Displaying posts published in

August 2016

Shocking data revision by feds: Americans’ wages dropped 4.2% instead of rising in the first quarter By Thomas Lifson

Wages for Americans are dropping at a rapid rate, instead of rising as the feds had claimed. This shocking news – making President Obama’s claim that the economy has recovered from the great recession laughable – was buried in a report on second-quarter earnings and has barely registered in the nation’s media, which are anxious to elect Hillary Clinton.

Neil Munro of Breitbart summarizes the changes:

“Real hourly compensation decreased 0.4 percent after revision, rather than the previously-published increase of 4.2 percent,” the BLS admitted. Compensation also fell another 1.4 percent in the second quarter, from April to June, the BLS admitted in the same report. That’s 2 percent drop in wages since December.

Pay shrank 0.3 percent in 2013, rose a mere 1.1 percent in 2014, but rose a promising 2.7 percent in 2015, according to the BLS.

Based on the erroneous data, President Obama has been taking victory laps on the economy.

In June, Obama cited the mistaken 2016 wage-growth claim while arguing the economy was finally helping ordinary Americans. “Let’s get wages rising faster,” Obama declared in a speech at Concord Community High School, Elkhart, Indiana.

I also know that I’ve spent every single day of my presidency focused on what I can do to grow the middle class and increase jobs, and boost wages … Here’s the good news: Wages are actually growing at a rate of about 3 percent so far this year. That’s the good news. Working Americans are finally getting a little bigger piece of the pie. But we’ve got to accelerate that.

That speech was advertised as his first speech of the 2016 campaign, and he continued his wage-boosting theme during his July 27 speech at the Democratic Convention;

Hamas: Vote for Us or Burn in Hell by Khaled Abu Toameh

Abbas decided to hold local and municipal elections because his advisors convinced him that Hamas would boycott the vote, according to senior Fatah official Husam Khader.

The first sign of Hamas’s frightening platform emerged when one of its top muftis, Yunis Al-Astal, issued a fatwa banning Palestinians from voting for any other party other than Hamas. “Any person, male or female, who votes for a party other than Hamas will be considered an infidel and apostate and his or her repentance will not be accepted even if they fasted or prayed or performed the hajj [pilgrimage] to Mecca,” the mufti ruled.

This Hamas tactic has worked in the past. In the previous parliamentary election, Hamas used the same propaganda to brainwash and scare Palestinian voters.

By calling the election and allowing Hamas to participate, Abbas is digging his own grave, and presiding over the burial of any so-called peace process with Israel.

It is election season in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are preparing to cast their votes in the local and municipal elections, scheduled to take place on October 8. The upcoming elections will be different from the last one, held in 2012 only in the West Bank, when Hamas boycotted the vote, allowing the rival Fatah faction to claim victory.

This time Hamas has decided to join the political fray — a move that caught Fatah and its leaders, including Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, by surprise.

Hamas’s decision to participate in the local and municipal elections has further aggravated tensions with Abbas’s Fatah faction, which continues to suffer from deep internal divisions and rivalries.

“Walla she deserves it!” – Young Muslims of Sweden celebrates brutal honor killings

Young Muslims in Sweden, both men and women, defend honor killings. It reports the Göteborgs-Posten.
Social media star Qandeel Baloch has been described as Pakistan’s answer to Kim Kardashian. Last month she was strangled to death by her brother because she had posted scantily clad pictures of themselves online.

When the event was discussed in the Swedish-language Facebook group VIP Room, bringing together over 28,000 members, there were many who praised the killing.

“Sharaflös bride! She would lower her family’s reputation with their porn-like videos online. She comes from a religious family, her brother said to have warned her from before, but she did not listen, so he strangled her to death. Walla she deserves it!”

So write for example a 18-year-old Mohammed lives in Malmo in a post which, according to GC received 18 “like”.

“To all of you who think we email pigs would kill our own daughter / sister if they committed adultery greatly. You must understand that consequences exist. This chick died of their consequences, that she died because of his own actions,” explains one 20-year-old Muslim man from Stockholm according to GP.

“Heavy dude, should take a selfie with him since,” writes another Muslim man speaking of his brother.

Violence against sexual minorities intensifies

The spike in anti-LGBT vitriol, predominantly during January and February this year, has intensified violence against sexual minorities throughout Indonesia, the report said.

Indonesia’s largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama, in February described gay lifestyles as perverted and a desecration of human dignity.

In Aceh, the only Indonesian province that applies Islamic law, the local government urged business owners to refuse to hire gay citizens.

In interviews with activist groups, HRW reported gay rights organisations shut their offices and even hid staff as threats mounted against them.

In Yogyakarta an Islamist group forced the closure of a transgender Islamic boarding school, while a peaceful rally in the same Central Javan city in support of Indonesia’s LGBT community was shut down.

“The impact of anti-LGBT rhetoric from government officials is enormous for us as individuals. For those of us who have worked so hard and risked so much to come out, it is a major step backward,” a lesbian activist in eastern Indonesia told HRW.

Islamic State supporter Aaron Driver killed in police raid Suspected of plotting suicide bomb attack on major Canadian city

A former Winnipeg man who was a known Islamic State sympathizer is dead following a police operation late Wednesday in the southern Ontario community of Strathroy.

Aaron Daniel Driver, 24, formerly of Charleswood, was living in Strathroy, 225 kilometres west of Toronto, after agreeing to a peace bond earlier this year that stopped him from communicating with Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

Driver was killed inside a Strathroy home and was suspected of plotting a suicide bomb attack in an unnamed major Canadian city. He was acting alone, media reported.

CTV News said “a loud explosion and gunshots” were reported by neighbours and the RCMP, a bomb squad and military special forces were involved in the operation.

Quoting “an internal government memo obtained by CTV News, the suspect allegedly planned to use an IED (improvised explosive device) to carry out a suicide bombing mission in a public area. His alleged plan, according to the document, was to create mass casualties.

“Officials feared that the plot could’ve been carried out on Wednesday during rush hour in a busy location,” CTV added.

Driver, who also went by the alias Harun Abdourahman, was released on a peace bond in February with 12 conditions — some expiring in August and others in December. He was not facing criminal charges, and no trial was scheduled.

The peace bond meant federal justice officials believed there were reasonable grounds Driver might aid a terrorist group or terrorist activity.

HYPOCRISY IN AUSTRALIA: “GAY PRIDE” GAMES SPONSORED BY SHARIA COMPLAINT ANTAGONISTS

Roger Franklin :Holding the Man in Dubai

Given the discriminatory intent of the AFL’s programme to favour Muslim back-office recruits, it is difficult to imagine a more blatant hypocrisy. Not after this weekend’s Rainbow Round, which will see the League promote homosexuality while taking money from desert kingdoms that persecute gays.
The world’s greatest sport, Australian Rules football, has some problems at the moment. The recently re-vamped rules regulating when the ball has been forced out of bounds on purpose prompt much booing and bafflement in the stands. Likewise the high-tackle. Did the nippy rover duck into the knee that knocked him silly, or was flattened by an adversary’s contemptuous disregard for his safety? While these matters are moot, another aspect of the homegrown game is beyond dispute: its executives’ galloping hypocrisy.

Tonight (Friday, August 12) will see the first game of this weekend’s so-called Pride Game, which Chief Executive Gillon McLachlan is presenting as something akin to a manifestation of the AFL’s moral obligation to promote acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Just why a sporting code feels obliged to push alternate forms of human affection remains a mystery, one explained not at all by McLachlan’s conceit that the popularity of his code imposes an obligation “to lead” on this and other social issues. As Tim Blair points out, this agenda also includes preferential scholarships for Muslims, but adherents of no other creed. If you’re a devout Calathumpian who can slot six-pointers from the intersection of the boundary line and fifty, bad luck.

Given the bare-faced and discriminatory intent of that programme, it might be difficult to imagine a more blatant example of hypocrisy. Yet, as is so often the case with the AFL, it strives to exceed even its own worst standards.

Pentagon looking to Israel for Iron Dome-type missile defense shield to protect troops abroad : Lisa Daftari

American defense contractor Raytheon and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems who work together developing Israel’s Iron Dome-the highly-acclaimed mobile air defense system that has become critical to Israel’s national security-are now collaborating on an American prototype.

The U.S. version of the missile system would help protect U.S. forces in advanced combat positions around the world from a variety of threats including cruise missiles, rockets and UAV’s.

A 2015 trademark filing by Raytheon lists the “SkyHunter,” described as a ground-based missile interceptor system with a guided missile that has electro-optic sensors and adjustable steering fins to track and destroy incoming enemy rockets, missiles, artillery and mortars.

Raytheon is the world’s largest manufacturer of guided missiles and works with Israel’s State-owned Rafael providing key components for Israel’s highly-versatile electro-optic Tamir interceptor missile.

In April, the U.S. successfully tested a modified Tamir missile from a Multi-Missile Launcher (MML) at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico successfully intercepting a target drone.

The missile system is one of several under consideration by the U.S. Army, though the production costs and successful track record would make a Raytheon/Rafael produced system an ideal proposition for the U.S., Yosi Druker, vice president and head of the air superiority systems sector at Rafael told Sightline’s Defense News.

The missiles would be built in the U.S., rendered compatible for American military standards and “100 percent Raytheon,” said Druker, who added that intelligence sharing would be vital and another valuable asset to the project.

David Singer: Come Clean, Clinton! Trump Advisor Castigates Clinton Betrayal of Israel

Donald Trump’s trusted co-advisor on Israel – David Friedman – has castigated Hillary Clinton for her role as Secretary of State in perpetrating one of President Obama’s worst foreign policy failures –
trashing the letter from President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dated 14 April 2004 – its terms having been overwhelmingly endorsed by Congress 502 votes to 12.

Friedman – rumoured to be Trump’s Ambassador to Israel if Trump becomes America’s next President – was recently asked this question in a wide ranging interview:

“Hillary Clinton has just about everyone suggesting she is the most qualified person ever to be president. Where did she go wrong with the Middle East — if she did?”

Friedman replied:

“I don’t think she has made a right decision. I think she said some helpful things when she was the senator from New York when she had a Jewish constituency. As soon as she became secretary of state, the first thing she did was to embrace a unilateral settlement freeze. I think it completely poisoned the environment. I’m not aware of anything she did that is particularly good. I can name off the top of my head things that were nasty, like ripping up the letter from George Bush to Ariel Sharon, which I think was the only thing Israel got from evacuating Gaza.”

The Bush letter had acknowledged the risks Israel was taking in unilaterally disengaging from Gaza and part of the West Bank. In return Bush gave Israel written assurances that in final status negotiations with the Palestinian Authority America would support Israel:

* not returning to the 1949 armistice lines

* demanding recognition as the Jewish state

* refusing Palestinian Arab “refugees” being resettled in Israel

In ripping up these assurances Obama had undermined Israel’s security concerns and negotiating positions as agreed with Obama’s immediate predecessor.

U.K. Teen Who Joined Islamic State Was Killed by Airstrike, Family’s Lawyer Says Kadiza Sultana ran away with two friends over a year ago to live in Syria By Alexis Flynn

Of around 850 Britons believed by authorities to have made their way to Syria and Iraq, more than 50 are women, say police.

LONDON—A British schoolgirl who ran away to Syria to join Islamic State is believed to have died in an airstrike, her family’s lawyer said Thursday.

Seventeen-year-old Kadiza Sultana made headlines last spring when she and two of her friends from an east London high school left their homes to marry fighters for the extremist group in Raqqa, the Syrian city that it controls.

Ms. Sultana’s family were told of her death “weeks ago,” by their own sources, said Tasnime Akunjee, the family’s lawyer.

“Her body was pulled from the rubble of a building hit by a bomb dropped from a Russian plane,” said Mr. Akunjee in a telephone interview.

It hadn’t been possible to verify whether she had died, he added. The family had informed authorities, he said, but they haven’t received any information on Ms. Sultana’s status in response, said Mr. Akunjee.

The U.K. Foreign Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Palestinian Charity Trap A willful ignorance of the facts on the ground makes aid groups ripe for corruption and the misdirection of funds to terrorist groups. By Gerald M. Steinberg

World Vision officials have professed to be “shocked” by the arrest in Israel last week of Mohammed El-Halabi, the head of the megacharity’s Gaza operations. Mr. Halabi is accused of repurposing over the course of 10 years up to $7.2 million a year, in cash and materials, to Hamas. That’s approximately 60% of World Vision’s total aid to Gaza. In addition to money allegedly used for deadly weapons and the construction of terror tunnels, the charge sheet includes diverting unemployment payments, “2,500 food packages worth $100 each” and “3,300 packages of cleaning supplies and personal hygiene products worth $80 each . . . to Hamas units.”

According to the Israeli security agency that conducted the investigation into World Vision, Mr. Halabi admitted his role as a Hamas agent during interrogation, though his lawyer has since rejected this account and denied the allegations. World Vision has also denied the charges, claiming that the budget for its Gaza operations was smaller than the amount of the funds allegedly diverted. However, the annual reports of the Jerusalem-West Bank-Gaza (JWG) branch of World Vision fail to specify a separate budget for operations in Gaza alone, making it impossible to independently verify these assertions.

But it is impossible not to see in Gaza the massive construction of terrorist infrastructure everywhere, with humanitarian aid as the primary source of funds and materials. Terror is the territory’s only major industry, and if Hamas wasn’t stealing the aid, where were the sacks of cement, beams, pipes and other materials, as well as the cash to pay for the work, coming from?

Instead, World Vision leaders such as Tim Costello of the charity’s Australian branch, which provided a significant portion of World Vision JWG’s 2014 budget of more than $20 million, took refuge in distant accounting firms. “We have PricewaterhouseCoopers that audit us each year,” Mr. Costello said. CONTINUE AT SITE