MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• Rep. Pence to reintroduce Broadcaster Freedom Act.Former House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) said today that he would soon reintroduce the Broadcaster Freedom Act, and that Congress should reject the idea of regulating political speech in the wake of the Arizona shooting over the weekend. Pence, who spoke on C-SPAN this morning, said his bill would prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating content on the airwaves.In the last Congress, Pence introduced the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2009, which would have prevented the FCC from requiring broadcasters to present opposing points of view, a concept known as the Fairness Doctrine.Pence said he does not want free political discourse to be "another casualty" of the Arizona shootings.Read the full story here.

• HT:AtlasShrugs.OMG !WTF !George Washington Statue Covered by "NAACP," at "MLK Rally."The annual MLK observance at the state house in Columbia SC had an interesting twist this year. The event is held on the north side steps of the statehouse. Prominent at that location is a large bronze statue of George Washington. This year, the NAACP constructed a “box” to conceal the Father of His Country from view so that participants would not be offended by his presence.I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this picture of the MLK Day rally in Columbia, South Carolina yesterday. This rally was sponsored by the NAACP and they said that they covered the statue because they “didn’t want to offend anyone”. Really? George Washington is the father of this nation. How is he offensive to anyone?Hmmmm......"I Have a Nightmare"?Read and see the full story here.

• Dick Cheney brands Obama 'a one-term president'.Former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney says he still sees Barack Obama as a one term president in an interview due to be aired in the States today.In his first interview since heart surgery last July, Mr Cheney addresses a wide range of topics, including the Arizona shooting and the resulting political fallout, his latest views on Barack Obama's presidency, his offer to George W. Bush to step down as vice president, and his health.The former VP says after five heart attacks over the last 30 years he made a decision to have a heart pump fitted, which he explains is a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) which pumps the blood around his body.'It's battery powered from the outside. But it's a wondrous device. It's really a miracle of modern technology, and I'm here today because we have that kind of technology,' he tells interviewer Jamie Gangel.He tells Gangel why he still believes Obama is a one term president:'I think he embarked upon a course of action when he became President that did not have as much support as he thought it did...once he got into the business, for example, of the healthcare reform.'I think he's enacted a program that a great many people are very worried about...I think his overall approach to expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit, and giving more and more authority and power to the government over the private sector is a lack of a "feel" for the role of the private sector in creating jobs, in creating wealth and getting our economy back on track. Those are all weaknesses, as I look at Barack Obama.''I think the President I worked for [George W Bush] had an absolute commitment that that's never going to happen again on our watch. And that we'll do whatever we have to do in order to prevent it. 'And I hope President Obama is at that point now where he has that same basic attitude. But we might never find out until there's actually another attack.'When asked about taming the language used by politicians and whether things like targets on websites should be banned, Cheney says:'Well, perhaps. But as I say, I'm reluctant to judge our politicians based upon the act of what appears to be a lone, crazed gunman.'Read the full story here.

• Medvedev to recognize Palestinian state? PA president's top advisor says Russian president to make announcement during visit to Jericho. Foreign Ministry 'unfamiliar with such information'. Palestinian officials say Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to announce his recognition of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders during his visit to Jericho on Tuesday. The Foreign Ministry has rejected the claim, saying that Israel was "unfamiliar with such information." In 1988, the Soviet Union announced its recognition of a Palestinian state following Yasser Arafat's independence declaration.Nabil Shaath, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' senior advisor, told the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper that the Russian president would ratify Moscow's recognition of a Palestinian state, stressing that it was a historic event. The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, whose workers have been on strike for three weeks now, tried to confirm the report but was forced to issue a statement that it was unfamiliar with the information. "If such a move has taken place on the part of the Palestinians and the Russians, it must have been in the past few weeks, and such information has not been received by the Foreign Ministry. In this process, like others, we are simply blind and have no idea what's going on," a knowledgeable source told Ynet.Hmmmmm.....Looking back on how "Mother" Russia has treated it's Jewish population in the course of history,nothing could be a surprise to Israel.Read the full story here.

• HT:AmericanThinker.Obama Is America's First Post-Responsibility President.America didn't elect a president; we chose a rapper-in-chief. Obama gets all the fun of truly livin' large: transforming the White House into a party palace straight out of "MTV Cribs" and zooming around on Air Force One like a hotshot celebrity on his private jet. All he has to do is smile at his screaming groupies, recite some catchy twaddle, and jet off to his latest vacation, serene with the knowledge that whatever misery and carnage may unfold below, his hands are clean.Obama is America's first post-responsibility president, and the degrading spectacle of the Tucson aftermath proves it. A quick reminder to Krauthammer, Noonan, et al., who have resumed tossing love notes at their favorite star: Obama is so indifferent to the safety of Arizonans that he actually sued the state for trying to protect them.What if the Tucson killer had been an illegal alien? What if "Javier Lopez" had shot up the crowd, after sneaking past the billion-dollar "virtual fence" that Obama just quietly canceled? What if he had murdered a border patrolman along the way, like Federal Agent Brian Terry, who was shot in the back with an AK-47 in December? Would Obama have borne any responsibility for that?Has Obama taken one single action to make the people of Arizona safer? Was the border more protected? Has the mental health apparatus of Arizona been appraised and improved? Has the sheriff been chastised for "acting stupidly" and possibly compromising the integrity of the investigation? Has anything "presidential" actually been done?No. But what does it matter? As Obama flew away, a grateful punditry wept with joy that they had lived to behold such a day, when the great rapper-in-chief had descended among us and softly blessed us with his font of sacred nonsense.Read the full story here.

• HT:TheWorstPoliticalBlog.Iranian Penetration Posing a Threat in Latin America.I must confess that, after years of closely observing Iran’s strategies abroad, I find its growing presence in Latin America to be the most disturbing geopolitical development the region is facing today. Iran’s presence is Messianic in its goals and relentless in its tactics. It is intimately related to narcoterrorism, both in its own practice and in the groups and activities it sponsors. The key to its expanding reach has been Hugo Chávez. Recently, a journalist from an important news outlet in Venezuela questioned the importance I attribute to Iranian embassies in Latin America. “They are just embassies,” he told me. To which I answered that our concept of what embassies are, or should be, has little to do with how Iran and its peers conceive of them. For these regimes, an embassy is a platform for terrorism. We need only to remember that two of the most brutal terrorist attacks in recent times in the region were ordered by Tehran and were planned and executed by Iranian agents operating directly from Iran’s embassy in Buenos Aires. With this background, and with solid evidence that Islamic terrorist networks operate in sensitive areas of the continent, the Iranian regime’s growing interest and presence in Latin America is deeply troubling. On his part, Hugo Chávez—Venezuela’s autocratic President—is acting as a go-between for Iran’s penetration strategy. He opens the doors to leaders of countries under his influence for the Iranians, like the Bolivian Evo Morales, the Ecuadorian Rafael Correa and the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega. Recently, Chávez made his ninth visit to Tehran. Lately we have learned that Chávez also acts as a front man, facilitating Iranian arms purchases banned by UN sanctions. I refer to the fact, reported in the international press, that while in Moscow recently Chávez publicly announced that he would buy the batteries for the S-300 surface-to-air missiles whose sale to Iran Russia had to cancel in compliance with the new UN rules. This raises suspicion about the massive arms purchases already made by Chávez, in quantities that go well beyond the conceivable needs of any single country like Venezuela.Hmmmm....All this under the watchfull eye of our golfing President,who by the way never rests! Read the full story here.

• Federal Debt Jumped $463.6 Billion In First Quarter of FY 2011.As Government Borrowed an Additional $1,500 Per Person in U.S.The national debt jumped $463.6 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2011 (which ran from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31), the Treasury Department reports.That means the government borrowed approximately an additional $1,500 for every one of the 308,745,538 men, women and children in the United States as counted by the 2010 Census. If government debt continues to accumulate at that pace through the remaining three quarters of the fiscal year, total new debt for the year would amount to approximately $1.85 trillion--or about $6,000 for every person in the country.That would rival the $1.89 trillion in new debt the government piled up in fiscal 2009--the greatest debt-accumulation year in the history of the country--when the federal government bailed out some of the nation's largest banks and President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus package.Hmmmmm......If you wanted to destroy America,would you do anything different?Read and see the full story here.

• Obama Coal Crackdown Sends Message to Industry.A move by the Environmental Protection Agency to revoke the long-standing permits for a mammoth coal mine in West Virginia sends a strong signal that President Obama plans to implement key parts of his agenda even though newly empowered Republicans can block his plans in Congress.In the aftermath of the November elections, many political pundits predicted that the once-unchecked Obama legislative machine would turn it's energies to federal rulemaking as a way to circumvent Republicans on Capitol Hill. And the EPA’s decision last week suggests that those forecasts were spot-on.Much to the consternation of the West Virginia delegation in Congress, the coal industry, and the working people of the Mountain State, the agency took the unprecedented step of revoking a mining permit that it had issued four years ago to Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia.The revocation prompted unusually harsh responses from West Virginia's two Democratic Senators.Sen. Jay Rockefeller sent the president a letter which read, in part: "I am writing to express my outrage with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decision to veto a rigorously reviewed and lawfully issued permit at the Spruce Number 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. This action not only affects this specific permit, but needlessly throws other permits into a sea of uncertainty at a time of great economic distress."Sen. Joe Manchin issued a statement which appeared to mock the EPA's permitting process."According to the EPA, it doesn't matter if you did everything right, if you followed all of the rules,” Manchin wrote. “Why? They just change the rules.""It's just the arrogance of the EPA,” said Bill Raney of the West Virginia Coal Association. “The people in Logan County want the permit. It's important to the company. It's critically important to Logan County."The environmental concerns over surface mining were well-known when the EPA first issued the permit in 2007. Since that time, Arch Coal has made millions of dollars in infrastructure investments in the mine, perhaps the largest ever in the region --investments which are now threatened by the EPA permit revocation." I don't think it's the American way," says Brad Blakeman, an advisor to former President George W. Bush. "I don’t think we rule retro-actively when businesses invested a lot of money, legally, in a permitting system that was certainly above board and they followed every rule and procedure that EPA had at the time and now to be told after-the-fact that this is now improper or legal, I think is wrong.”Hmmmmm.....If you wanted to destroy America from the inside ,would you do it any different?After the Oil industry now the mining industry?Or will they have to pay"Enviromental taxes"?Who will be handled by the ex Shorebank,is this the ultimate plan?Read the full story here.

• Iran executes national football hero's lover for murdering his wife.Iran today hanged a woman convicted of murdering a love rival.Shahla Jahed, 40, was executed at 5am local time after the verdict was confirmed by the supreme court and the judiciary chief.She had been a 'temporary wife' of Nasser Mohammad Khani, a former striker for the Iranian national football team.Her death, which took place in in front of the family of the woman she was convicted of killing, was confirmed by the national news agency.She had spent more than eight years - 3,063 days - in prison after her conviction, although human rights activists believe her confession was forced out of her.She was convicted of stabbing to death Khani's 'permanent' wife Laleh Saharkhizan in 2002. She repeatedly retracted the confession at her public trial.In the Shiite faith - the majority religion in Iran - men and women can marry for an agreed period of time. Afterwards, the marriage is null and void, although it can be renewed, although there is an obligation for both to look after any offspring.Men can have up to four permanent wives, and any number of temporary wives. Women can only be married to one man at a time.A spokesman said yesterday: 'There are good reasons to suggest that she may have been wrongly convicted.'Amnesty said that in early 2008 the judiciary overturned the verdict and ordered a fresh investigation, citing 'procedural flaws'. However, Jahed was again sentenced to death in February 2009.Read the full story here.

• Now WikiLeaks plans to reveal Swiss bank account details of 'tax evader' celebrities and politicians.WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has threatened to reveal confidential offshore bank accounts of hundreds of the rich and famous.A former Swiss banker handed the whistle-blower two CDs reputedly containing details of up to 2,000 wealthy individuals and corporations, including 40 politicians and various celebrities.The ‘high net worth’ individuals are from Britain, America, Germany, Austria, Asia and ‘all over’, according to Rudolf Elmer, who said he wants to expose mass tax evasion.Mr Assange, currently fighting extradition to Sweden on alleged sex offences, said the names - once verified - could be published on the WikiLeaks website in a fortnight.Mr Elmer handed over the CDs before flying back to Switzerland to stand trial on Wednesday for breaking bank secrecy.The banker, a former executive at Julius Baer Bank, one of Switzerland’s top private banks, said he was releasing the confidential documents to educate society.He said: ‘I do think, as a banker, I have the right to stand up if something is wrong.‘I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. From that point of view, I wanted to let society know what I know. It is damaging our society.’Mr Elmer - who runs his own whistle-blower website - was sacked from the Swiss bank in 2002 after working for eight years as Julius Baer’s chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands.Read the full story here.

• Dubai - Four year old girl raped on shoolbus by 3 men -School to blame for not hiring female staff, says Deputy Chief of Dubai police!Maj Gen Mozainah says school management responsible for any incident on a school bus.The Deputy Chief of Dubai Police has stated that the school management is responsible for any incident involving a pupil on a school bus.Speaking to Emirates 24|7, Major General Khamees Mattar Al Mozainah, said specifically in the context of the tragedy where a four-year old student of Modern High School was raped by three men on the school-bus,“The first person to be blamed for what happened to the poor girl is the school management for recruiting a male driver and supervisor for the school bus.Any school, not only for girls but also for boys, must have a female supervisor with good and clean background.Female are more sensitive when relating to children at very young age.”He added that the police investigation shows that this girl was the only victim so far of this school.Major General Mozainah also said that he blames the parents for taking such a long time to report the incident.“The parents did not have to wait for two months to come forward and file complaint. They should have done this long time ago, and not left the suspects free for all that time to get away with what they did.”Hmmm.......Everyone is to blame except the perpetrators?Read the full story here.More here.

• Iran MPs back 'revolution' in Tunisia.Lawmakers from Iran's parliament voiced their support on Tuesday for what they said is a "revolutionary movement" of the Tunisian people, the Fars news agency reported."The parliament of the great Iranian nation strongly supports the revolutionary movement of the brave Tunisian people... and wishes success to them," a statement signed by 228 members of the 290-strong parliament said. "The freedom seeking scream of people of Tunisia ended the tyranny and atrocity and put a smile on the face of the oppressed people of Tunisia," said the statement.The lawmakers said the current situation was created because of the "black report card of colonialist countries in Africa and the long, historical struggles of the people with tyranny on one hand, and the disinterest towards the country's needs on the other."Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani blamed the "United States and some Western countries" for the woes of Tunisians and branded their reaction to the unrest as "very funny.Hmmmm.....Well at least we know now Turkey's Iran's point of view.Read the full story here.

• IDF Successfully Tests “Magic Wand” Anti-Missile System.The IDF’s "Magic Wand" (Sharvit Kesamim) system for intercepting intermediate-range rockets was successfully tested last week, the BaMachane military magazine reports in its latest issue.The tests took place in southern Israel last week and were conducted by the Defense Ministry and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems under the attack conditions that Israel expects. At the end of the experiments it was estimated that the system will become operational within several years.Magic Wand is intended to deal with a wide range of threats, and is essentially designed to fill a gap between the Iron Dome system for short-range missiles, such as the Qassam, and the Arrow for long-range missiles such as the Iraqi Scud and the Iranian Shihab.In preparation for the system becoming operational, the Israel Air Force will begin an extensive preparatory project that will be completed soon. “Before the system becomes operational, we must put together the entire support system and infrastructure, and prepare literature and training,” an Air Force officer involved in the subject told BaMachane.Meanwhile, it was also reported that the Air Force is expected to declare Iron Dome operational within several months.Read the full story here.

• Canada - Yes, Islam condones wife beatings.Recently, Marvin Levant (Dec. 28), Steve Harris (Dec. 30), Syed Soharwardy (Jan. 2), and Riazuddin Ahmed (Jan. 5) debated Islam through the forum of the Herald's letters to the editor. The issue of wife beating and gender inequality in Islam has become convoluted and highly controversial as many Muslims try to sugar-coat the ugly truths and others try to shed some light on the issue. Soharwardy's statement that "Beating one's wife is not only wrong, it is criminal and completely un-Islamic" is incorrect. The Qur'an says that "men are in charge of women because Allah has made one of them (men) to excel the other (women), thus man's superiority over women . . . good women are the obedient ones . . . admonish the rebellious women and banish them, and scourge them (whip them severely to inflict pain) (4:34) . . . smote them (hit or strike with the hand or with a weapon causing pain, beat them . . . (4:62)". Islam does not recognize gender equality. For example, polygamy is accepted in Islam, but polyandry is not. A woman's testimony is considered half as worthy as a man's in court; a son inherits twice as much as a daughter does. Muslim men may marry Muslim, Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women can marry only Muslim men. In short, sharia law leads to the inhuman treatment of Muslim women by their husbands and others, especially in South Asia and the Middle East.Higher education is emphasized more for sons than for daughters; in cultural honour killings, almost always women are the target for murder. Under sharia, divorced Muslim women get custody of their sons under eight years of age and daughters until puberty, and then the fathers take the children away. Sharia enabled one of the worst fundamentalists, the vile and ruthless military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, to put more than 15,000 rape victims in jail because they could not comply with the absurd Islamic condition requiring them to have numerous male witnesses of their victimization. They were charged with fornication and their rapists were let go free.At birth, all infants are equal, but Islam makes then unequal; sharia is incompatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Soharwardy knows all of this to be true. It is in his Qur'an and other Islamic texts. I have no desire to hear useless excuses from mullahs for all these gender inequalities in Islam.Soharwardy and I were on CHQR Radio in Calgary to discuss the issue of a 17-year-old Muslim boy who beat his 16-year-old sister. That boy was incited by an illiterate mullah to discipline his sister because she was suspected of flirting with a white boy in northeast Calgary. Soharwardy and I agreed it was not an Islamic requirement for the boy to do what he did. I mentioned that Muslim husbands do have sharia-sanctioned power to discipline their wives. Soharwardy personifies an addiction to religion. I watched him on his own community TV channel shouting his head off just before the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Dec. 9, 2004, in favour of same-sex marriage, and Parliament passed the civil marriage legislation, C-38, recognizing same-sex marriage on June 28, 2005. He literally shouted that "Canada will be wiped off the face of the Earth by a tsunami if it accepts same-sex marriage. . . . Who the (heck) does the Parliament of Canada think it is to make laws? The laws are made by God."The Muslim world is ruled by a corrupt elite, including the monarchs, oligarchs, military dictators, corrupt politicians, depraved bureaucrats, and the murderous fundamentalist Muslim clerics. On the whole, Muslims seem to be frustrated, less recognized except in international terrorism, less secularly educated than the West and less developed. Without a democratic system of government, they are hopeless, hapless, desperate, and mad at Jews and Christians.Hmmmm......"We don't want to take over your country"?Read the full story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.Michigan: ‘Islam in America’ forum on MLK Day.Apparently, Muslims all across America are hijacking MLK Day to promote Islam. This event in Michigan, is the third event we’ve posted on and there are probably events in many other cities – with CAIR not far behind. The Islamists aren’t content just having Muslims holidays, they want every holiday to be a glorification of Islam.Interfaith love from CAIR – where being Muslim takes precedence over being black, or American, or anything else.Read the full story here.

• Saudi approves child protection law.Saudi Arabia’s appointed parliament has endorsed a law on the protection of children and set the child’s age limit at 18 years, a newspaper said on Tuesday.The Shura Council discussed the law presented by the Saudi government at its session on Monday and gave it its approval following several debates and rifts on the child age limit in the Gulf Kingdom.“Shura approved the child protection law at its session yesterday….it also put an end to disagreements about the child’s age limit when it approved a government proposal setting it at 18 years,” Alwatan daily reported on Tuesday.It said the law includes 25 articles dealing with the protection of children and penalties against physical, sexual or psychological harm of children.“The law also defines the responsibility of the parents of other custodians in bringing up their children, protecting them and ensuring they are not harmed or neglected,” the paper said.Conservative Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil basin, has been hit by a surge in child violence in the absence of clear laws on such cases.The country has already established 38 child protection centres and is planning to create hotlines and an online network for reporting such incidents, they said.In 2009, hospitals and authorities received 164 cases involving mistreatment and other acts of violence against children, official data showed."The Ministry is studying a draft law to regulate the marriage of teenage girls," he said, without giving details of the law and the date of its enforcement."The marriage of teenage and underage girls in the country is not a phenomenon yet as some claim... those who say this are wrong. We are considering regulations in line with the Islamic Shariah to govern this kind of marriage."Hmmmmm......What about human rights?Read the full story here.

• HT:StrategyPage.Allah Wants To Get Paid.Some al Shabaab factions are imposing very restrictive lifestyle rules, as well as economic restrictions. Al Shabaab needs money, and is trying to force the cell phone companies to raise their rates and pay a tax to al Shabaab. Al Shabaab uses extortion to tax whatever they can. Exports from ports must pay a fee to al Shabaab to move their goods (goats and charcoal being big items.) There is also an attempt to switch to the discredited and worthless Somali currency. Kenyan, and other foreign currency, has been used for the last two decades. Cell phones are very popular, and efforts by some al Shabaab leaders to get them banned, have failed. But restrictions on women have been increased, at least in some of the larger towns. There, women are now banned from shaking hands with, or walking next to, men they are not related to. Women have also been banned from working outside the home. This is very unpopular, as has been the ban on football (soccer) and videos and TV. Al Shabaab has also banned foreign (especially non-Moslem) aid groups in many areas. Most of the aid is provided by Western nations, and paid for by the United States. This ban means food aid does not get in. Rather than starve, a growing number of people are fleeing. Some will die in transit, or when they reach Mogadishu or Kenya (the two main destinations for starving refugees). In 2010, Somali pirates seized 49 ships (and 1,016 crew). Eight crew were killed during these captures. At the end of the year, 28 ships and 638 crew were still held. Because the anti-piracy patrol rarely kills or prosecutes captured pirates (for legal and public relations reasons), there is no real risk to being a pirate.The much larger number of mother ships out there has overwhelmed the anti-piracy patrol, and gone after ships much farther away (to within a few hundred kilometers of the Indian coast.) If one of these low cost pirates tales part in a successful capture (resulting in a ransom), they often receive only $10,000. But that's a fortune for these guys. The million or more dollars remaining goes to the pirate gang leaders, his associates, and the middle-men in Gulf states like the UAE, who actually negotiate the ransom and arrange the delivery of millions of dollars in cash.Hmmmm.....Time for the insurance compagnies to launch their own Navy,against these modern Barbary Pirates?Read the full story here.

• HT:Imra.[Will not show them yet] Senior Iranian Military Official Confirms Shooting Down of Israeli, US, British Drones.TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian military official on Monday confirmed reports on the shooting down of several enemy drones over the Persian Gulf, and said Iran has targeted a large number of these pilotless planes during the last 7 years."We have experienced similar incidents many times in the past and there have even been drones belonging to the occupying Zionist regime (Israel), the United States and Britain which have been shot down in the Persian Gulf during the past 7 years," the senior military official told FNA Monday on the condition of anonymity.He also confirmed that the planes had been targeted outside Iranian airspace, and noted, "The move shows that we are careful in a bid to stop violation of Iran's airspace by alien aggressive drones."Yesterday, Deputy Head of the General Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Major General Gholam Ali Rashid confirmed earlier reports claiming that several US drones have been shot down by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) air defense units, and said that the planes had been targeted outside Iranian airspace.Rashid further added that these pilotless planes are currently kept and controlled by the IRGC.Meantime, Commander of the IRGC Naval Forces Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi told FNA on Saturday that the IRGC will definitely show these crippled drones in an appropriate time."We have, thus far, shot down a large number of their highly advanced spy planes".He declined to mention the exact date and location of the development.After shooting down these planes the IRGC aerospace unit has copied and produced them in large numbers through reverse engineering, the commander added.Hmmmm........copied and produced them in large numbers through reverse engineering.Read the full story here.

• Revealed: How even German civilians took part in killing concentration camp survivors.A new book about the closing days of WW2 chronicles how German civilians murdered many concentration camp survivors as they moved through their towns and villages on infamous 'death marches' back into the shrinking Reich.The violence shows how even with their nation in ruins, the Allies advancing on all fronts and the war hopeless, ordinary people were so indoctrinated with Nazi hate they were prepared to kill defenceless people in cold blood.'The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide,' by Daniel Blatman, is the first book to research what drove these civilians to acts of savage murder.Some 500,000 prisoners from the concentration camp gulag both within and without Germany were on the move in the first months of 1945. As the Allies advanced, the shocking fate of approximately half of them became all too apparent.'..as was the case in Gardelegen, a town in east-central Germany, where US soldiers found hundreds of charred and mangled bodies in a barn in mid-April 1945.They were the bodies of prisoners from various camps who had been forced inside' writes Blatman, an Israeli, whose book is published this week and goes on sale in Germany.'It was later discovered that people had volunteered to guard the prisoners, including ordinary civilians, some of them armed with hunting rifles, who mutated into prison guards of their own volition.'We're going hunting, to shoot down the zebras!'' cries youths, in reference to the striped uniforms of the inmates.'Men from the Volkssturm militia, police officers, soldiers from a paratrooper division barracked nearby, guards and civilians helped drive the doomed prisoners into the barn. 'Then they locked the doors, lit gasoline-soaked straw on the ground and tossed hand grenades into the building. Anyone who attempted to escape the inferno ran into a hail of bullets. 'Some 25 prisoners survived, while about 1,000 died.' 'Some will say that the Nazis were responsible for this crime,' said Colonel George P. Lynch, of the 102nd US Infantry Division. The same thing happened in Celle, not far from the terrible, disease riddled concentration camp of Belsen.Prisoners were 'killed like animals' in a forest according to a British military report. Some 300 died in April 1945 massacre, a Hitler Youth leader aged just 17 accounting for 20 alone.Blatman, a historian at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said; 'The more the war approached its end, and the more obvious the prisoners' presence in the midst of the German population became, the more regularly German civilians participated.'In Palmnicken near the former East Prussian city of Königsberg some 3,000 prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp were herded by civilians on to beach of the frozen Baltic Sea to be mowed down by S.S. men.Along the country roads of a huge swathe of Germany can be found the little memorials to terrible acts where people were killed in ones and twos and sometimes tens and hundreds.A decade of indoctrination, a genocidal mentality that had systematically dehumanized the Jews and the Slavs, led to the collective hunt,' he said.Hmmmmm.....Just imagine what 1400 years of indoctrination does if this was the result of ten years of indoctrination?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheAmericanDream.High Oil Price = Faster Economic Decline For America.Most Americans have no idea how important oil prices are to the overall health of the U.S. economy. Whenever oil prices have pressed toward record levels in recent decades, it has always resulted in an economic downturn. A high oil price does not just mean that consumers will have to pay a little more at the pump. The truth is that oil is the very lifeblood of our economic system. We have built our entire country around the concept that we can transport lots of stuff very long distances for a very, very cheap price. When that paradigm beings to change, it fundamentally alters the dynamics of the U.S. economy. A high oil price will mean an even faster economic decline for America. The cost of oil factors into everything. A high oil price means that transportation of products and services costs more, travel costs more and energy costs more. It means that consumers will have less disposable income. When the price of oil goes up it benefits the big oil producers and a few others, but for everyone else it is very painful. But perhaps even more importantly, because the U.S. has to import such massive quantities of oil, whenever the price of oil goes up it means that we are becoming poorer as a nation because even more of our money flows out of the country and into the hands of the oil barons.According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States consumed a grand total of 6.9 billion barrels of oil during 2009. That represented approximately 27 percent of the total oil consumption of the entire globe.Unfortunately, the U.S. imports over half of the oil it consumes, and this represents a massive transfer of wealth out of the United States.Just think about it.Every month America imports massive quantities of oil which we rapidly consume. At the end of the month we are left with nothing.And guess who says that they now have the biggest crude oil reserves in the entire world?Venezuela.That's right - Venezuela now says that they had certified deposits of 297 billion barrels of oil at the end of 2010.So because of all of this corruption we are all going to pay the price. There are plenty of untapped oil reserves inside the United States. There are plenty of alternative energy sources that we could be developing. But we have been kept completely and totally dependent on foreign oil and now rising oil prices are absolutely going to devastate our dying economy.Things did not have to turn out this way.But guess what?They did.Hmmmmm......If you wanted to estroy America would you do anything different?Read the full story here.

• Grandma on acid! Researcher finds rare footage of 1950s housewife in LSD experiment.Next time you hear someone say 'Back in the olden days, we had to make our own fun', this is probably what they are talking about.An American biographer - doing research for a book on pioneers in the field of hallucinogenic drug experimentation - has stumbled upon footage of a prim and proper housewife struggling with the affects of LSD.The bizarre and slightly creepy footage shows a doctor dosing up the unsuspecting young woman and filming the consequences.Dr Cohen, seen sitting at a table and wearing a lounge suit - his legs crossed in the classic I'm-a-scientist pose - interviews the unidentified housewife, who is dressed in her best black frock.She tells the doctor: 'My husband is an employee here at the VA and he said they were looking for normal people, so I volunteered.'Dr Cohen asks: 'How do you feel about coming here and drinking this strange material?'She replies: 'A little nervous, perhaps.'As the housewife obediently drains the glass and Dr Cohen smiles benevolently, a dramatic voice-over explains: 'This is a glass of water, colourless, tasteless. It contains 100 gamma of LSD 25. One tenth of a milligram, the equivalent of one 600th of a grain.'An ounce of this material will make 150,000 such doses. Let us observe the affect some three hours later.'Unsurprisingly, three hours later the housewife is insanely high.She says: 'Everything is in colour and I can feel the air. I can see it, I can see all the molecules - I'm part of it. Can't you see it?'Dr Cohen asks: 'How do you feel inside.'She replies: 'Inside? I don't have any inside.'Read and see the full experiment here.

• "Life or Death in Iran's Prisons".2011: Iranian Regime Executes Average of One Person Every Eight Hours.The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran called on the Iranian Parliament and the Judiciary to immediately institute a moratorium on executions and to move swiftly to abolish the death penalty, in the face of skyrocketing executions following unfair trials and opaque judicial proceedings.Since the beginning of the New Year, Iran has hanged 47 prisoners, or an average of about one person every eight hours. Iran executes more people per capita than any other country, and in absolute numbers, is second only to China.On Saturday, 15 January 2011, Iran hanged a Kurdish prisoner some Iranian websites have identified as Hossein Khezri, a Kurdish political prisoner on the death row. A local official in the province of Western Azerbaijan told media that “a member of the Pejak (an armed Kurdish guerilla group)” was hanged in Urumiye prison on Saturday morning. He did not name the executed prisoner.Khezri’s brother told the Campaign that the authorities have not provided any information to the family about the execution of his brother. Hossein Khezri had denied charges against him and said he was severely tortured.“The Iranian Judiciary is on an execution binge orchestrated by the intelligence and security agencies,” stated Aaron Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Campaign.“The execution of Kurdish activists, without fair trials and following torture, increasingly appears as a systematic, politically motivated process,” he said.In addition to the execution of Khezri, Iranian media have reported a total of 46 executions in 2011: seven in Kermanshah on 1 January, sixteen in Ahwaz on 5 January, one in Asfaryan on 8 January, eight in Qom on 9 January, seven in Tehran on 12 January, five in Khorramabad on 13 January, two in Boroujerd on 14 January.Khezri, who is around 29 years old, was convicted of being Mohareb, “an enemy of God,” on 11 July 2009, on the basis that he “endangered state security.” He reported in a letter to international organizations that he had been tortured while in prisons run by the Intelligence Ministry and the Revolutionary Guards, but according to Amnesty International, his request for an investigation was denied. He had refused to confess to committing any of the crimes for which he was convicted.Another Kurdish activist, Habibollah Latifi, was about to be hung on 26 December 2010, but the execution was halted. The Campaign considers him still at grave risk.On 9 May 2010, Kurdish activists Farzad Kamangar and Shirin Alam Holi were hung.At least 14 other Kurdish prisoners are in danger of execution: Zeinab Jalilian, Shirkoo Moarefi, Rostam Arkia, Mostafa Salimi, Anvar Rostami, Rashid Akhkandi, Mohammad Amin Aghooshi, Ahmad Pooladkhani, Seyed Sami Husseini, Seyed Jamal Mohammadi, Hasan Talei, Iraj Mohammadi, Mohammad Amin Abdollahi and Ghader Mohammadzadeh.According to information received by and reported by the Campaign, the number of executions in Iran is apparently even higher than previously reported. Multiple and reliable reports indicate that secret, mass executions of more than a hundred have taken place in Mashad’s Vakilabad prison.“When executions become the method of choice to solve political and practical problems, human life is being tragically devalued in Iran,” Rhodes said.Hmmmmm.....These are the People that NATO Ally Turkey protects and cooperates,Get Turkey out of NATO and keep them out of Europe!Read the full story here.

• HT:Imra.Canada - Inconsistent explanations from The Bay regarding removal of Ahava products from shelves.There have been a variety of responses from representatives at The Bay throughout the past week regarding the removal of the Ahava products from their shelves; yet, each of these representatives has provided a different explanation for the removal of the products, which has led to much confusion. The responses given were variations of the following:

1. The Bay has discontinued Ahava products because they have not been selling well.
2. The manufacturer (Ahava) has discontinued the products because globally sales were down.
3. Ahava is rebranding and repackaging their product, and in the interim, The Bay has pulled their products off the shelves, but will stock the new products this coming spring.
4. The products have been removed from the shelves for political reasons.
5. The decision to restock Ahava products in the spring has not necessarily been finalized.These responses, however, remain problematic for several reasons. Firstly, to pull off everything from the shelves just at the time of the protests targeting The Bay leads one to doubt that the swift removal of the Ahava products by The Bay is merely coincidental.Moreover, there has also been evidence from other jurisdictions that sales of Israeli-made products have actually increased during such protests, so taking the Ahava products off the shelves at this point is a decision that does not make sense from a retail perspective – The Bay is seemingly losing business. Moreover, other retail outlets continue to sell Ahava productsaklein@bnaibrith.ca -Project Assistant League for Human Rights B'nai Brith Canada(416) 633-6224 ext. 112.Read the full story here.

• Iran suspends sentence to hang woman in stoning case.Iran has suspended a sentence to hang a woman at the centre of a global outcry about stoning, a member of parliament was quoted as saying on Monday. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s sentence to be stoned for adultery was suspended last year after condemnation from several governments, but she had still faced death by hanging for being an accomplice in her husband’s murder.In a letter to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the head of parliament’s human rights committee, Zohre Elahian, said the hanging, too, had been suspended due to pleas from her children. “Although the stoning sentence has not been finalized yet, the hanging sentence has been suspended due to [her children’s] pardon,” the letter said, according to student news agency ISNA.Ashtiani has been sentenced to 10 years’ jail, Elahian said. She was arrested in 2006.Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered Ashtiani asylum in July, prompting an embarrassing public rejection by Iran which said he was a “humane and sensitive character” but was not in possession of all the facts. Brazil has warm ties with Iran and attempted to broker a nuclear deal last year which was rejected by the West.Amnesty International says Iran is the world’s second most prolific executioner after China, putting to death at least 346 people in 2008. The Iranian authorities dismiss allegations of rights abuses, saying they are following Islamic law.Hmmmmm......Sharia Law can not coexcist with Human Rights.Read the full story here.

• HT:AmnonAndJonathan.First baby born in IDF field hospital in Haiti, named Israel.Footage from the IDF Field Hospital that has been set up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the earthquake. This video includes footage of the first baby born at the field hospital on 17 January 2010. The mother arrived at the IDF field hospital 8 months pregnant and Maj.Dr. Shir Bar and Maj. Efrat Shayer delivered a healthy baby boy, who was named 'Israel' by his mother.The IDF field hospital is currently the largest operating in Port-au-Prince. It has a staff of over 40 doctors, with different specialists, nurses, paramedics and features a maternity ward, ICU, pediatrics unit, internal medicine department, a pharmacy, and operating rooms. The hospital can treat up to 500 patients a day.Read and see the full story here.

• HT:ShalomLife.Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp Cancel Trip to Israel. French singer Vanessa Paradis and long-time boyfriend, Johnny Depp will not be visiting Israel after all. The chanteuse cancelled her scheduled February 10th performance at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Centre, "due to professional reasons", as reported in a press release by her management. Paradis was also set to meet President Shimon Peres whilst in the country.The February 10th concert was part of a wider tour, but the Israel show was the only cancelled date, leading to speculation that Paradis was influenced by pressure from Palestinian solidarity organizations. After the event had been announced, the international movement advocating boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians, apparently contacted the singer demanding she cancel the concert. A letter from movement organizers stated that "despite international law, Israel is free of punishment… discriminating against its Arab citizens. Due to this situation, BDS calls upon French singer Vanessa Paradis to cancel her performance in Israel, for as long as this country doesn't work to change its policy."The 37-year-old singer/actress has released 10 albums in her native France, and broke out with an international hit “Joe Le Taxi” in 1987 at the tender age of 14. Paradis has been in a 12 year relationship with superstar Johnny Depp- they have two children together. Other celebrities had intended to accompany the couple on their trip to Israel, including French actress Isabelle Adjani, and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.Hmmmm.......Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.Martin Luther King, Jr.Read the full story here.