MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• HT:EmergingCorruption.Obama’s Labor Dept. To Create Gov’t Sponsored ‘Labor News’ Agency?What is it called when a government creates a state-sponsored “news” agency, again? Ah yes, it’s called government propaganda. And that is what the Obama administration seems interested in creating if the words of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’s senior advisor Carl Fillichio can be believed.The advisor to the Secretary of Labor told the audience that one of the things that vexed his department is that it was so hard to get their “news” reported by the media. “We battle every single day when we try to put something out,” Fillichio told the audience.“We cannot depend on those other people – the traditional media – to get that message out,” Fillichio said.Imagine what is being said here. A person of high position in the Department of Labor is proposing that he be the one to “report” labor news. He is proposing that the government itself become a media agency in an effort to get around “the traditional media.”Every totalitarian government has such government-controlled agencies, of course. Who can forget the U.S.S.R.’s famed Pravda and Izvestia news agencies?Lastly, think of this for just a minute. If Fillichio and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis don’t think that the left-wing, Old Media is fair enough to them, just imagine how biased and left-wing the “news” that this new ministry of Big Labor information would be disgorging! I mean if the leftists in the Old Media aren’t leftist enough to suit Obama’s Dept. of Labor, I shudder to think how far left these guys really are.Chalk this up as yet one more step toward authoritarianism evinced by this president and his administration.Hmmm....wanted people with experience in the 1940's "Volksaufklärung und Propaganda"?Read the full story here.

• Obama's granny 'prayed for him to become Muslim'.'I prayed for my grandson to convert,' Sarah Omar tells Saudi paper while on hajj pilgrimage.The Kenyan grandmother of US President Barack Obama said during her hajj pilgrimage to Mecca that she had prayed for the American leader to convert to Islam, a newspaper has revealed. "I prayed for my grandson Barack to convert to Islam," Sarah Omar, 88, told the Saudi daily Al-Watan in an interview held in Jeddah after she had performed the hajj. The paper said that Omar was in Saudi Arabia on pilgrimage along with her son, Obama's uncle Saeed Hussein Obama, and four of her grandchildren. Omar told the newspaper that she could only discuss hajj matters and would not comment on Obama's politics.The family was hosted by the Saudi government for the holiday. Saeed thanked King Abdullah for his "kind hospitality," the paper said.Hmmmm.......One bows to the king the other is his guest?Read the full story here.

• U.K. Girl, 15, arrested for 'burning Koran at school and posting footage on Facebook'.A teenage girl has been arrested on suspicion of inciting religious hatred after allegedly burning an English language version of the Koran.The 15-year-old was questioned and bailed by detectives last Friday after the alleged incident in the West Midlands.She is also accused of posting video footage of the burning booklet on Facebook.A 14-year-old boy has also been arrested in connection with the alleged incident. He was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of making threats on Facebook. He was also released on bail.'West Midlands Police will investigate and monitor any crime reported by individuals who may have been targeted because of their disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation or transgender.'Read the full story here.More here.

• Canadian military families receive fake death calls.Canadian military police are investigating fake calls to families of soldiers in Afghanistan claiming their relative has died in combat, authorities have said.At least three families at a military base in Quebec have been targeted, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.One woman was reportedly told her husband had been killed by a bomb.Police say those responsible could face jail time if caught.Canadian Forces always deliver news of a soldier's death in person, National Defence spokeswoman Chantale Le Bouthillier told AFP news agency."Military personnel should not be needlessly worried about their families when they are fighting for our country in far away lands," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay, adding that the imposters responsible for the calls were "insensitive, amoral and disgusting".He added: "It is our hope that the perpetrators of this despicable action are brought to justice."A family centre at the Canadian Forces Base Valcartier in Quebec has offered counselling to those who have been targeted by the phoney calls.Hmmm....now who would be low enough to do this?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheStrata-Sphere.This Panicked Administration Has Turned Dictatorial, Not Democratic.The question at the core of the TSA security mess is what individual rights are We The People willing to give up for security. Are we willing to be groped and scanned, or should we use sophisticated profiling to detect evil human beings bent on mass murder?We face blood thirsty enemy in the form of Islamic Fascism – a deadly combination of religious fervor and soulless cruelty that makes the human holocausts of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia look pale in comparison. The Obama administration’s original plan to not speak of Islamo Fascism and their Terrorist-based war on the West was as naive as it was stupid. In return for Obama’s efforts to pretend Islam does not have a deadly cancer growing inside of it, we experienced more near-successful attacks on our country in 2 short years than in all the years since 9-11.But this latest TSA intrusion is too much and illegal. We don’t need mass molestation and invasion of privacy to stop terrorism. We need profiling. And before another liberal moron cries ‘racism’ I must note that looking at race or clothing is not profiling – it is another version of liberal ignorance. Profiling for terrorists has to look well beyond race, nationality and garb. It has to look at human behavior. It has to transcend the obvious, since the obvious can be faked or a facade or a home grown terrorist. Some of our most notorious enemies in AQAP are Americans turned traitor. The Times Square bomber was American, as was the Ft Hood murderer.Hmmm...hiding yourself in a locked room (Country) won't make the threat go away.Read the full story here.

• Turkey 'will not be silent' if Israel attacks.'Does Israel think it can enter Lebanon with most modern aircraft and tanks to kill women and children, use cluster bombs to kill kids in Gaza, and expect us to remain silent?' asks Turkish prime minister on visit to Beirut.Turkey will not remain silent if Israel attacks Lebanon or Gaza, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Beirut on Thursday, as ties between the longtime allies remained at an all-time low."Does (Israel) think it can enter Lebanon with the most modern aircraft and tanks to kill women and children, and destroy schools and hospitals, and then expect us to remain silent?" Erdogan said at a conference organised by the Union of Arab Banks. "Does it think it can use the most modern weapons, phosphorus munitions and cluster bombs to kill children in Gaza and then expect us to remain silent? "We will not be silent and we will support justice by all means available to us."Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on a two day trip during which he met with officials and visited the north and south of the country.He was inaugurating a hospital in the southern port city of Sidon Thursday as hundreds of protesters gathered in the capital's Martyrs' Square.When demonstrators tore up a large poster of Erdogan and pelted troops with rocks, security responded by beating up a number of them.There were no reports of major injuries.Lebanon has 150,000 Armenians, or nearly 4 percent of its population, which harbors deep animosity toward Turks over the 1915 killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians.Hmmm...it's becoming clearer by the day that Turkey's hatred towards Israel and love for Iran has no place in NATO. Get Turkey out of NATO NOW ! Read the full story here.

• HT:AmericanThinker.Oaths and the Constitution.In a column titled "The danger of a government with unlimited power", George Will wrote this past summer that Woodrow Wilson "was the first president critical of the nation's founding." Wilson, "avatar of progressivism," rejected the notion that the purpose of the federal government was limited to protecting "the exercise of natural rights that pre-exist government, rights that human reason can ascertain in unchanging principles of conduct and that are essential to the pursuit of happiness." Will wrote that "the name ‘progressivism' implies criticism of the Founding," meaning, quite literally, progressing away from the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.Reflecting on the Congressional customs above and re-reading the oath and the Pledge, how can it possibly be that those who revere the Constitution are somehow "extreme"? The answer is, of course, we are not, but progressives and their sympathizers in the mainstream media are determined to cast us that way in their effort to "fundamentally transform America" in pursuit of some sort of post-Constitutional socialist utopia. We should expect and demand our elected representatives to uphold their solemn oaths. We should remind them of their sworn statements, their promises of loyalty, their pledge of fidelity to our founding doctrines and principles. Those who endeavor to dismantle or subvert our Constitution and undermine our liberty should be deemed what they are in the oaths: "enemies", be they "foreign or domestic."Read the full story here.

• HT:IsraelMatzav.Does the Israeli Left finally get it?Even Leftist Gershon Baskin understands that the 'research report' issued by the 'Palestinian Authority' claiming that Jews have no connection to the Western Wall crosses a red line. Gershon Baskin, the joint CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, sent a letter to the Palestinian leadership in the wake of the Post article, calling the findings “a serious mistake” and “a stain on the Palestinian Authority.”“Any observer, even a non-professional archeologist, can discern that the stones used to construct the Western Wall (the Kotel) are from the era of Solomon’s Temple and the Temple rebuilt by King Herod which was hundreds of years before Islam appeared on the world stage.“The falsification of history, as done in the report by the Palestinian poet Al- Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the Ministry of Information, is a serious stain on the Palestinian Authority.”Read the full story here.

• General Assembly votes to commemorate Durban conf. The US and Israel expressed dismay on Wednesday at a vote by the UN General Assembly to commemorate the Durban anti-racism conference of 2001 at next year’s GA meeting in New York.Late on Tuesday night, the motion passed 121 to 19, with 35 countries abstaining.Israeli officials voiced concern that next year’s conference would become a forum for anti-Israel bashing, just as the original one had.Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor responded to the vote by saying that it was “unfortunate there are those who want to deflect from the fight on racism for anti-Israeli propaganda purposes.”By so doing, they were “harming the real struggle” against racism, he said.Palmor noted that most of the world’s democratic countries had either voted against the resolution or abstained.Among those voting against the intended commemoration were Israel, the United States, Italy, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania.The US, in a statement by Deputy Representative to the UN’s Economic and Social Council John Sammis, expressed its disapproval of the commemoration in an accompanying explanation of its vote.“Just days earlier, we will have honored the victims of 9/11, whose loved ones will be marking a solemn 10-year anniversary for them and the entire nation,” Sammis said.“It will be an especially sensitive time for the people of New York, and a repeat of the vitriol sadly experienced at past Durban-related events risks undermining the relationship we have worked hard to strengthen over the past few years between the United States and the UN.”“It means reviving manifestations of hate in which the swastika and the Star of David overlap and the hunting season on Jews is declared open, the result being an exponential growth in anti-Semitic incidents. This makes many people happy, very happy.”The Anti-Defamation League, meanwhile, called the UN resolution to commemorate the conference “outrageous and shameful.”Hmmm....another proof that the UN has outlived it's usefulness.Read the full "story' here.

• HT:BacktoBasics.Helen Thomas to be Honored by Arab Group Raided by FBI.A long-time White House correspondent, Thomas served as a columnist for Hearst newspapers before her anti-Israel views, termed anti-Semitic by many critics, became too controversial and she was forced to step down from her journalistic perch.Having received a “Courage in Journalism” award from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, former White House correspondent Helen Thomas is now scheduled to be honored by an Arab group whose executive director had his home raided by the FBI because of his alleged ties to terrorist groups.On December 12, the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) is featuring a speech by Thomas, who has been called the Arab American Dean of the White House Press Corps, as part of its 15th anniversary fundraising event.The Arab American National Museum, based in Dearborn, Michigan, is currently raising funds for a Helen Thomas Sculpture Project, in order to create a sculpture honoring Thomas. The Arab American National Museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.But plans to honor Thomas—and questions about how she should be treated in the history of journalism in the U.S.—have become increasingly controversial because of the questions surrounding the AAAN and its executive director, Hatem Abudayyeh. His home was raided on September 24 as part of an FBI investigation into illegal support provided by U.S.-based groups to foreign terrorist organizations in the Middle East and Latin America.Incredibly, the raid followed a friendly visit to the White House by Abudayyeh earlier this year.Accuracy in Media had suggested that she quit journalism, which she subsequently has done, and become a full-time advocate for the Arab/Muslim cause.This appears to be what lies behind her scheduled appearance at the AAAN fundraiser.But the nature of the AAAN raises even more questions about Thomas’s judgment.It also raises some concerns for the Obama White House.The AAAN was founded by Barack Obama friend Rashid Khalidi, who once served as a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Then-State Senator Obama was photographed at an AAAN dinner held on May 24, 1998 in Burbank, Illinois. The Woods Fund, where Obama served as a director from 1994 through 2001, approved a $40,000 grant to the AAAN for “community organizing.”When a controversy emerged during the 2008 presidential campaign over Obama’s ties to the AAAN, the liberal-oriented “PolitiFact” website called it a non-controversial group that focused on “local initiatives” and “has no foreign policy.”But one target of the FBI investigation is alleged support provided to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist group designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. Secretary of State. U.S. law prohibits U.S.-based groups or individuals from providing support to foreign terrorist groups.Reporter Chuck Goudie said that while Obama did not attend the briefing, the AAAN was founded by an “Obama friend and fundraiser named Rashid Khalidi, who became a lightning rod during the presidential campaign for his views on Israel.”The AAAN now wants Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder to stop the FBI investigations and prevent a Grand Jury from bringing criminal charges against the “anti-war” and “peace” activists.Hmmm.....talk about the enemy within?Read the full story here.

• Muslim 'fanatic' exposed as a hypocrite as he's jailed after £2.6m drug factory raid.A Muslim who dressed as suicide bomber in protest over cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed has been jailed for 13 years for a massive drug conspiracy.Omar Khayam, 27, was part of a gang who aimed to flood the Bedford area with £2.6million worth of heroin.And far from being devout, his part in the conspiracy exposes him as a hypocrite as drug dealing is expressly forbidden under Islamic law.In February 2006, Khayam, the son of a retired Urdu teacher, shocked the nation by dressing up as a suicide bomber - just months after the 7/7 bombings in London. He was involved in angry protests outside the Danish Embassy in London after cartoons showing Mohammed had been published in Denmark.Luton Crown Court was told two police officers stumbled across a heroin and cannabis factory in Ashburnam Road in Bedford on December 3 last year.They had gone to arrest a man for an unrelated offence. He was not there but they noticed powder on the floor and objects covered by large plastic bags.Hmmm...The Lord works in mysterious ways?Read the full story here.

• The ACN Report on religious freedom in the world is released.The 2010 Report on Religious Freedom in the World by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) was released yesterday in Rome. It shows that the situation is serious in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia. In the Near East, Iraq represents an especially bad case where anti-Christian violence is taking on the form of systematic persecution, as the latest episodes indicate. In Egypt, despite the fact that it is a major tourist destination, there have been many acts of violence against the Christian minority in 2009-2010. Lebanon shows how difficult it is for foreign religious staff to enter the country. The situation of Christians in Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip is getting worse with episodes of explicit persecution.In Pakistan, the blasphemy law is used as weapon against religious minorities, especially Christians who are the victims of Muslim fundamentalism. In Afghanistan, the government is not able to ensure effective religious freedom. In Bangladesh, where Islam is also the state religion, several cases of discrimination and attacks against minorities have been recorded with security forces showing little interest in protecting them. Hmmmm....Islam the religion of peace.Read the full story here.

• Turkey tells Nobel laureate Naipaul not to come.A Trinidadian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 has been told not to attend the upcoming meeting of the European Writers’ Parliament in İstanbul after conservative circles reacted to the author’s negative views of Islam. The possibility that Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, commonly known as V.S. Naipaul, could deliver an opening speech as a guest of honor at this event caused controversy and heated debate when writer Hilmi Yavuz in an op-ed published in a Turkish daily asked his colleagues if they would really be comfortable sitting next to a man who has insulted Muslims. This was followed by an outcry from conservative circles that opposed him being the guest of honor.Reports yesterday said the organizers thought about canceling the event altogether but decided to exclude Naipaul only from the event at the last minute. The decision was made late Tuesday evening. Agency representatives reportedly called the author on the phone and explained him the situation in Turkey and the repercussions created by the prospect of him coming to town. Naipaul, who said he would not attend the event, has not yet released a statement.Although the organizers have yet to make a public statement, sources close to the Kült Refleks agency said it wanted to avoid causing a new polarization in Turkey because of the event and avoid protests and controversy during the meeting, as well as being concerned for the safety of the guest writer.However, some still have fresher memories of Naipaul who in 2001 compared the “calamitous effect” of Islam on the world with colonialism. He claimed that Islam had both enslaved and attempted to wipe out other cultures. “It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.” For Naipaul, Pakistan was living proof of the damage Islam could wreak.Hmmmm....Doesn't Turkey sound every day more like Iran?Get Turkey out of NATO NOW ! Read the full story here.

• Turkey’s EU membership big error, says Former German Chancellor Schmidt.Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said Turkey’s possible European Union membership would be a big mistake, warning that Muslims may flock to Europe and asserting that they have difficulties adapting to German society. Schmidt’s remarks are likely to add fuel to a heated debate over immigration in Germany. “Of course, I know that many Muslims have really adapted to the society. But I cannot forecast a positive development if the European Union presents membership to Turkey,” the former German chancellor said in remarks published in Bild on Tuesday.Schmidt said if Turkey is accepted as an EU member, millions of Muslims will travel across Europe without restraint and fill European employment markets and social systems. “In this case, you could also add Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Syria to your future planning. We would bring disputes among Turks and Kurds to our European cities. This will be a big, wrong development,” Schmidt said in remarks translated by the Anatolia news agency.Hmmm...At least there are some sane politicians left.Read the full story here.

• Connecticut Roller Rink Defends Policy on Headscarves After Muslim Woman Complains.A roller skating rink in Connecticut is standing behind its decision to ask a Muslim woman to remove her headscarf because it could present a danger to skaters if it fell off.Marisol Rodriguez-Colon was set to attend her 4-year-old niece’s birthday party at Ron-A-Roll but apparently didn’t make it very far past the check-in counter before she was stopped by a rink employee, who offered her two options: remove her headscarf or wear a helmet over it.Rodriguez-Colon said she felt “mortified” when an employee at a rink asked her to wear a helmet on top of her religious headscarf, or hijab.But Jennifer Conde, the operations manager at the Ron-A-Roll, said the rink’s main priority is the safety of its patrons.“We are not insensitive to people’s religion,” she said. “We just focus on safety.”In a statement to FoxNews.com, Ron-A-Roll said it has a policy that prohibits headwear to be worn in the building. Safety helmets are offered to those that are unable to remove headwear for any reason, because they are secured with a chin strap.Janine Gallo, who organized the party, said she signed a contract that assured the club that the rules would be followed by her guests. The two women, according to Gallo, were not on the roster and created an unnecessary scene.“They were shouting that they were going to sue,” said Gallo.“The kids were having a great time, but they had to make it a racial thing,” Gallo told FoxNews.com. “It really shouldn’t be.”Hmmmmm......"You give me what i want or else....?Read the full bully story here.

• HT:NewZeal.Who Benefits? The Food Safety Bill Will Centralize and Regulate Food Production.“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” - Thomas Jefferson.This Founding Father would be rolling in his grave if he knew of the draconian measures to restrict food production the Senate is seeking to bring in. Under the deceptive title of the "FDA Food Safety Modernization Act", the bill if passed into law will crack down not only on large corporations, but also on "small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers", and will give authorities power to further regulate "growing, harvesting, sorting, packing, and storage operations, minimum standards related to soil amendments, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water".The Food Safety Bill (S. 510) is being heralded as more dangerous than even the Health Care Reform which passed earlier this year. Section 404 makes it clear that the bill seeks to conform to the requirements of the World Trade Organization and grants new authority to the Department of Homeland Security to oversee food production. Here's the key catchphrase from the proponents of this bill, responding to criticisms that the bill will cripple small-time farmers. This comment from Sandra Eskin of the Pew Charitable Trusts:"Rather than telling peo­ple they don't have to meet these basic safe­ty re­quire­ment that will be scale and size ap­pro­pri­ate, rather than ex­empt­ing them we think you should be giv­ing as­sis­tance in help­ing them meet the re­quire­ments of the law."Because that's what we want, isn't it. We want the Government to protect us with the likes of this highly regulative "food safety" bill, and then to very kindly help us to meet the requirements of the law. Eskin also applies the tired "progressive" argument that the law is too old.Read the full story here.

• UK-based Taliban spend months fighting Nato forces in Afghanistan.Taliban fighter reveals he lives for most of year in London and heads to Afghanistan for combat.British-based men of Afghan origin are spending months at a time in Afghanistan fighting Nato forces before returning to the UK, the Guardian has learned. They also send money to the Taliban.A Taliban fighter in Dhani-Ghorri in northern Afghanistan last month told the Guardian he lived most of the time in east London, but came to Afghanistan for three months of the year for combat."I work as a minicab driver," said the man, who has the rank of a mid-level Taliban commander. "I make good money there [in the UK], you know. But these people are my friends and my family and it's my duty to come to fight the jihad with them.""There are many people like me in London," he added. "We collect money for the jihad all year and come and fight if we can."His older brother, a senior cleric or mawlawi who also fought in Dhani-Ghorri, lives in London as well.Read the full story here.

• So who's next for financial meltdown?Spain, Portugal and Belgium set to follow Ireland into abyss as debt crisis threatens to destroy the euro.New fears have been raised about the future of the euro with the domino effect of faltering economies spreading today.The latest nation to get sucked into the crisis is Belgium after market traders pushed the cost of insuring the country's debt to record levels.The rising cost of Belgium's debt is now 100 per cent of annual national income. That is raising concerns the country could join Portugal, Spain and Italy on the growing list of countries that could be heading for a financial crisis along with stricken Ireland.Despite the growing unease over the success of the Irish bailout and fears that Portugal or Spain might need help soon, a senior official said today the crisis will not lead to the breakup of the eurozone.European Financial Stability Fund chief Klaus Regling said: 'There is zero danger. It's inconceivable that the euro would collapse.'Mr Regling, who has overseen the eurozone's 440billion euro bailout fund since it was created last spring, said Ireland was not suffering from rampant speculation, but rather from a lack of buyers for its bonds.'We're experiencing a buyer's strike, not wild speculation', Regling said. 'And there's some uncertainty around whether the crisis will spread to other countries.'Hmmm....which one will go first the Euro or the Dollar?Read the full story here.

• And now for something completelely different.Three teenagers, who survived on raw seagull and fish, found alive after FIFTY DAYS adrift in tiny dinghy in Pacific Ocean.Three teenagers given up for dead nearly two months ago after going missing in the Pacific Ocean in a small boat have been found alive.Rescue officials in New Zealand - which had sent a search aircraft into the vast ocean to look for the boys - had given up all hope of finding them.But today the trio, Filo Filo and Samuel Perez, both 15, and 14-year-old Edward Nasau, from the tiny Atafu atoll, are resting on a tuna fishing boat.Their frantic waving from their small aluminium dinghy was spotted by the crew.'It's an absolute miracle they were seen', said the first mate of the tuna boat, Tai Fredricsen.'They were drifting in an area where ships generally don't go.'For fifty days they had survived on raw fish they had managed to catch and had also eaten a raw seagull that had landed on their aluminium boat.A few rain squalls had provided some water but in the last three days before they were spotted they were so desperate for something to drink they had started to drink the sea water - 'the worst thing they could have done', said Mr Fredricsen.Read the full story here.