MFS – The Other News

Morning Posting.

  • Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Tonga 6.8 !More info here.

 

  • Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

 

  • First images of NASA satellite as it falls toward earth here.

 

  • Complete Coverage of NASA’s Falling Satellite UARS Here.

 

  • Black Friday Arrives: Biggest Weekly Move In 30 Year Bond Since Black Monday.(ZeroHedge).30Y rates move more than three standard deviations this week – the greatest move since Black Monday (1987) – as it drops 55bps – Hmmmmm…….stability.Source.

 

  • Nigel Farage: Financial “Cataclysm” To Come, Gold to Unimaginable Levels.(SHTF).Mr. Farage is a former commodities broker on the London Metals Exchange, so he understands the financial markets and monetary system (unlike 99% of the other politicians in the EU and DC), as well as the implications of the current debt crisis facing not just Europe, but the entire world. You’ll rarely hear a politician come out from behind the curtain as Nigel Farage does. Like most of us, he’s not very optimistic about what’s to come, and he lays out his views in an interview with King World News which is well worth listening to in full Here.

 

  • Breaking News! Independence Day Rocks – 2 Jews killed by Arab Independence Rocks near Hebron on Highway 60. Car was stoned,The 2 that were murdered were a 30 year old from the area and his baby.Source.Updated: IDF says no rock throwing took place, here

 

  • Another Day, Another Power Grab.(WHD).By Keith Koffler. What’s the major difference between George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law and the new education program that will be announced by President Obama today?It’s there in the very sentence above.The Bush law is a law. It was the result of arduous bipartisan negotiations that led to an agreement between, of all people, Bush and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.The Obama program is a program. It is federal fiat, a decision about what’s best by your superiors in the Obama administration. It’s a unilateral move to bypass the legislative process. It may or may not be good education policy. But the Chinese Politburo also may or may not be doing good education policy.In an August briefing previewing the new policy, Duncan encapsulated the Administration mindset: BIG BROTHER KNOWS BEST.

I want to thank the President for doing the right thing, stepping up. Congress, we would have loved them to act. They should have acted, didn’t happen, and we can’t afford to sit here and not support states.This is the right thing to do for the country. Congress just hasn’t acted. And we can’t afford to wait. People are begging, they’re imploring us to do the right thing.So it’s not my job to psychoanalyze Congress; it’s my job to move forward the children.

So you see, instructs Mr. Duncan, democracy is a slow and cumbersome process. But when you know what is right and other’s don’t – especially if others don’t – you just have to take action.Even though once, long ago, our Founding Fathers decided that democracy was the “right” thing to do.Hmmmm….“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776.Read the full story here.

 

  • Close Obama Pal Embroiled In Grant Fraud Scandal.(JW).More than two months after a Chicago nurse got criminally charged for stealing half a million taxpayer dollars from minority outreach programs one media outlet has dared to reveal that a close friend, advisor and donor of President Obama’s is embroiled in the scandal.It’s the taboo portion of the story that’s been ignored by the mainstream media and conveniently omitted in government press releases announcing the June federal indictment a month after it was filed. The one-time director of the Chicago Chapter of the National Black Nurses Association (Margaret Davis) faces two decades in prison for defrauding various state grant programs out of approximately $500,000, according to federal authorities.What the feds haven’t revealed is that the state agency that gave Davis all the money, the Illinois Department of Public Health, was run by one of Obama’s closest pals, Dr. Eric Whitaker, when the cash was disbursed. We know this only because Chicago’s conservative-leaning newspaper has been digging around. This week it published a lengthy article connecting the dots between Whitaker and the corruption scheme.The state’s convicted felon governor (Rod Blagojevich) appointed Whitaker health director in 2003 after Obama, a state senator at the time, recommended him. During Whitaker’s four-year tenure, the agency spent millions of taxpayer dollars on highly questionable publicity campaigns to educate African-Americans and other minorities about common diseases in their communities, mainly AIDS.Nearly $600,000 of it went to Davis and her Black Nurses Association, which received an additional half a million dollars in state grants from other agencies. Whitaker referred to the indicted nurse as “the ultimate advocate for health care and human services” and even gave her a no-bid contract to train college nursing students in administrative areas.Similar minority programs, many of them “faith-based,” also received big chunks of taxpayer dollars from Whitaker’s agency while he was in charge. Among them is a defunct AIDS awareness program that has been sued by the Illinois Attorney General’s office for misspending $523,546.Whitaker claims that thousands of grants were distributed when he ran the agency and he “couldn’t have known about the transgressions such as the alleged embezzlement related to a contract with the Chicago Chapter of the National Black Nurses Association.”He seems to have little worries as he enjoys his lucrative, private-sector job. In 2007 Whitaker resigned to join Michelle Obama at the University of Chicago Medical Center where he makes more than $670,000 a year as executive vice president for strategic affiliations and associate dean for community-based research.Hmmmm…..Anyone has a theory about coincidence?Read the full story here.

 

  • Dem. Rep. and Muslim Ellison Slams Obama As “Wrong” To Vote Against Palestinian Statehood At UN.(TheHill).Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Friday that Obama is “wrong” to oppose the vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.“The key issue of statehood is something that we can do now, that we should do now,” Ellison said on the progressive Bill Press radio show. “I think it will bring great stability to the region.”Ellison said Obama is missing an opportunity to get the Palestinian state he has previously said he wanted. Ellison’s position represents a break with top House Democrats, who have agreed with Obama on the possible U.N. vote.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) sided with Obama last week in a letter sent to 40 European heads of state urging them not to support the Palestinian bid.Not being a recognized state “puts [the Palestinians] at a considerable disadvantage when they try to bargain with Israel,” Ellison argued. “The move we should be making is welcoming Palestinians … as a sovereign nation.”Our opposition “will have a negative impact on our already hurting credibility,” Ellison said.Hmmmm…..”I will stand with my Palestinian brothers?”Read the full story here.

 

  • Palestine to defy Obama’s warning of violence and push ahead with bid for independence.(DailyMail).Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is preparing to submit his bid for UN recognition of Palestine as an independent state today in defiance of a US-led bid to stop him. He said he would deliver the application to UN chief Ban Ki-moon as planned.A top aide, Mohammed Ishtayeh, said that Mr Abbas asked Mr Ban and the Security Council’s Lebanese president this month to process the application without delay.‘We’re going without any hesitation and continuing despite all the pressures,’ Mr Abbas told members of the Palestinian diaspora at a hotel in New York on Thursday night.’We seek to achieve our right and we want our independent state.’Mr Abbas will address the UN general assembly in New York later today and he will be followed soon afterwards by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who opposes the move.U.S. President Barack Obama has also pleaded with Mr Abbas to drop the application in case it causes further violence in the region.Mr Abbas’ appeal to the UN to recognise Palestinian independence in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip would not deliver any immediate changes on the ground: Israel would remain an occupying force in those first two territories and continue to severely restrict access to Gaza, ruled by Palestinian Hamas militants.Beyond that, Security Council action on the membership request could take weeks or months.The strategy also put the Palestinians in direct confrontation with the US, which has threatened to veto their membership bid in the UN Security Council, reasoning, like Israel, that statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties to the long and bloody conflict.The US and Israel have been pressuring council members to either vote against the plan or abstain when it comes up for a vote. The vote would require the support of nine of the council’s 15 members to pass, but even if the Palestinians could line up that backing, a US veto is assured.The resumption of talks seems an elusive goal.Israel insists that negotiations go ahead without any preconditions.But Palestinians say they will not return to the bargaining table without assurances that Israel would halt settlement building and drop its opposition to basing negotiations on the borders it held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza in 1967.Israel has warned that the Palestinian appeal to the UN will have a disastrous effect on negotiations.Mr Netanyahu opposes negotiations based on 1967 lines, saying a return to those frontiers would expose Israel’s heartland to rocket fire from the West Bank.Read the full story here.

 

  • Canada – Horrific video captures moment cop shoots teen in face with Taser to break up street fight.(DailyMail).There is growing outcry after a police officer was videotaped breaking up a street fight by shooting a Taser in the face of one of the teenage participants.The 17-year-old is recovering in hospital, with his mother saying it took three surgeons to remove the prongs from her son’s ear.Witnesses to the incident at 11.55am yesterday in London, Ontario, claim the officer did not shout a warning. High-school students are threatening a protest in response.A cell phone video of the clash was posted on YouTube.It shows one youth hitting the other with a chair when a London Police officer on foot walks in from the street and shoots a dart from a Taser stun gun at a young man wearing jeans and a black shirt.From the video, it appears the two males had separated when the officer approached.The crowd gasps in horror as the Taser’s prongs appear to hit the male in the face. He falls to the ground and is motionless for nearly one minute.’Why would you tase him? You shot him in the head. You never even asked him to stop,’ screams a male on the video.The officer walks and stands over the teen, motioning for bystanders to step back.Vivian Greening was riding her scooter down Dundas St. when she came across the melee, the London Free Press reported.The officer did not give any warning before using his stun gun, Ms Greening said.He just pulled out the Taser and shot him,’ she told the paper. ‘They didn’t even try to talk to the kids (or) yell at the kids.’Onlookers to the fight in the area of Dundas Street and Maitland Street spilled onto the street, many of them students at nearby H.B. Beal secondary school.Read and see the full story here.