Zoellick Warns Stimulus ‘Sugar High’ Won’t Stem Unemployment

Timothy R. Homan
Bloomberg
May 31, 2009

World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned policy makers that fiscal-stimulus plans are insufficient to turn around the “real economy” and rising joblessness threatens to set off political unrest across the globe.

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“While the stimulus has given an impulse, it’s like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working,” Zoellick said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” “When unemployment increases, that’s probably the most political combustible issue.”

Zoellick’s caution is a contrast with private economists, who are raising their outlooks for growth from India to China as stimulus measures take effect. The biggest developed and emerging nations have committed spending increases and tax cuts totaling 2 percent of their combined economies, a level the International Monetary Fund recommended to end the recession.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/zoellick-warns-stimulus-sugar-high-wont-stem-unemployment/

Support Your Local “Domestic Warrior-Heroes” — Or Get Kicked In The Head

William Grigg
The LRC Blog
May 31, 2009

Police are “society’s sheepdogs, [who] willingly and selflessly protect your flock — with your lives if necessary,” trumpeted retired SWAT officer Robert O’Brien in a recent column for Police magazine. “You are our nation’s domestic warriors and heroes.”

May 13, 2009, video of cop kicking suspect in the head as part of a “post pursuit ass-kicking.”

They are the heroic “sheepdogs”; we, the public at large, are merely helpless and contemptible sheep.

O’Brien spares no superlatives in hymning the innumerable virtues of his tax-devouring fraternity, which he describes as “a thin blue line [that] strengthens into a solid steel band of brothers” in the face of danger and adversity.

While O’Brien’s self-aggrandizing rhetoric is at once florid and fascist, Police Associate Editor Dean Scoville, a retired patrol supervisor for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, eschews verbal adornment in expressing his thuggish and authoritarian views.

Scoville is peeved by the publicity earned by a recent incident in El Monte, in which a suspected gang member was kicked in the head by a cop following a vehicular pursuit. Although he led the police on a dangerous chase, the suspect, Richard Rodriguez, was face-down, hands-out, and unresisting when he was booted in the face by Lt. Dan Berlingham.

As far as Scoville is concerned, kicking an unresisting suspect is just good old-school police work. The real scandal, he whines, is a “conspiracy” by what he calls the “f___ing news media,” who are supposedly “putting the boot to our collective heads” by dwelling on the episode.

Lt. Bellingham’s only offense, Scoville sneers, is “Working in the wrong era.”

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“There was a time when post pursuit ass-kickings were obligatory,” Scoville writes with the gleeful abandon of an adolescent eager to show off his mastery of newly learned vulgarisms. “Cops knew it, suspects knew it, and there are enough old times on both sides of the fence that will verify the assertion when I say that what this officer did was NOTHING compared to what would have happened in another place and time…. I’m nostalgic for the days when the pursued feared the judicial system if for nothing but the inevitable ass-kicking and street justice.”

Actually, it’s quite common to see tax-fattened functionaries in police uniforms inflict reflexive criminal abuse of the sort that makes Scoville go all girly with admiration. See this, for example, or this, this, this, this, this….

“Perhaps matters of practicality shouldn’t even be considered in a profession that embraces terms like `war on drugs,’ `war on organized crime,’ and ‘war on gangs,’ but is not allowed the means to fight them as such,” complains Scoville, who apparently lusts to turn the entire country into a patchwork of “free-fire zones” and “strategic hamlets” — or perhaps even unleash a domestic version of the Phoenix Program in order to “win” those “wars.”

(Thanks to Rad Geek for bringing the Police magazine essays to my attention.)

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/support-your-local-domestic-warrior-heroes-or-get-kicked-in-the-head/

Israel begins “Doomsday” Drill

Press TV
May 31, 2009

Israel has launched its largest-ever military exercise to test its capabilities against potential missile attacks, bombings and riots.

Over the past few months, Israel has been busy making plans for fresh confrontation in the Middle East. The drill is widely believed to be in line with the regime’s preparation for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities which they admit can ignite an all-out war in the region.

The five-day exercise which was launched on Sunday will simulate simultaneous rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and missile attacks from Iran and Syria.

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“We will be exercising the doomsday scenario of simultaneous strikes against Israel on all fronts and by different means,” Israel’s defense ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror told AFP last week.

Exercise Turning Point 3 will also include simulating chemical and biological strikes on populated centers and a wave of attacks by Palestinians.

Israeli cabinet will also hold simulated meetings to weigh its response to such scenarios.

This is the third consecutive year Israel is conducting such an exercise.Tel Aviv says the war games are defensive in nature.

Lebanese Army however has heightened its security measures along the southern border with Israel to repel possible threats during the Israeli drill.

Israel’s speedy military build up can also be part of efforts to avenge its decisive defeat in the 2006 war on Lebanon.

Israel fought a 33-day war against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 to destroy the military power of the Lebanese resistance. According to the Winograd report, the attack backfired to wreak a humiliating defeat on Israel.

In the face of the overwhelming Israeli threats, the Hezbollah resistance movement has reportedly doubled its military might by preparing a joint training program with Lebanese Army forces.

In addition to the military patrols, Hezbollah forces, according to Al Manar, will be on guard “to respond to any possible aggression”.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/israel-begins-doomsday-drill/

Notorious Abortion Doctor Shot Dead in Wichita

STAN FINGER
The Wichita Eagle
May 31, 2009

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.

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Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.

No information has been released about whether a suspect is in custody. Police said they are looking for white male who was driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB.

Homicide detectives and Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston arrived at the church after the shooting.

Members of the congregation who were inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting were being kept inside the church by police, and those arriving were being ushered into the parking lot. Witnesses are being transported downtown for interviews and other members of the congregation are slowly being released from inside the sanctuary.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/notorious-abortion-doctor-shot-dead-in-wichita/

Obama’s disappearing stimulus

Christopher Swann
Reuters
May 31, 2009

It’s not just California that threatens to sabotage the Obama stimulus. State and local governments across the nation are gradually unravelling federal efforts to revive growth.

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The states have been inveterate stimulus eaters in the past. For most of the 1930s the expansionary policies of the federal government were just sufficient to offset the shrinking of state and local governments. Click here for PDF.

States also raised taxes in the recession of the early 1990s and in 2001. It was a problem that Obama — his team stocked up with renowned  scholars of the Great Depression — was determined to avoid.

Sadly, the financial woes of the states and cities — many of them self inflicted — are overwhelming these good intentions. The maths now looks distinctly unpromising.

The Obama administration has pledged around $140 billion in fiscal assistance to the states with the express goal of saving them from tax increases, layoffs and painful cuts in services. But as state tax revenues have tanked, they now appear to be heading for a $370 billion shortfall over the next few years. Federal largesse will cover just 40 percent of the gap.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/obamas-disappearing-stimulus/

France Considers Mandatory Flu Vaccinations

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
May 31, 2009

The French government will spend nearly a billion euros on a mandatory flu vaccination this autumn, a French website reported on May 30. “France is preparing a battle plan without precedent for this autumn, including an obligatory vaccination campaign for all French of more than 3 months of age,” writes Marie-Christine Tabet for Le Journal du Dimanche. “According to our information, the State will place an order for 100 million units of influenza vaccine from three laboratories (GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi and Novartis).”

Hundreds objected to the mandated flu vaccinations in New Jersey.

On May 15, Bloomberg reported that France, the UK, Belgium and Finland agreed to buy about 158 million shots from London-based Glaxo and Baxter International Inc.

According to the World Health Organization at the United Nations, production of up to 4.9 billion doses of a swine flu vaccine a year would be possible.

“A ‘pilot vaccine’ is being developed under the supervision of the EU. However, some conspiracy theories that are spreading just as fast as the virus have already dismissed the hysteria over the virus as a malevolent plot orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies in order to cash in on people’s fear. One in particular believes that the strain has been purposely engineered so companies producing vaccines can cash in,” Russia Today opined on May 1.

In February Baxter confirmed that it released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria. The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabeled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany, the Toronto Sun reported.

Anne Laude, co-director of the Institute of Health at the Université Paris Descartes, said “nobody would have the right, except in the case of a medical counter-indication, to refuse a vaccination.”

Last month the Obama administration announced it was considering whether to trigger mass production of swine-flu vaccine, which could affect the bottom lines of big vaccine makers as well as public health, according to the Wall Street Journal. Obama requested a $1.5 billion emergency appropriation to deal with swine flu, including development of a vaccine.

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The Obama fall vaccination program, according to the Washington Post, would entail giving Americans three flu shots — one to combat annual seasonal influenza and two targeted at the H1N1 flu virus. “If enacted, the multibillion-dollar effort would represent the first time that top federal health officials have asked Americans to get more than one flu vaccine in a year, raising serious challenges concerning production, distribution and the ability to track potentially severe side effects.”

In 1976, following a small swine flu outbreak at the Fort Dix Army Base in New Jersey, the federal government ordered a nationwide vaccination program. “Mass vaccinations started in October, but within weeks reports started coming in of people developing Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralyzing nerve disease, right after taking the shot. Within two months, 500 people were affected, and more than 30 died. Amid a rising uproar and growing public reluctance to risk the shot, federal officials abruptly canceled the program Dec. 16.,” writes Tony Long for Wired.

“The vaccine manufacturers had anticipated the potential for serious side effects from the vaccines they manufactured and had insisted on indemnification by the federal government before releasing pandemic vaccine. Harmed vaccinees and their families sued the federal government and eventually received millions of dollars in damages. Sencer was let go as CDC director. Many people faulted him for his dogged pursuit of universal influenza vaccination,” notes the Suburban Emergency Management Project.

During the swine flu hysteria earlier this year, the corporate media made the case for mass vaccination. “Time Magazine’s coverage of the swine flu scare has a noticeable subplot — preparing Americans for draconian measures to combat a future pandemic as well as forcing them to accept the idea of mandatory vaccinations,” wrote Paul Joseph Watson on April 28. According to Time, the government “may soon have to consider whether to institute draconian measures to combat the disease.”

New Jersey was the first state to require flu shots for young schoolchildren. “It was part of a new policy requiring a total of four additional immunizations for schoolchildren over the objections of some parents who worry about possible risks from vaccinations,” the New York Times reported on January 2, 2009. An advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that all children ages 6 months to 18 years should receive an annual flu shot.

Hundreds of concerned parents participated in demonstrations outside the New Jersey Statehouse on October 16, 2008, in protest of the State’s decision to mandate flu vaccinations for young children.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons considers mandatory vaccines a violation of the medical ethic of informed consent.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/france-considers-mandatory-flu-vaccinations/

Life in Vichy America

William Buppert
Lew Rockwell
May 31, 2009

“You can only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.”

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Collaboration in a negative connotation is an active or passive surrender to an overarching regime which removes freedom and liberty and replaces it with an ordered command mechanism to modify or influence your behavior. One can consider the British Loyalists in the American colonies to be collaborators and their fates on occasion were quite ghastly. This can happen as a result of foreign occupation or a replacement of statist forces over time through elections, coups and administrative fiat in an increasingly tyrannical government. The state is a remora that needs a host to survive and convincing the host that the relationship is beneficial to both parties is the key to the remora’s survival. If Obamunism provides one salutary service to the nation, it is a televised demonstration project on how gangster government (is that redundant?) thrives in an environment where the rule of force trumps the rule of law. On your own counsel, is your acceptance and compliance voluntary or a submission to staying one step ahead of the jailer?

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When the Germans rolled into France in June 1940, the French Third Republic toppled to be replaced by État Français or the French State. Vichy France was established after France surrendered to Germany on 22 June 1940 and Marshall Phillipe Pétain removed the administrative center of France from Paris to Vichy. Southern France remained relatively autonomous from direct German control until 11 March 1942 when the Allies landed in North Africa in 1942. The Vichy government ruled over France until the Allied repatriation of the Free French under de Gaulle in June 1945. This government was acknowledged and legitimized by the US and Canada, among others, until 23 October 1944.

During this entire time a guerilla war raged between the French Resistance and the maquis and the Vichy/German government in France and some of its colonial holdings. The Vichy government was simply the latest installment to provide a stage for the adversaries to engage in real and rhetorical combat. This civil war had its origins in the 1789 Revolution when the people who did not agree to the destruction of the Ancien Régime continued to sow division resulting in tremendous dissent and disruption throughout French history in the nineteenth century. During WWII, the behavior and resistance of these anti-Vichy forces was used as an opportunity to expand the state and was responsible for the post-WWII socialist government after the war.

“Historians distinguish between a state collaboration followed by the regime of Vichy, and “collaborationists,” which usually refer to the French citizens eager to collaborate with Nazi Germany and who pushed towards a radicalization of the regime.”

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/life-in-vichy-america/

Vet Under Fire for Patriotic Stickers

James Rose
MyFoxHouston
May 31, 2009

DALLAS – Frank Larison is a disabled veteran with more than 14 years of service, including more than a year of combat duty in Vietnam.

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The 58-year-old former Marine now finds himself under attack by his Dallas homeowners association for displaying seven decals on his vehicle supporting the Marine Corps.

“To me, it’s being patriotic, and it shows that I served,” the veteran told FOX 4.

The board says the decals are advertisements that violate HOA rules, and must be covered or removed.

Otherwise, the homeowners association for The Woodlands II on The Creek — where Larimore has lived for eight years — says in a letter it will tow the car at Larimore’s expense. The board also threatens to fine him $50 for any future incident.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/vet-under-fire-for-patriotic-stickers/

European elections 2009: No wonder voters can’t be bothered

Christopher Booker
Telegraph
May 30, 2009

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With four days to go before we can take part in the second largest “democratic” election in the world (after India’s), it is not just the diversion of the scandals engulfing our own Parliament which has driven voting for the EU’s version further than ever off the radar.

At least, last time the flurry of excitement over Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins – resulting in the UK Independence Party winning 12 seats – temporarily halted that steady collapse in turnout which in 1999 saw only 23 per cent of the electorate bothering to vote. The trouble with the European Parliament, as we know, is that none of us really know how to relate to it, or what connection this remote, mysterious body has with our lives. Probably not more than one in a thousand could name more than a couple of the MEPs we sent there last time. The farcical “list system”, based on dividing Britain up into 12 vast “Euro-regions”, means we probably didn’t even know the names of the mediocrities we voted for.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/european-elections-2009-no-wonder-voters-cant-be-bothered/

County won’t force permit on Bible study leaders

Helen Gao
The San Diego Union-Tribune
May 30, 2009

Sweeping issues of religious freedom and governmental regulation are swirling around Pastor David Jones’ house in rural Bonita, attracting attention from as far away as China and New Zealand.

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He says it all started with $220 in car damage.

Jones and his wife, Mary, hold a weekly Bible study at their home that sometimes attracts more than 20 people, with occasional parking issues. Once, a car belonging to a neighbor’s visitor got dinged.

David Jones paid for the damage, but he thinks the incident spurred a complaint to the county.

A code enforcement officer warned the couple in April for holding a “religious assembly” without a permit. The action became an international incident when it was reported last week on the Web site worldnetdaily.com.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/county-wont-force-permit-on-bible-study-leaders/