Thursday, December 30, 2010
Former Israeli President Convicted of Rape
JERUSALEM – Former Israel President Moshe Katsav was convicted Thursday of raping an employee when he was a Cabinet minister, the most serious criminal charges ever brought against a high-ranking official and a case that shocked the nation.
Katsav, 65, likely faces from four to 16 years in prison for the crimes, which included two counts of raping an employee in 1998 when he was tourism minister and lesser counts of indecent acts and sexual harassment involving two other women who worked for him when he was president.
Katsav served as a minister in several right-wing Likud governments before he was elected president, a largely ceremonial post, in 2000. He has denied the rape charges, claiming he was a victim of a political witch hunt and suggesting he was targeted because he comes from Israel's Sephardic community. Sephardic Jews, of Middle Eastern origin, were for decades an underclass. Katsav was born in Iran and immigrated to Israel as a child.
A somber Katsav left the courtroom without commenting, surrounded by his legal team. He was ordered to surrender his passport while awaiting sentencing at a date that has not yet been set.
Katsav can appeal the verdict, but legal experts said Israel's Supreme Court was unlikely to overturn such a sweeping conviction. A presidential pardon is also highly unlikely because of the severity of the offenses. In his ruling, the judge said Katsav's defense was full of lies.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/30/israeli-president-katsav-convicted-rape/#ixzz19bQ1aXmD
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Child patients 'washed with sick bowls' at London hospital | Mail Online
Sick children at a leading hospital were forced to wash in buckets for almost a month after bosses failed to fix the hot water supply.
More than 100 youngsters, some of them seriously ill, were left without hot running water.
Parents were forced to carry hot water in buckets from a single working tap in a sluice room so their children could wash. Youngsters suffering from brain tumours and cystic fibrosis were among those affected.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252364/Child-patients-washed-sick-bowls-London-hospital.html#ixzz19YsQosuK
U.S. Army Waiting List Near Record Levels with High Unemployment, GI Bill - ABC News
Young Americans looking to join the armed forces may have to wait to serve.
The combination of lower recruitment target numbers, a weak economy and the implementation of the GI bill has made waiting lists, officially known as the Delayed Entry Pool, longer than they have been in recent years.
The Marine Corps, which has traditionally had a smaller recruiting base, has fulfilled more than 65 percent of its target for fiscal year 2011. The Army entered the new recruiting year in October having fulfilled 50 percent, or half its targeting goals for next year.
The number is a near record for the Army. The last time in recent decades the waiting list was so long was 1996, when the Delayed Entry Pool was at 42.9 percent at the start of the fiscal year.
In recent years, the Army lowered standards to boost recruitment, including allowing those with low test scores and even criminal records to join. But after years of such incentives and hefty bonuses, recruitment interest has not only surged but the quality of Americans who have expressed interest has improved considerably.
For the first time since fiscal year 1992, nearly all of the Army recruits -- 99.9 percent -- in fiscal year 2010 were high school graduates.
FBI Delivers Anti-terror Flyers to Farm Supply Stores
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 29, 2010
An Infowars.com reader was recently visited by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and asked if he wanted to prevent another Oklahoma City bombing. “I work for a large farm store retailer with stores in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico yesterday I had a visit from the FBI joint terrorism task force requesting that we train our staff to help prevent terrorism,” the man writes.
Underneath the Happy Talk, Is This As Bad as the Great Depression?
Washington’s Blog
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The following experts have – at some point during the last 2 years – said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:
- Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
- Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (and see this and this)
- Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker
- Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin
- The head of the Bank of England Mervyn King
- Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
- Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman
- Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead
- Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O’Rourke(updated here)
- Investment advisor, risk expert and “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber
- Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker
- Former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto
- Billionaire investor George Soros
- Senior British minister Ed Balls
How could that possibly be, when the stock market has largely recovered? (Let’s forget for a moment that the stock market rallied after 1929, but then crashed in a double dip).
To find out, we’ll look at a couple comparisons to get an idea of what is going on in the rest of the economy. And then we’ll compare the government’s efforts in the 1930s to today.
Housing Crisis Rivals Great Depression
As I noted last month, the current real estate slump rivals the Great Depression:
Zillow’s Stan Humphries said:
The length and depth of the current housing recession is rivaling the Great Depression’s real estate downturn, and, with encouraging signs fading, will easily eclipse it in the coming months.
During the Great Depression, home prices fell 25.9 percent in five years. The U.S. housing market is now down around 25 percent from its peak in 2006.
As housing price expert Robert Shiller pointed out in September 2008:
Home price declines are already approaching those in the Great Depression, when they plunged 30% during the 1930s [i.e. over a 10-year period]. With prices already down almost 20%, it’s not a stretch to think we might exceed that drop this time around.
As I wrote in December 2008:
In the greatest financial crash of all time – the crash of the 1340s in Italy …. real estate prices fell by 50 percent by 1349 in Florence when boom became bust.How does that compare to 2001-2007?The price of Southern California homes is already down 41%[that was before the first-time homebuyer credit, Hamp and other governmental programs temporarily boosted prices]. Southern California hasn’t fallen as fast as some other areas, and we’re nowhere near the bottom of the market.
Moreover, the bubble was not confined to the U.S. There was a worldwide bubble in real estate.
Gulf Activists Harassed By TSA Agents Who Claim Filming Is Illegal :
As anger against the TSA has mounted, many have wondered if activists will be specifically targeted in an attempt to scare and intimidate them. No subject has been bigger than the gulf disaster and it looks as one of the groups who exposed the extensive use of Corexit9500 in the gulf have fallen victim to TSA tyranny.
When Matt Smith, Gavin Garrison, and Heather Rally of Project Gulf Impact arrived at Ontario Airport in California Tuesday evening to board a plane headed back to the Gulf of Mexico, all three of them were pulled aside by TSA agents and patted down. Coincidentally, they were the only three people pulled out of the security lines.
Matt was the first to be let goand he immediately began filming Gavin and Heather in the holding cell. As he was filming, a TSA Security officer walked up and began to yell at him to turn the camera off and was quoted as saying:
“TSA doesn’t want stuff like this to end up on youtube”
When Matt informed him that it is perfectly legal to film in a public place, the TSA agent radioed in his supervisor. When the supervisor walked over to Matt and Heather, he informed Matt that it was aFEDERAL OFFENSE to film security in airports.
When Heather and Matt challenged this, he grew increasingly angry. He continued repeating that it was a federal offense yet when he was questioned about the law he was unable to provide an answer.
We now live in a country where traveling American citizens are subject to a Stazi type TSA that believes that it completely legal to fondle attractive women’s breasts yet illegal to film their intrusive security procedures.
These procedures are much more than Orwellian scanners; they are being used to break the will and spirit of the American people. If the government is able to to force the public into accepting these intrusive measures than society as we know it will come to an end.
To top it off, Janet Napolitono is openly declaring that TSA is coming to a mall and hotel near you, all in the name of stopping cave dwelling ninjas who can apparently stay out of the sights of every single intelligence agent in the CIA and still find time to make an Internet video calling for the killing of American and Israeli citizens.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Associated Press: Several injured as chairs drop from Maine ski lift
CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine (AP) — A chair lift has derailed on Maine's tallest ski mountain in high winds and injured several people who plummeted as far as 30 feet to the slope below.
Officials at the Sugarloaf resort say that there are about six injuries from Tuesday's accident and that patrols are evacuating the lift. Winds were about 40 mph at the time and about 220 people were on the lift.
Sugarloaf spokesman Ethan Austin says five chairs came down. The resort says none of the injuries appear to be life threatening.
The resort says all the injured have been treated and being taken to hospitals.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine (AP) — A chair lift derailed at Maine's tallest ski mountain Tuesday, sending skiers plummeting 50 feet to the slope below and injuring several people, officials and a witness said.
The Sugarloaf resort in Carrabassett Valley, about 120 miles north of Portland, said on its Facebook page that there were about eight injuries and that its patrols were evacuating the lift.
Most of the injuries appeared to be minor, it said. At least two people were whisked to the nearest hospital, 45 miles away, by ambulance.
111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined: $10,429 Per Person in U.S. | CNSnews.com
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government has accumulated more new debt--$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury.
That equals $10,429.64 in new debt for each and every one of the 308,745,538 people counted in the United States by the 2010 Census.
The total national debt of $13,858,529,371,601.09 (or $13.859 trillion), as recorded by the U.S. Treasury at the close of business on Dec. 22, now equals $44,886.57 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
In fact, the 111th Congress not only has set the record as the most debt-accumulating Congress in U.S. history, but also has out-stripped its nearest competitor, the 110th, by an astounding $1.262 trillion in new debt.
111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined: $10,429 Per Person in U.S. | CNSnews.com
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government has accumulated more new debt--$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury.
That equals $10,429.64 in new debt for each and every one of the 308,745,538 people counted in the United States by the 2010 Census.
The total national debt of $13,858,529,371,601.09 (or $13.859 trillion), as recorded by the U.S. Treasury at the close of business on Dec. 22, now equals $44,886.57 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
In fact, the 111th Congress not only has set the record as the most debt-accumulating Congress in U.S. history, but also has out-stripped its nearest competitor, the 110th, by an astounding $1.262 trillion in new debt.
111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined: $10,429 Per Person in U.S. | CNSnews.com
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government has accumulated more new debt--$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury.
That equals $10,429.64 in new debt for each and every one of the 308,745,538 people counted in the United States by the 2010 Census.
The total national debt of $13,858,529,371,601.09 (or $13.859 trillion), as recorded by the U.S. Treasury at the close of business on Dec. 22, now equals $44,886.57 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
In fact, the 111th Congress not only has set the record as the most debt-accumulating Congress in U.S. history, but also has out-stripped its nearest competitor, the 110th, by an astounding $1.262 trillion in new debt.
Mr. Rothschild and his valet Mr. Rockefeller
With food safety bill, U.S. government will spend nearly $1 million per person to prevent food-borne illness deaths
Mike Adams
Natural News
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
To answer that question, let’s look at the food illness fatality figures offered by the CDC:
• Out of the 5,000 food-borne illness deaths each year in the United States, only 1,809 are “attributable to foodborne transmission” according to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5n…).
• E.coli, which is often quoted in the big scare stories about food safety, only kills 78 people a year through food-borne transmission (52 plus 26, from the CDC’s chart). Interestingly, according to the CDC’s own numbers (from 1998), more people are killed from being struck by lightning each year than from e.coli.
• Listeria kills 499 people and Salmonella kills 553 people. But salmonella poisoning is easily acquired from store-bought chickens, of which two-thirds are contaminated with salmonella every day! Since the food safety bill doesn’t even address chickens, cows or other animals because those are handled by the USDA, this salmonella fatality figure probably won’t be reduced at all. (Salmonella comes largely from animals: Fowl, reptiles, etc.)
Monday, December 27, 2010
Ban on birth photos irks western Md. moms-to-be - wtop.com
HAGERSTOWN, Md. - Some expectant parents in western Maryland are objecting to a new policy that bans birth photography at the Hagerstown hospital.
The change took effect Nov. 1, prohibiting video, film or still photography until five minutes after birth.
Meritus Medical Center spokeswoman Jody Bishop says the policy protects patient privacy and reduces potential staff distractions.
But Cascade resident Laurie Shifler and her husband Michael say they want to photograph the birth of their eighth child, just as they have the first seven.
The U.S. Office for Civil Rights says birth photography by a family member or friend doesn't violate privacy laws, but that some hospitals prohibit it out of a fear of lawsuits.
Napolitano Announces Expansion of Gestapo Zones from Airport to Malls and Hotels
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 27, 2010
As we predicted, Homeland Security and national security state officialdom are in the process of expanding the police state and citizen humiliation grid from airports to hotels and shopping malls.
Thousands fear hunger after Pakistan bombing
The US Arrogance: CONFLICT OF GEOGRAPHY | Opinion Maker
By Brig Samson S Sharaf
The message being sent to Pakistan in the post Wikileaks scenario is ominous and bereft of diplomatic dignity. “We will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with,” said President Obama. Retired Gen. Jack Keane, put it more bluntly: “Don’t just put a finger in their chest, put a fist in their chest.” As predicated in my columns, USA is expanding the drone war into Pakistan while our national leaders continue to put a façade of protest in the backdrop of tacit compliance.
If USA is adamant in pushing its own interests in Afghanistan and remains insensitive to Pakistan’s security, ethnic and other social concerns, Pakistan is well within its right to pursue its own ends of policy. After all it was these objectives that formed the basis of Pakistan’s cooperation with the US in the war against USSR and allowed free access to Afghans for over two decades. More than 70% population of Afghanistan is ethnically, linguistically and culturally linked to Pakistan. Despite the Durand Line, the ethnic Pashtuns and Gujjars have been flowing to and fro for centuries. The Powindas, as we call them, have rights to grazing meadows, encampments and movements as if it was their own country. Cognitively they are as much Pakistani as those living on this side of the divide. A deliberate effort is now being made to label this cross border movement as sanctuaries and lump the blame for failures on Pakistan.