Mall of America, St. Paul and other places throughout the area.
But the daily papers are loathe to report the race of the perpetrators or how they occur from black mobs exponentially out of proportion.
In September 2011, a group of black people attacked a mobile alcoholic beverage cart in Minneapolis — stealing, threatening. The newspapers dutifully reported the crime, and dutifully ignored the race of the attackers — except for the University of Minnesota newspaper, which in its early editions identified the attackers by race, but removed it in later editions.
Which is how it should be, said Minneapolis police spokesman William Palmer:
“The MPD does not track arrestees by race,” said Palmer. “And frankly, no, it doesn’t matter. We arrest and prepare criminal cases for consideration of prosecution for those people who choose to break the law. Race has nothing to do with it.”
Maybe the City of Chicago should have called Palmer as a witness. Maybe it could have saved the city $22.5 million from a civil judgment that said otherwise.
As the attacks proliferate, so do the denials that race has anything to do with the attacks. But more and more people in the Twin Cities region are wondering what is going on. They also wonder when local media and public officials are going to start to tell the truth about it.
“A gang of African-American males and females beat a white male nearly to death, and it isn’t a hate crime?” said Tiffany Johnson in the reader comment section of the Pioneer Press. “And why isn’t the NAACP speaking out about this terrible crime?”
“The media continues to dismay with their clear double standard in news coverage regarding their agenda in matters of race,” said Keith Olson. “The media loves to sensationalize white-on-black victimization and literally turns a blind eye when the races are reversed. I am not surprised whatsoever that whites are finally showing their displeasure with this sort of distortion when it comes to the propaganda they are fed.”
“If you look at the crime stats, the vast majority of such incidents are committed by young black males,” said Jim Russell. “We can’t help them solve this problem if we won’t admit it exists. Don’t make it worse by falling for the PC media narratives.”
The beating took place Sunday, August 4, but local residents did not learn about it from local media for almost a week. That also brought down a heaping of scorn on local media.
This comment found at the web site of the local ABC affiliate: “These losers stomped on this man’s head and practically beat him to death!” said Nicole Rhoades. “Why did it take so long to get news coverage on this story?”
| — Hat tip: McR | [Return to headlines] |
Man Says Off-Duty Cops Beat Him Up, Left Him for Dead
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
Man says he was “on the verge of death”
An Oklahoman man claims that two off-duty police officers beat him within inches of his life then left him for dead following an argument he was having with his girlfriend during a picnic outing.
Yohawna Lewis and his girlfriend were having an argument over absent lunch meat last Saturday, Aug. 3 on the banks of the Illinois River in Tahlequah.
“We had no food, and that was the stupid argument we were having,” Lewis’ girlfriend Amanda Belty explained to NewsOn6.com.
Three men happened to wander by and demanded Lewis leave Belty alone.
“They acted like he was about to hit me and he wasn’t. I mean, we were arguing and that was that,” Belty stated.
Lewis says the men “aggressively started pushing me around, telling me he was a cop and that I was going to do what he said.”
When Lewis asked for identification and badge numbers, the three men laid in on him, pinning him to the ground and placing him in a choke hold, while one of the men kicked him.
“They jumped on me,” Lewis disclosed to NewsOn6, “and began sitting on top of me, punching me directly in the face, while another one in their party was saying, ‘hold him under, just hold him under.’ And they repeatedly did this.”
Photos of Lewis’s face post-confrontation tell the story of the brutal beating…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘Mandatory Minimum’ Sentences to End for Many Drug Offenders
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. plans to announce a federal policy shift to reduce penalties for low-level, nonviolent offenders and to ease prison overcrowding.
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors will no longer seek long, “mandatory minimum” sentences for many low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, under a major shift in policy aimed at turning around decades of explosive growth in the federal prison population, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. planned to announce Monday.
“Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no good law enforcement reason,” Holder planned to tell the American Bar Assn. meeting here, according to an advance text of his remarks. “While the aggressive enforcement of federal criminal statutes remains necessary, we cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation.”
Under the new policy, prosecutors would send fewer drug offenders to federal prison for long terms and send more of them to drug treatment and community service. A Justice Department spokesman said officials had no estimate of how many future prosecutions would be affected.
The change responds to a major goal of civil rights groups, which say long prison sentences have disproportionately hurt low-income and minority communities.
In his speech, Holder endorses that point of view, saying that “a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities” and that “many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem, rather than alleviate it.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Monsanto and GMO Lies Revealed
Generally speaking, many of the biggest bio-tech companies in the world would have us believe that GMOs are ‘perfectly safe’ and designed to ‘more efficiently’ feed the world. But, GMOs do not generate greater yields; effectively resist drought conditions; have greater nutritional value or any other consumer benefit.
In fact, a growing body of evidence connects GMOs with health problems, environmental damage and violation of farmers’ and consumers’ rights. The unforeseen consequences of altering the natural growth cycle of our food may be staggering. The following is just a sample of what the experts say:
“The process of genetic engineering always involves the risk of altering the genetics and cellular functioning of a food organism in unanticipated ways. These unanticipated alterations can result in GE foods being allergenic, toxic, or reduced in nutritional value”. — Professor John Fagan, award-winning Geneticist, Maharishi University of Management, Iowa, USA.
Back in 1998, Bob Shapiro (the eventual CEO of Monsanto) even admitted that the effects of GMOs are unknown when he said:
“But we realize that with any new and powerful technology with unknown, and to some degree unknowable — by definition — effects, then there necessarily will be an appropriate level at least, and maybe even more than that, of public debate and public interest.”
Since its inception, Professor Richard Lacey, a microbiologist, medical doctor, and Professor of Food Safety at Leeds University has been strongly against the introduction of genetically engineered foods because of the health risks. Professor Lacey make an important point:…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Rodeo Clown Mocks Obama, Infuriates Democrats!
Missouri State Fair officials and politicians on Sunday condemned the performance of a rodeo clown who donned a mask resembling President Barack Obama during Saturday’s riding competition.
A tempest over the incident erupted after the website Show Me Progress reported a Facebook account of it.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Stop-and-Frisk Policy in New York City Violated Rights, Judge Rules
In a repudiation of a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy, a federal judge has found that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers, and called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms.
In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision.
These stop-and-frisk episodes, which soared in number over the last decade as crime continued to decline, demonstrated a widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, according to the ruling. It also found violations with the 14th Amendment.
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Ted Cruz’s Father: ‘ObamaCare is Going to Destroy the Elderly’
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the subject of endless 2016 presidential speculation, and if he does decide to run, he’s already learned one important lesson.
“You all had the opportunity earlier this afternoon to get to know my father. And as you saw, my dad is very soft spoken,” Cruz joked during a speech in Iowa this weekend. “I will confess, I am today violating what has been a cardinal rule, which is never, ever, ever follow my father at the podium.”
Cruz and his father, Rafael, a Texas pastor, both addressed a gathering of Christian conservatives in Ames, Iowa on Saturday, and the elder Cruz — speaking without notes — recounted his imprisonment and torture in Cuba during the 1950s and subsequent immigration to the United States.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Confused and Misguided Youth
Brainwashed, dumbed downed, Led astray, Education, Common Core, Main Stream Media
Dr. Thomas Sowell, Economics professor, economist, writer, and sage, encapsulated brilliantly what ails our youth. “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
And the culprits are the American public education, an ever growing lack of religious education, and the indifferent parenting that does not question what children learn or do not learn in school.
Young people in any generation tend to be naïve, idealistic, and gullible; it is easy to sell them anything because they confuse feelings with rational thought. They are told so often and so early in life that they are special that they form a distorted view of themselves.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The NSA is Turning the Internet Into a Total Surveillance System
Another burst of sunlight permeated the National Security Agency’s black box of domestic surveillance last week.
According to the New York Times, the NSA is searching the content of virtually every email that comes into or goes out of the United States without a warrant. To accomplish this astonishing invasion of Americans’ privacy, the NSA reportedly is making a copy of nearly every international email. It then searches that cloned data, keeping all of the emails containing certain keywords and deleting the rest — all in a matter of seconds.
If you emailed a friend, family member or colleague overseas today (or if, from abroad, you emailed someone in the US), chances are that the NSA made a copy of that email and searched it for suspicious information.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
‘We Are All Trayvon’ Mural Debuts in Florida State Capitol
This weekend, a new mural entitled “We are all Trayvon Martin” was unveiled inside Florida’s Capitol in Tallahassee. It’s a lovely piece of work, featuring a man shooting a hooded figure in the back of the head. At 10 feet long, there’s also room for the bleeding visage of Martin Luther King Jr. and the words “we are all Trayvon Martin” in multiple languages.
Apparently, that’s supposed to bring together the peoples of many nations. …or something.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
British Library Network Blocks ‘Hamlet’ For ‘Violent Content’
Use of Web blocks — usually “for the children” — is becoming depressingly common these days. So much so, that many people have probably come to accept them as a fact of online life. After all, the logic presumably goes, we can’t do much about it, and anyway surely it’s a good thing to try to filter out the bad stuff? Techdirt readers, of course, know otherwise, but for anyone who still thinks that well-intentioned blocking of “unsuitable” material is unproblematic, the following cautionary tale from the British blogger W.H. Forsyth may prove instructive:
“On Monday, I was sitting in the British Library frantically trying to write my new book in a shturmovshchina. I had to quickly check a particular line in Hamlet, so I Googled Hamlet MIT, because the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has put the entire works of Shakespeare up on the Internet. (It takes 70 mins to order a physical book). I clicked on the link and…
“A message came up from the British Library telling me that access to site was blocked due to “violent content”.
The rest of the highly-entertaining blog post details attempts to get the library staff to see that there was a worrying symbolism about blocking Hamlet of all things in the British Library of all places:…
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Far-Right Attacks Scare French Muslims
PARIS — A recent foiled anti-Muslim shooting attack has send shockwaves among French Muslims, fearing a surge on attacks on their mosques and lives.
“There is a clear will today to hurt the Muslim community,” Kamel Kabtane, rector of the Grand Mosque of Lyon, told Reuters on Monday, August 12.
“These are no longer isolated acts. It feels like there is a whole organization being put in place,” he said, adding that two minor acts had been carried out against mosques in southeastern France over the weekend.
Kabtane comments came during a meeting with Muslim leaders in the French city of Lyon.
During the meeting he urged local Muslims to show solidarity at the suburban Minguettes Mosque, which police said the soldier arrested on Saturday planned to shoot at on the Muslim ‘Eid al-Fitr holiday.
According to the interior ministry, a 23-year-old French soldier was arrested at his air force base near the city of Lyon for planning an attack on a local mosque.
The suspect was placed under formal investigation on Monday, accused of “possessing category 4 ammunition in relation to a terrorist undertaking”.
He is also accused of “defacing a place of worship in relation to a terrorist undertaking” for the Bordeaux attack, a legal source said.
The soldier held views “close to those of the radical extreme right” and had already attacked a mosque in the Bordeaux region last year without causing much damage, the ministry said, without giving further details.
Security services are grappling with an increase in far-right militant activity in France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim minority.
The government closed down half a dozen far-right militant groups in July after the death of a left-wing student in a brawl between fringe groups.
A recent report issued last July by Committee against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) showed an increase in verbal and physical attacks against Muslims in France.
In an annual report, the CCIF said anti-Muslim attacks rose to 469 last year, from only 298 in 2011 and 188 in 2010
Attacks against mosques had almost doubled to 40 in 2012 compared with 2011, the CCIF said.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
First Bone Tools Suggest Neanderthals Taught us Skills
Two Stone Age humans watch intently as their teacher works on a fragment of rib. With a final flourish the tool is complete, and one student moves in for a closer look. Communication is difficult in the absence of a common language. “Now you try,” gestures the Neanderthal teacher.
The scene may not be as far-fetched as it might seem. A team of archaeologists has found evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were the first to produce a type of specialised bone tool, still used in some modern cultures today. The find is the best evidence yet that we may have — on rare occasions — learned a trick or two from our extinct cousins.
Neanderthals evolved in Europe 200,000 years ago, about the same time that our species first appeared in Africa (see diagram). Modern humans had made it to Europe by about 44,000 years ago, and the two species lived side-by-side for about 5000 years.
During that time, Europe’s Neanderthals suddenly began making relatively sophisticated tools, similar to those produced by our species. This suggests one obvious conclusion, says Shannon McPherron at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany: “Neanderthals were being influenced by the modern humans.”
Perhaps that is not the full story, though. McPherron and Marie Soressi at Leiden University in the Netherlands, with colleagues, have just finished excavating two sites in south-west France that are 45,000 and 51,000 years old. As such, they slightly predate the accepted first appearance of our species in Europe.
At both sites, the team found specialised tools made of polished bone, similar to those still used in some cultures today to process animal hides and make leather. Unless humans arrived in Europe earlier than we thought, the sophisticated bone tools can only have been fashioned by Neanderthal hands, says McPherron. “We’ve added a whole new component to Neanderthal behaviour.”
Other Neanderthal tools made of bone have all been shaped by chipping away bits of bone, much like stone tools are made. The polishing treatment suggests those who made the tools had a grasp on the material properties of bone.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
French Soldier Held Over Plan to Attack Mosque
A French soldier, described as a far-right sympathizer, has been arrested over a plot to carry out an armed attack on a mosque in the city of Lyon, officials announced on Sunday.
French police have arrested a young soldier on suspicion of planning to fire shots at a mosque near the eastern city of Lyon, the interior ministry said Sunday.
The 23-year-old man, who investigators say is “close to the radical far-right”, was detained at his airbase near Lyon.
He was remanded in custody on Wednesday and charged with the possession of ammunition and plans to damage a place of worship “in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
ID-Card Fraud ‘Epidemic’ Threatens Sweden
Sweden’s commitment to transparency and access to information is turning the country into a favourite target for criminals who use fake IDs to defraud unsuspecting Swedes.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
In Scotland, Big Brother Now Plans to Monitor Your Child
The Scottish provincial government, led by the secession seeking Scottish National Party, has introduced legislation that will see the State provide a personal guardian for each child, regardless of need, at a cost of over £120 per child per year.
The government’s plan has met fierce opposition from a number of fronts including The Law Society of Scotland, The Schoolhouse Home Education Association, and sections of the media but party officials are doubling down on their plans.
First Minister Alex Salmond’s SNP administration wants every child to have a ‘Named Person’ with the legal authority to ensure they are raised in a government-approved manner. There will be a database where children’s personal details can be recorded, stored and shared, and the act named the Children and Young People Bill would permit children who are angry with their parents to report them to their named person.
It literally is something out of Orwell’s 1984 where parents constantly had to be mindful of what they did, since children were encouraged to report them to the authorities for the tiniest infractions of party policy.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Professor Richard Dawkins has become embroiled in a Twitter row after he claimed the last time Muslims contributed something worthwhile was during the Dark Ages.
The 71-year-old author went on to tweet that the world’s Muslims had won fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.
His comments sparked anger among high-profile Twitter users including writer Caitlin Moran and economics editor at Channel 4 News, Faisal Islam.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Neanderthals Made Leather-Working Tools Like Those in Use Today
Archaic humans may have invented bone implements still used to make expensive handbags.
A bone tool found in a cave in southwestern France suggests that Neanderthals had sophisticated ways of working leather.
Excavations of Neanderthal sites more than 40,000 years old have uncovered a kind of tool that leather workers still use to make hides more lustrous and water resistant. The bone tools, known as lissoirs, had previously been associated only with modern humans. The latest finds indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans might have invented the tools independently.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sweden: Thieves Make 40,000 Litre Diesel Raid
Police are on the hunt for diesel thieves who stole a huge quantity of fuel from an automatic filling station in Vilhelmina, northern Sweden, with the raided goods estimated to be worth 600,000 kronor ($92,000)
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Testicle-Biting Amazon Fish Caught in Denmark
Danish skinny-dippers beware: A piranha cousin rumored to go after testicles might be invading brackish waters around Copenhagen.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A man who wears a sieve on his head for religious reasons has been allowed to wear his bizarre headgear on his official identity card.
Prankster Lukas Novy, from Brno in the Czech Republic, claims that his Pastafarian faith means he has to wear the sieve at all times.
Officials ruled that turning down Novy’s request would be a breach of the country’s religious equality laws.
Brno City Hall spokesman Pavel Zara explained: ‘The application complies with the laws of the Czech Republic where headgear for religious or medical reasons is permitted if it does not hide the face.’
Novy claims to be a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, when emerged in the USA as spoof on organised religion.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
UK: Man Charged Over Lee Rigby Videos and Inciting Terrorism
From the Guardian, the BBC and the Daily Mail
A 22-year-old man has been charged with terror offences after allegedly making a series of video recordings about the murder of soldier Lee Rigby. Royal Barnes, aka Musa Barnes, from Hackney east London, was detained by police on Friday along with a 21-year-old woman (said to be his wife) who is due to answer bail on Tuesday. .
A Scotland Yard spokesman said Barnes is charged with dissemination of terrorist publications for allegedly making a series of recordings about Rigby’s death on 22 May, and circulating them “with the intention, either directly or indirectly of encouraging others into the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism”.
He is also charged with encouraging an act of terrorism by publishing a statement that glorified the killing, and inciting terrorism overseas.
It is claimed that on 12 June Barnes “incited another to commit an act of terrorism, wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom, and that act, would if committed in England and Wales constitute an offence”.
One video was called ‘Muslim laughs at British Soldier killing’
Barnes, (aged 22) who insisted on standing throughout the court hearing, was refused bail and remanded in custody until a hearing at the Old Bailey on Friday, August 16.
The consumer relations worker, who wore a blue and white striped t-shirt to court, was flanked by two guards in the dock, speaking only to confirm his name and address at the start of proceedings.
He was supported in the public gallery by his wife of nine-months and another man.
| — Hat tip: Steen | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
A 13-year-old girl who went missing for a week has been found alone, safe and well — 40 miles away from home, police said tonight.
Erika Kacicova had last been seen last Monday at 4pm as she left her home in the Darnall area of Sheffield, South Yorkshire — but she was found tonight in the centre of Bradford, West Yorkshire.
Officers said five people — four men and one woman — were being held in custody on suspicion of child abduction. Two men, aged 41 and 37, were in custody, police said, but details of the other two men and a woman were not released…
Erika Kacicova’s father Stefan, 40, said his ‘beautiful’ daughter had got to know a man of Pakistani origin on Facebook before disappearing a week ago.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
A judge who allowed a paedophile to walk free in a case where the 13-year-old victim was described as a ‘predator’ was forced to alter his sentence today, but still failed to jail him or apologise.
Neil Wilson, 41, was given a suspended sentence last week after Judge Nigel Peters QC said the child may have looked and acted older than her years.
The judge today called back Wilson because his sentence contained an error and added four months to his initial eight months in jail, still suspended for two years.
But separate to this the Attorney General’s office has confirmed it is still investigating if this is too lenient, and will come to a decision in the next 21 days.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
A 22-year-old salesman has been charged with terror offences after allegedly making a series of videos ‘glorifying’ the murder of soldier Lee Rigby.
Royal Barnes, from Hackney, east London, is accused of creating clips celebrating the father-of-one’s execution in Woolwich, including one called ‘Muslim laughs at British Soldier killing’.
He is also accused of inciting terrorism overseas and appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court after being arrested on Friday along with a 21-year-old woman, who is due to answer bail tomorrow.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Attorney for Whistleblower: 400 U.S. Missiles Stolen in Benghazi
On August 12, Joe DiGenova, attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told Washington D.C.’s WMAL that one of the reasons people have remained tight-lipped about Benghazi is because 400 U.S. missiles were “diverted to Libya” and ended up being stolen and falling into “the hands of some very ugly people.”
DiGenova represents Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson. He told WMAL that he “does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles.”
He claimed his information “comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in constant contact with people in the special ops and intelligence community.” He said the biggest concern right now is finding those missiles before they can be put to use. “They are worried, specifically according to these sources, about an attempt to shoot down an airliner,” he claimed.
On August 4, Breitbart News covered a report in The Telegraph that said 35 CIA operatives were working in Benghazi when the attack against the consulate took place. The Telegraph claimed these operatives were allegedly in an “annex near the consulate [working] on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armories to Syrian Rebels.”
Months earlier, following then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s February 7 testimony on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi attacks, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) suggested that one of the causes behind the terrorist attack “may have been that there was a gun running operation going on in Benghazi, leaving Libya and going to Turkey and [distributing] arms to the [Syrian] rebels.”
| — Hat tip: JLH | [Return to headlines] |
CIA Gun-Running, Qatar-Libya-Syria
A report from CNN’s Jake Tapper has reintroduced “Benghazi-Gate” to the US media spotlight. The report claims that “dozens” of CIA operatives were on the ground in Benghazi on the night of the attack, and the CIA is going to great lengths to suppress details of them and their whereabouts being released. The report alleges that the CIA is engaged in “unprecedented” attempts to stifle employee leaks, and “intimidation” to keep the secrets of Benghazi hidden, allegedly going as far as changing the names of CIA operatives and “dispersing” them around the country.
One suspects this has a single and defined purpose — to hide the CIA’s culpability in supplying arms to known extremists in Libya and Syria. Moreover, the CNN report alludes to the CIA supplying “surface-to-air missiles” from Benghazi to rebels in Syria, but this may only be the tip of the iceberg. The report goes on to state: (my emphasis)
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Yemeni Official: Embassy Attack Threat “Had No Basis in Fact”
Terror plot manufactured to dampen opposition to drone strikes
A high-ranking Yemeni security official has told McClatchy that the Obama administration’s recently announced terror threat which supposedly targeted US embassies had “no basis in fact” and was manufactured merely to dampen opposition to drone strikes…
The announcement of the threat against US embassies also served to justify blanket NSA surveillance, leading some to suggest that the alleged plot was being hyped to distract from the Edward Snowden scandal. It was later claimed that the NSA had intercepted a “conference call” of Al-Qaeda members during which militants discussed an attack.
However, in a report entitled U.S. embassies in Muslim world reopen amid still-murky threats, McClatchy cites, “A high-ranking Yemeni security official speaking on the condition of anonymity,” who told the news outlet that the threat “had no basis in fact,” with the source bemusedly attributing “media reports about imminent terror strikes to a single official’s comments, which he cast as a misguided attempt at shifting public opinion in the face of increasing and unpopular American drone strikes.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Kremlin Security Agency Turns Back the Clock
In the wake of the Snowden espionage drama, the Kremlin is looking to fortify its security with surprisingly outdated gadgets. German typewriters are the new key to prevent the theft of classified information.
Russia’s Federal Guard Service (FSO) says it is too risky to archive top-secret data on electronic storage devices. Good news for Olympia Business Systems, a German company based in Hattingen, because the FSO is looking to acquire a line of analog typewriters — gadgets the company still produces.
Olympia offers four different typewriters, two of which are electronic. They cost between 150 and 300 euros. According to CEO Andreas Fostiropoulos, the FSO has also ordered hundreds of fabric ribbon spools to go with its “new” fleet.
Electric typewriters ‘spy-proof’
The office gadgets producer, which has some 60 employees, makes around 33 million euros in revenue per year. Around two percent of that amount is brought in by its typewriters. Even with Russia’s newly awakened interest in the heightened security of typed documents, CEO Fostiropoulos doesn’t see a real boom coming the typewriter business.
“We don’t want to get carried away just because the FSO is all of a sudden keen on typewriters. Sure, the typewriter will be around for a few more years. But it’s not like this is the technology of the future or anything.”
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
A Pakistani father has told how he faces death threats and has been driven into hiding — because of his 30ins moustache.
Islamist extremists were so infuriated by Malik Amir Mohammad Khan Afridi’s facial hair they kidnapped the businessman and held him in a cave for a month until he shaved.
But despite his clash with the militants over his prized whiskers — said to signify virility and prosperity — the father-of-ten, from Peshawar, Pakistan, has now grown it back, vowing never to be bowed by the thugs again.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Britain giving millions of pounds to Nigeria while it embarks on a space programme is a ‘sensible investment’, the government insisted today.
The oil-rich country, which has accepted £300million from Britain in aid this year alone, has set in train ambitious plans to launch its own rockets and even put a man into space.
But International Development Secretary Justine Greening was backed by Downing Street after arguing that it was money ‘well spent’ by Nigeria.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Exploding Racial and Linguistic Divide in America in 2013
Teddy Roosevelt, in 1906, said, “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or prevent all possibility of its continuing to be a national at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. We have but one flag. We have one language, English.”
With the killing of African-American Trayvon Martin by a Latino-American George Zimmerman, President Teddy Roosevelt’s brilliant statement over 100 years ago — exemplifies America’s exploding racial and linguistic divide.
Before 1965 and Senator Teddy Kennedy’s Immigration Reform Act, America thrived on a 90 percent European, 7 percent African and 3 percent Latino population. While Dr. Martin Luther King brought equality of opportunity and human rights, he failed to bring to inspire African-Americans to higher educational standards. Today, racism rears its ugly head with cyclical welfare dependency, illiteracy, joblessness because of a lack of education, skills and personal accountability, welfare babies and entrenched poverty for a growing population of black Americans.
Within 45 years, Kennedy’s immigration bill dumped over 100 million people from all over the globe into America’s heartland. Bantu Somalian tribesmen from thatched huts on the African plains, to Hmong peasants from Asia, to goat herding Muslims from all over the Middle East, to Brazilian drug lords, now call America home — by the millions.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Immigration and Recession Boost UK Population by 420,000… the Fastest Growth in Europe
The population in Britain is rising more steeply than anywhere else in Europe, according to official estimates yesterday.
Numbers rose by almost 420,000 in a year, driven by the highest birth rate since 1972.
The figure, which covers the 12 months to the middle of 2012 is more than the population increases in Germany, Belgium, Holland and Sweden combined.
The Office for National Statistics says around four in ten of the additional people are immigrants. Six out of ten are the result of rising birth rates, which brought a 40-year high in the number of babies born last year — 254,400 more births than deaths.
But a major cause of the baby boom is immigration. More than a quarter of all newborns have mothers who were born abroad.
The total number of people living in the UK at the end of last June was 63,705,000…
UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: ‘These figures show the continuing failure of the Government to get a grip on immigration into this country. The results of this increase in population can be felt in communities up and down the country as public services struggle to cope with the increase in demand.’
He added: ‘At the same time we face cuts to frontline services and send billions of pounds abroad in foreign aid. And this is before Romanian and Bulgarian citizens have full access to the UK come January next year.’
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
The Labour Party ‘made mistakes’ on immigration by going it alone and opening Britain’s borders to a huge influx of migrant workers, Chris Bryant admitted today.
Labour’s shadow immigration minister said the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were too slow to introduce a points-based system aimed at curbing the number of low-skilled people flocking to the UK.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
President Ignores Murders of Americans Committed by His Illegal-Alien Constituents
Despite President Barack Obama and his minions weakening U.S. sovereignty, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the American citizens who are being victimized by Obama’s constituents who became lawbreakers the moment they crossed the U.S. border without permission or overstayed their temporary visas, according to two cases adjudicated last week.
In one case, a federal judge in New Mexico on Wednesday sentenced an illegal alien from El Salvador to 40 years in federal prison for armed robbery and felony murder, according to law enforcement officials.
Marvin Aguilar-Lopez will be deported back to El Salvador upon completion of his prison sentence, said U.S. Attorney Kenneth Gonzales in Albuquerque, N.M.
The 26-year-old Aguilar-Lopez and his accomplices — Pablo De Leon Ortiz, 34, and Francisco Melgar-Cabrera, 30, both of El Salvador — were indicted in October 2009, and charged with robbery, felony murder, and firearms offenses in a nine-count indictment as the result of the armed robbery of a Denny’s Restaurant located in Albuquerque and the murder of American citizen Stephanie Anderson, a restaurant worker, on June 20, 2009.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Six Migrants Drown, 100 Rescued Off Sicily
The Italian coastguard found Saturday the dead bodies of six clandestine migrants on a tourist beach in Sicily while nearly 100 others, thought to be Syrians and some Egyptians, were rescued in the latest desperate attempt to reach Europe.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Spain: Rescue Services Save 80 Would-be Migrants
Nearly 90 people attempting to illegally enter Spain via the country’s southern in makeshift boats were picked up at sea on Saturday by Spanish and Moroccan coastguards according to rescue services.
It came just a day after a further 39 immigrants were intercepted in the Strait of Gibraltar.
The Spanish authorities said the rescue operation was coordinated out of the port of Tarifa and, “in total, 70 people in 10 boats were rescued,” a spokeswoman for the rescue services told AFP.
The immigrants are of “sub-Saharan origin” and have been transferred to a Red Cross centre in Tarifa, she said.
Among them was a young girl “suffering from severe hypothermia and who had been transferred to hospital by helicopter,” she added.
The spokeswoman said that a further “16 people in two boats” had been rescued by the Moroccans and transferred to the north African country.
On their official Twitter account, the Spanish rescue services said there was a wind force reading of eight, highlighting how dangerous any crossing would be.
Almost daily, African illegal immigrants try to cross into Spain from Morocco by sea, through the Strait of Gibraltar, or overland via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, in the extreme north of Morocco.
In 2012, 3,804 immigrants reached the Spanish coast by sea, a reduction of 30 percent on 2011.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
“We the People” vs. Insane Utopian Zombies (R Rated — Contains Sex and Profanity)
It is a constant source of amazement to me how the free-wheeling liberals of yesteryear morphed into the most intolerant, self-righteous, arrogant smacked asses on the planet. They are the firmly entrenched Establishment that pretends it is an “outsider” counter-culture. The transformation from sandal-wearing beatniks into jack-booted thugs wearing three-piece suits and designer gowns has been something to behold — and behold it I have.
The end always justifies the means to these humorless utopian zealots. What is more, their “end” acts as a perfect camouflage for all manner of social misfits and undesirables — psychotics, sociopaths, narcissists, thieves…all of them and more have found a made-to-order refuge under the cloak of utopianism.
The utopian cloak is a patchwork quilt made of many pieces, but in this article I will focus on only two of them — secular millenarianism and materialism (scientism). I am indebted to Melanie Phillips and her book “The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power” for valuable insights into these two areas (and several other areas as well). I can’t recommend the book highly enough…
If you have come to feel that the inmates are running the asylum, and have the nagging suspicion that you have been, and are being, lied to by your government, entertainment industry, “news” media, politicians, pundits, and darn near everybody else and their cousin, then take heart — you aren’t crazy, they are…
Suffice it to say that through centuries of trial and error the left-wing intelligentsia have parlayed a hope-filled optimistic foundation of sanity, morality, Deism, and reason — into a grim, amoral, envious, pessimistic, misogynistic, misanthropic, nihilistic, Godless, senseless mess. No mean feat that. What was bad is now good, and what was good is now bad — this state of affairs is sometimes called the “Luciferian Inversion.”
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Aborted Human Fetal Cells in Your Food, Vaccines & Cosmetics
[WARNING: Disturbing Content.]
Dr. Helen Ratajczak, a former drug company scientist, just published a comprehensive review of autism research. Buried in her 79-page review, on page 70, are five words that reveal a secret Big Pharma has kept from you:
“…grown in human fetal tissue.”
As Dr. Mercola reports for Health Impact News Daily, Dec. 21, 2011, the line reads (page 70):
“An additional increased spike in incidence of autism occurred in 1995 when the chicken pox vaccine was grown in human fetal tissue.”
But that fact is never disclosed in your vaccine consent form, which is why most people are unaware that cell cultures derived from aborted human fetuses have been used extensively in vaccine production for decades. And vaccine makers are just content that most of the public are ignorant of this most inconvenient truth. For if we knew, we might be dissuaded from getting the vaccine.
Why are human fetal cells used in the production of vaccines? Joseph Herrin explains, in his August 14, 2009 article, “Hell’s Pharmacy”:
“The traditional process is to inject viral material into chicken eggs and then to harvest the antibodies that are produced. This is a time intensive process, and a way to speed up the production of vaccine has been sought, and has been found.
“The foremost way to streamline the process involves taking human cells, instead of eggs, and using them as the medium in which to grow the viral material to produce the desired vaccine. […] one company in particular has a line of cellular material that they license to other major pharmaceutical companies so that they can create pharmaceutical products. These products include flu vaccines.
“The company is called Crucell. It actually has multiple lines of human cell material, but one in particular, called PER.C6, is marketed to be used to develop vaccines. What the company does not announce publicly is that the cell line was derived from an aborted baby…
Many of the above products manufactured by Pepsi, Cadbury, and Nestles, make use of additives developed by Senomyx, an American biotechnology company that develops additives to amplify certain flavors and smells in foods. Senomyx’s website claims that it has reverse engineered the receptors in humans that react for taste and aroma, and they are capitalizing on these discoveries to produce chemicals that will make food taste better.
Children of God for Life, citing the Senomyx paper “Human receptors for sweet and umami taste” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, claims Senomyx uses aborted fetal cells in its products and testing, making use of Human Embryonic Kidney 293 cells (HEK 293).
Senomyx has not denied this. The company lists several large corporate partners or “collaborators” on its website, such as PepsiCo and Nestle. Campbell Soup Company was a Senomyx corporate partner, but recently ended its partnership after pro-life groups brought up the matter of the use of human fetal cells.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
In the Blink of a Cyborg’s Eye I See Elysium
Our society is moving at lightning speed into a very real future that most people have difficulty believing could exist. As I said at a recent conference, “We have developed science and technology that most people think will not be available until about 100-200 years into the future. Therefore the average personal cannot understand our world or where it is going because they do not understand that we are currently operating science and technology that they think only exists in the world of science fiction.”…
The science of Transhumanism is moving us quickly into the future. The US National Science Foundation has also been looking at that future, including its ethical development, and in 2003 produced a report on technologies that will enhance human abilities; the report was titled “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science.” The military has been funding many of these new technologies. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is within the US Department of Defense, has been working on programs that are Transhumanist in nature, such as the Physical Intelligence project. According to Michael Anissimov, the Media Director for the Singularity Institute, DARPA has been funding “dozens of human augmentation projects around the world.”
There are many scientific breakthroughs which will be able to enhance and extend the overall quality of life. But will these breakthroughs be available to the average person? The lower, middle, and upper middle classes are being brainwashed into accepting socialism and universal health care, through movies like Elysium which heavily promotes socialism as the answer to the “inequitable” wealth of the elite “one percent.” But the problem is that the powerful elite or “one percent” are the ones promoting the socialist myth. The powerful and secretive elite have never had any intention of sharing their wealth and becoming part of the 99%. They will simply continue to control the media, academia, and health care and will live in secure places where the true extent of their vast wealth is carefully hidden.
In the same way, it is now possible to reverse the aging process and enhance cognitive and physical performance through all kind of new technologies. There is a global and well-organized effort to shorten the average life span for us commoners to 66 years. Through the ingestion of GMO foods and chemicals in the food, water and air, human bodies and minds are being genetically rewired to accelerate the aging process, produce all kinds of diseases, and shut down the human brain through Alzheimers and other biotechnological mechanisms. GMO foods are really powerful drugs, genetic modification and neurological rewiring biotechnologies disguised as food. GMO foods act synergistically with vaccines, EMF waves, brainwave entrainment, and an entire range of technologies that the average person does not know exist. The new health care plan appears to be built on
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Norway: Scrap Women’s Quota on Company Boards — Jensen
The Progress Party has called for a victorious centre-right coalition to remove Norway’s quota for women on company boards.
“We have been against this quota from the start,” Progress Party leader Siv Jensen told Aftenposten. “We believe it is wrong to impose such a requirement on private companies. If you own a business, you should be able to decide how it is managed.”
Norway’s pioneering policy, which requires 40 percent of boardroom seats to go to women, has been a huge boon to the so-called “golden skirts”, the female executives women who found themselves in demand when it was introduced in 2006.
However, Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg, who leads the centre-right coalition, said that although her party was also “sceptical” of the quota, removing it was “not a priority”.
| — Hat tip: Fjordman | [Return to headlines] |
Sen. Schumer Calls for Olympic Gay Rainbow Flag Parade to ‘Embarrass’ Putin
A week after senior US lawmaker Sen. Chuck Schumer called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “schoolyard bully,” on Monday he urged athletes marching in the opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year to wave the rainbow flag to show support for gay rights and embarrass the Russian leader.
“When we march initially, all the countries should wave the multicolored flag for gay rights. That would be pretty embarrassing for Putin, let our athletes participate and still take a stand,” Schumer said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.
Putin signed legislation in June that bans the promotion of homosexuality to minors. Russia’s Interior Ministry, which controls the police force, confirmed Monday that the controversial anti-gay law will be enforced during the Sochi Olympics, which are due to be held from February 7-23.
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |
Wi-Fi Trashcans Now Silently Tracking Your Smartphone Data
In an astounding testament to the depth of our surveillance society, a new line of ‘spy trashcans’ have been rolled out that further the international agenda to track and collect all of your personal data at every turn.
In the past we’ve seen politicians revealing that various electronics like your television and computer can spy on you at any time using special built-in hardware, but now even the most basic items are being turned into tools of the surveillance state. In fact, they don’t even have to be electronic in the first place.
And such is the case with the new ‘spy trashcans’, rolling out just recently into the streets of London for beta testing.
Utilizing Wi-Fi technology within the infrastructure of the now tech-equipped trashcans, new ‘Renew Pods’ spy trashcans have been placed throughout the financial district of London. The trash cans actually go ahead and utilize their internet connectivity to collect information from your smartphones without your permission (or any form of warning).
| — Hat tip: JD | [Return to headlines] |