Thursday, 11 March 2010 13:15 'By now the story had started to emerge in the press and by Monday the internet was rife with rumours about Purcell stepping down because of cocaine rather than the “stress” cited in the official statement. We now know that Council staff wanted to blow the whistle but were stopped by Purcell’s mysteriously funded lawyers. As the week progressed the story unravelled more, Purcell’s vain attempts at crisis management were no match for overwhelming evidence. The final straw was the collapse and subsequent death of a admirer of Mr Purcell’s, a young Labour Party activist named Danus McKinlay who “worshipped” Purcell and “would do anything for him” . Guido understands that McKinlay was diabetic and there has been reason to believe that he had stopped taking his medication resulting in his subsequent collapse. Witnesses said they thought he was drunk – an easy mistake to make of someone who desperately needs insulin. That was the final straw, within two hours Purcell had resigned as a councillor and has fled Scotland to an unknown sunny destination. Through all of this Gordon has remained silent. The ally he was once so keen to be photographed with, campaign for, tip for future greatness and fund-raise for, was left to the scrap-heap. What did Gordon know and when?' Thursday, 11 March 2010 13:10 'A group of stunned primary schoolchildren began crying when their teacher told them during a bizarre Holocaust game that they were to be taken away from their families. The pupils, aged 11, became upset after a number of them were segregated and told they were being sent away or might end up in an orphanage. The ordeal was meant to give the youngsters at the Lanarkshire school an insight into the horrors faced by Jewish children during World War II. Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:35 'A little–noticed law could soon result in smaller Social Security checks for hundreds of thousands of the elderly and disabled who owe the U.S. money from defaulted loans and other debts more than a decade old. Social Security benefits are off–limits to creditors, such as credit–card companies and banks. But the U.S. can collect debts to federal agencies by “offsetting,” or withholding Social Security and disability payments. The Treasury currently withholds benefits of 3.1 million Social Security recipients to recover defaulted student–, farm– and small–business loans, unpaid income taxes, amounts veterans owe for health care, and other debts to the government.' Read more: Treasury Plans to Take Social Security from Elderly for Unpaid Loans Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:20 'News has just reached me that the great Professor Ian Plimer, scourge of climate-fear-promoters everywhere, has been suddenly disinvited by the Royal Society of Artists (RSA) from a lecture he was due to give in May before an audience including the Duke of Edinburgh. Here’s part of the embarrassed kiss-off Prof Plimer received from the RSA’s chief executive.' Read more: How the British Establishment is Conspiring to Prop up the AGW Myth Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:13 'So, Angela Merkel says a new European Union bailout fund would require changes to existing EU treaties. Now, I might be getting a bit excitable here, but I think this could be cause serious headaches for both Labour and Conservatives alike. Start with the technical stuff. The reason Mrs Merkel is talking about treaty change is that the Treaty on the European Union (Maastricht, to you and me) both allows the creation of a single European currency, and forbids one member-state bailing out another. So if the EU is create its own European Monetary Fund to save Greece (and whichever member goes bad after Greece) then the treaty must change. So far, so good. But hang on: when the Lisbon Treaty was ratified by the UK (yes, without a referendum), the Prime Minister promised that there would be no more institutional changes in Europe for up to a decade. He made the pledge several times, including in the Commons.' Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:01 'The psychology of war teaches that before an American soldier can kill a perfect stranger, a non-combatant - the first thing you do is dehumanize that person into a faceless ‘thing.’ Now devoid of all those qualities we cherish in ourselves, the US soldier does not have to deal with the dictates of his conscience when murdering a civilian in cold blood. Thus we find the use of dehumanizing terms: “hostiles” -”insurgents” - “extremists” - “terrorists".' Read more: US Military Trains To Clear ‘Civilian’ Homes (Kill All Inside) Civil Rights Fears Over Cornwall Schools Terror Watch Thursday, 11 March 2010 11:26 'The county council is holding a £3,500 conference to train secondary schools teachers how to spot children who might grow up to become suicide bombers. It follows a presentation from police to the council's Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education. The council's religious education advisor said curbing violent extremism should be "core to education".' Read more: Civil Rights Fears Over Cornwall Schools Terror Watch Thursday, 11 March 2010 10:55 'Were Ukraine to sign up, there would be a common economic space encompassing the “Big Four” republics of the Soviet era, with a combined population of 213 million and stretching from the European Union to China. Its political, military and economic centre would be in Moscow, where Mr Putin is expected to reclaim the presidency in 2012 for up to 12 more years. A common currency would give him an economic lever to challenge the US dollar and the euro by creating a regional reserve currency. Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin stated last month that Russia, as the world’s largest energy supplier, may soon sell oil in roubles.' Read more: Vladmir Putin Forging Ahead With Vision of Eurasian Empire Thursday, 11 March 2010 10:51 'Last Saturday and Sunday state troopers were ordered to absolutely saturate Interstate 95 and Interstate 81 and to issue as many traffic tickets as humanly possible during those two days. Why? Well, it turns out that the state of Virginia has a 2.2 billion dollar budget deficit that they are trying to deal with, and so they need to find some quick sources of cash.' Thursday, 11 March 2010 10:46 'Banning “recreational” fishing isn’t just an issue of economics, but is a threat to the personal liberty of each individual’s right to produce their own food. And banning fishing is just one of several policy changes the government is looking at. In Federal Food Police Coming Soon To A Farm Near You, Tess Pennington points out the risks of letting the government oversee individual food production methods under HR Bill 875 and The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which specifically target agricultural goods, including crops and livestock on personal, non-commercial farms: What is to stop the government from defining a small home garden as a food facility? Because of the vagueness of this bill, it is not only the micro farmers that are affected by this. Anyone who has a garden, or shares their produce with neighbors or even owns a local restaurant that supports local farmers and buys their produce could be affected.' Read more: Food Security Threat: Goverment Set to Ban Public Fishing, Individual Food Production Thursday, 11 March 2010 08:21 'A clunky and difficult term to define for laymen and some politicians, "cap and trade" had become dirty words on Capitol Hill in recent months. Republicans called the plan nothing more than "cap and tax" and one influential senator took great pains last week to declare cap and trade "dead." Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent trying to draft a bipartisan bill, said, "We don't use that term anymore." Instead Lieberman said, laughing: "We will have pollution reduction targets." But Lieberman did say it was still possible utilities may be subject to a cap and trade system. Senator Thomas Carper, who chairs a clean air panel in the Senate, told Reuters on Tuesday that cap and trade for utilities was the way to go.' Read more: U.S. 'Cap and Trade' Rebranded 'Pollution Reduction' Thursday, 11 March 2010 07:59 'In New Mexico,specifically The Plains of San Agustin a foreign born millionaire is preparing to pump massive quantities of water out and transfer it to the Rio Grande and sell it to Mexico and Texas! Needless to say the residents of Catron County and Socorro County are really angry at this proposed theft of the peoples water!' Read more: The Business Of Water - Privatizing An Essential Resource
Thursday, 11 March 2010
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